In Praise of Young People

When the temperature is 17 below zero, everyone needs a laugh. Here is a classroom vignette, shared by my friend Jean, who teaches high school in Ohio:

Today while discussing [Robert Frost's] "The Road Not Taken," this happened: 

Student 1 (frustrated): Mrs. K, I don't get why this guy's poetry is considered good. It looks like stuff anyone could write. I could write this. 

Student 2: Dude. It's ART. You can't create this because you don't even understand it yet.

Jean's internal comment: Hahaha. They don't need me.

And while I'm on the subject of young people: As I was driving around yesterday--and for a change, I wasn't driving around with a young person--I was listening to an NPR segment about how the millennial generation (defined in this case as 18- to 32-year-olds) views itself and believes that older generations view it. Repeatedly, the interviewees mentioned that older people see them as detached and selfish--wrapped up in selfies and texting and video games and uninterested in the larger elements of humanity.

This may be true for some young people. It is also true of some older people. Do you think that it's possible that selfish young people have learned selfishness from selfish older people? I hate to imagine that my children's generation sees mine as a collection of sour-mouthed disapprovers. I'm proud of my children, which is to say: amazed, impressed, overwhelmed, entertained, touched. They teach me so many things I never knew. And they know so much more about the world than I did at their age--for instance, they are closely attentive to global politics while I barely comprehended Watergate as anything more than a word. They are idealistic, inventive, ambitious, and kind. Also, they are very, very funny. So what if they don't love every single thing that I love. Why should they? I don't love every single thing that my parents love. That's the story of time.

Let's hear it for these excellent human beings: these young people who are our children, our students, our neighbors, our friends. The world could be in much worse hands--and it usually has been.