Nation of adolescents

Sometimes I wonder if we are seeing a fundamental change in how we do business as a society. (Other times I wonder if this is just the regular generational complaint that people in their late 30s or early 40s make, looking at the rising generation).

But I worry a little bit - and sometimes, more than a little bit - about a lot of my students.

I teach, among other things, an introductory-level college biology class. I try to get discussion going in there. So I ask questions about things in the news.

It alarms me, the blank stares I get about stem cells. Or the blank stares about genetic disorders - sometimes, if a student in the class has a relative with cystic fibrosis or something, then I can get some discussion going, but often, there's just this sense of "we don't know and we don't care."

And that alarms me. Because probably these people are going to be voting - if not on the issues, certainly voting for people who will be talking about the issues. And they'll be having to make decisions about their lives. And what are they basing those decisions on?

It's not like it's hard to stay informed - it's not like my parents' college-days, where maybe a few people in the dorm had radios (and no one had televisions, not even the rich kids). And it's not even like my days, when most people had radios, lots had televisions, but there was no internet yet.

The students in my classes get free cable hookups in the dorm. And they get free high-speed internet. And there are newspapers delivered around campus.

But I guess they're not using them for news.

Now, maybe I'm just strange - I brought this issue up with a friend who's a few years older than I am. She laughed, and said, "When you were a college student, did YOU read newspapers or watch the news?"

And you know, I did. I subscribed to the town newspaper where I lived - it was an afternoon paper and I'd come home at 5 or whenever from class, and I'd sit down and read it. It was part of my decompression from the day. Now, I didn't always read it cover to cover: usually I read the local stories, those pertaining to my university. I might have skimmed national or world stories that caught my eye, and I usually checked the editorials page to see if there were any that were entertainingly frothy-at-the-mouth. (Typical college town, so usually there were. On both sides of the aisle, so to speak.) And I frequently watched an evening news program.

I just did - because it was something my parents did. It was, I considered, part of being a grown up. You needed to be informed about your world. Ideally, you got information from a bunch of sources - you didn't just listen to NPR or watch ABC news or something like that.

I guess the idea I internalized from my parents was (a) news was part of being a grown-up and (b) if you have the privilege to vote, you should be informed so you're able to vote intelligently.

And that's part of what worries me - if people choose to be ignorant (note: I did not say "stupid," I said "ignorant." Those are two different things; ignorance can be fixed if you have the motivation), what's to stop them from voting for some dangerous person who panders in slick advertisements? One thing I've learned as a grown up is that political issues are never as simple as they seem on the surface. (For example: my father was generally known as the best advisor to have if you were a woman because he treated you as an equal and some of the other guys in his department didn't. But my father didn't support the ERA for some very specific reasons - which I didn't understand as a child, to me the ERA was a simple matter- because that's how the Weekly Reader or whatever presented it as).

But it's as if lots of people don't want to think about that.

I ask my students how they get information. Some of them just kind of shrug. Some of them say they half-listen when the news comes on on whatever country station they listen to. A few boldly claim that Jon Stewart is their source, and is the only source they need.

(I've tried watching the Daily Show. I really have. I cannot like Jon Stewart. To me, he seems symptomatic of the whole culture-of-extended-adolescence - the way he grins and mugs at the camera, the way he subtly makes things about HIM rather than about THE NEWS. The way serious issues are batted off with a snarky comment).

And you know, that's a big part of my concern: it seems that for a lot of people, what "should" be serious is not treated seriously any more.

I think there are some rules of grown-up-i-tude that I keep in my mind:]
1. Be informed, know what's going on around you

2. Be appropriately serious. That doesn't mean NEVER laugh at stuff - this morning I was racking my brains trying to come up with a good "attorney-client privilege" joke after hearing that Anna Nicole Smith's attorney is claiming he's the father of her new baby. But it means not making terror threats a big joke, not laughing off the very real possibility of danger. (I think one of the problems with the Hugo Chavez issue is that the translator - the flat expressionless way she spoke - made Chavez' very real and very dangerous [and very unhinged] comments about Bush being "the devil" seem funny, and therefore, less dangerous and alarming).

3. Take responsibility. (This is a big frustration of mine. I can't count the number of times I've had someone agree to do something and then not - because they were "too tired" or some other lame-ass excuse. Guess what? I'm tired too. I'm frequently "too tired" and yet I manage to do things other people are depending on me to do).

4. Uphold the social contract. One of the reasons we have so many idiotic nannying laws springing up is that people don't uphold the unwritten rules that stick society together. Like unwritten rules about noise. I don't run my lawnmower or other power-lawn-tools early on weekend days. Even if it's going to be killingly hot later and I'm courting heatstroke by waiting, I don't turn on the edger until 11, because I know there are people in my neighborhood who work the night shift and might need to sleep in. But I also expect people to do the same courtesy to me - to let me sleep at 11 pm because I get up at 5 the next morning. (I'm glad it's getting cooler out because boom cars seem to be less attractive in cooler weather. But for a while, we had this one guy in my neighborhood - I'm not sure what he did but he basically turned the metal panels of an old, old Cadillac into a sort of metal subwoofer. So not only did we have to listen to his tooth-jarring bass, but we also got the half-second-later, discordant added noise of the body panels on his car rattling from the music).

5. At least some of the time, put others' needs before your own wants.

I think of the people I think of as "grown ups" - the firefighters who ran INTO the WTC to try and get people out, even though some of them probably knew they were likely to die; soldiers; the parent who goes without a new widescreen television because their kid needs braces or because it would put the family into too much debt; the politician who thinks carefully about the issues and then chooses his or her positions based on what he or she considers best for the country - not best for his or her own re-election. And on and on.

But I look at a lot of the people around me - the students who sleep in on rainy days because it's too far to have to walk 500 feet in the rain from the dorm to the classroom buildings. The faculty who snipe and gripe about the pettiest damn things and keep meetings running long with their complaints. The local businesspeople who fight against anti-litter ordinances until it's someone in a competing business that they can blame litter on. - and I just see a shortage of grownups, of people who are willing to shut up and gut up and do what needs to be done without necessarily getting credit for it.

And it makes me sad. And it makes me wonder - on my more optimistic days, I say "The world isn't getting worse; you just notice it more than you once did." On my pessimistic days, I think "Good people are few and have always been few. And there is so much to be done, and so few people willing to work."