I don’t know why herds of wasted youths, much like I consider myself to be, continue to congregate around plastic digital-cable systems instead of with one another, organically. Like many of the people with whom I interact on a day-to-day basis, I’m growing apathetic about my apathy. We don’t care that we don’t care. . .But if we continue along the path we’re collectively treading, our children are going to care even less than we do, and our leaders will be even better at bending the rules.
We’re very comfortable. We owe the world an interest in ourselves. We’re the superpower. But if we continue to hardly bat an eye when our leaders lie and cheat us, we could very easily just be an ordinary country, like, I don’t know, France.
Just imagine. France.
Apathetic youth hinder global change
By Brandon Guarneri / Guest writer
December 01, 2005
The Ithacan
I was teaching one of my classes this morning, trying to engage the students by asking rather then telling, having them dissect a task into its component parts. When I came to a student [whom I've had in a previous semester's course as well, and labeled "scary Alex" because of his general demeanor and tendency to glower] he, as usual, stared at me blankly. (Okay, he glowered.) After a 10-second-or-so pause, I asked, “don’t know?” He responded, “No, just don’t care.”
Some in the class laughed, I said “o-KAY” and moved on to the next person. But. . .really. . .I guess I could just praise him for his honesty? but what I really want to ask is, why, then, are you here, taking up space and wasting my time? and maybe ask the class at large, how many of YOU care? but I guess that wouldn’t be fair to put them all on the spot (who knows if they’re each equally prepared to be equally honest, and in this particular case, I think a great many of them DO care, and if they don’t, do I really want to know this? As if it’s not hard enough already to get out of bed in the morning.)
And what do I do about how I approach these apathetic students? Are life’s lessons to be learned the hard way if they’re to be learned at all? (My oldest son told me exactly this once.) How much energy do I expend trying to pull them all along with me? I try to shine a mirror on it — put in what they do, but what about when they’re in the same class as the ones who try? How do I ration that out?
My 16-year old has a 3.6 grade point; he does about 10 minutes of homework a week. I think if he had a 2.6 grade point, he would do about the same. He doesn’t care. [This is probably not actually true -- he does care, it's just easy for him, so he does just enough, never more.] He needs a job, he’s always broke, he can only afford to drive to school on days he HAS to because he never has gas money, he likes a girl but can’t take her out; but he’ll only go out looking when I remind him that he needs to start paying me back for his car or that he is expected to contribute to his college tuition someday. He doesn’t really care. Will he someday? I hope so. I think his 20 year old brother is starting to care. I take that as a good sign. Do I just wait? and hope?
If I try to analyze the situation, I decide that, despite my struggles to maintain a middle-class lifestyle, my children have had too much too easily. They don’t know hunger, they have enough clothes to wear and a warm bed to sleep in every night. They aren’t forced into menial jobs to help feed their siblings or to help out on the family farm. The world is too generous to them, they have too much (and think they have so little), they don’t appreciate it, blah blah blah.
Good god; I sound like my father. (Except for the blah blah blah part.)
I wonder if they’re apathetic in France. Or Italy. I could live in Italy.*
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