Kids These Days

One of our most fundamental tasks as adults is to introduce young people to the importance of politics today and historically.  It’s not always an easy task, especially because for young people “history” means no further back than yesterday.

When teaching undergraduates during my long tenure at Drake University, I always tried to explain abstract concepts through references and analogies to aspects of popular culture.  Increasingly over the last several years, however, I found that I simply had no common cultural connections with the undergraduates of today. 

For example, in a class of mine on the Thursday of 2024’s Drake Relays week, students were talking about the musical act set for the weekend.  When I asked who was playing, the students answered with a particular name that left me completely blank. 

They then had their revenge.  I told them that when I was a freshman at the University of Michigan, I attended a Motown Revue concert, featuring the Miracles, the Marvelettes, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Jimmy Ruffin, and others. 

Despite my great enthusiasm in telling them this, my students’ response was also completely blank.  One young man tried to help matters by saying, “I think I’ve heard of the Temptations.”  I just hung my head and thought, “Give me strength.” 

Music aside, I even noticed over the past decade or so that when I mentioned the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, I always had to stop and say, “No, I was not there.”  Students nevertheless remained skeptical, leading me usually to add, “Okay, I knew people that attended the Convention, but I didn’t go myself.”  Still not a help.

Young people—though not only young people—are particularly susceptible to asking the question, “Why should I care about politics and government?”  They often go on to ask, “Why should we vote—they never pay any attention to us?”

The proper response is to ask, “Why should politicians pay any attention to you—you don’t vote?”  If the vote didn’t matter, there wouldn’t have been violent responses throughout our history to attempts to register and vote.

The best, if not a slam-dunk, response to these young citizens is to try to convince them that whether they know it or not, there are people and institutions making decisions that affect their lives, sometimes positively but also sometimes negatively. 

We all therefore have only two choices:  we can ignore and remain uninformed about these people, institutions, and decisions, leaving ourselves subject to forces that may or may not be in our best interest; or we can become informed about this environment and have at least a chance to influence it in our own interest.

Nevertheless, it’s still a tough sell.  In my own case, I recall that I read voraciously as early as elementary school, usually baseball books.  Though I don’t remember the reason, I shifted in 5^th grade from baseball books to history (I know—a case of the early-nerd gets the worm). 

It was reading history that eventually transitioned me to politics, and the fact that my father was politically active certainly contributed to this, even if he and I didn’t always agree about issues.

However, this was unusual for a young person.  I do remember sitting in an introductory course in philosophy and finding myself asking, “Why should I care about any of this?”  I eventually did go on to major in philosophy along with political science, but I’ve always said this was despite rather than because of the introductory course.

Students then and now seem to feel the same way about politics, asking implicitly if not explicitly, “Why should I care about any of this?  And it’s not just younger people that have this point of view.

Americans talk a lot about the right to vote, but we don’t really mean it.  According to most estimates, American voter turnout nationwide is around 60% in presidential elections and 40% in midterm elections. 

A big part of the problem is a failure to understand what politics can and cannot do.  Many people, young and old, have the laudable but unrealistic desire to choose the perfect candidate. 

There is, however, no knight in shining armor about to show up.  There simply are no perfect or even near-perfect candidates. 

Thus, because we’re always confronted by, if I may, the evil of two lessers, we must be willing to vote for the lesser of two evils.  No matter what your political orientation may be, one candidate is always less bad from your perspective than the other.

Young or old, those who prefer a supposed political purity to participating in an imperfect process surrender their voice and let others make those important decisions that shape our lives. 

Not a good strategy for self-protection, let alone idealism.