Friday, September 25, 2015

Kids These Days

"So," says the bartender/airport check-in lady/person waiting in line with you, as soon as they find out that you're a high school teacher: "What are they like?  Kids these days?"

They always give an ironic little smirk when they're saying it -- as if to proclaim their awareness of the innate ridiculousness of the phrase, to insist that they're not like the fuddy-duddies who they imagine are the ones usually asking this question.

Still, it's barely a question.  They already know their answer.

So you shrug, and grin, and say, "Pretty much the same as they've always been.  Kids are kids."

Your answer is dismissed before it's even considered.  "They're not shitheads?" the barista/tattoo artist/friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend asks, "Because I feel like they're shitheads."

You try to keep it casual.  "Maybe sometimes," you concede, "But no more than we were."

"Nah," the receptionist/waiting-room-companion/distant relative dismisses you, without a trace of irony, "That's wrong.  They're definitely bigger shitheads than we were.  The internet, man."

Because you have been socialized to be polite, and because you want to get this transaction over with, and especially -- in the case of the tattoo artist -- because you do not wish to agitate the man inking a permanent design into your friend's arm, you smile tightly and change the subject.

What you want to say, and don't, is "It's interesting how you think you know more than I do about the people I work with every day.  In the past eight years, I've known about 1200 teenagers from both sides of this country and literally all around the world, obviously not even counting the ones I knew when I was a teenager -- what's your sample size?"

You also want to say, "Well, sir, maybe you were a bigger shithead than you realized back then."

Nor do you say, "And maybe you still are."  Though you really want to.

If you teach high school, you've had this conversation and you've had it more than once.  It is my personal least favorite conversation to have about my job, mostly because the majority of people who begin it have no interest in hearing what I have to say about teenagers.  They're just looking for confirmation of what they think they already know -- that teenagers are The Scourge Of Society, The Reason We're All Going Down The Tubes, and Dead Inside -- and they want an excuse to vent and hear rage-inducing stories about how teenagers are Literally The Worst, Okay?

Well, sorry (not sorry!), but they're not going to get that from me, and they're not going to get it from pretty much any teacher I know.

Because here's the thing:  my teenagers humble me on a daily basis.  Sure, sometimes they make me want to pull out my hair, but ultimately, the teenagers I work with have more humanity and empathy and sheer voltage in their pinky fingers than most of the adults who disparage them.

And here's another thing:  My father taught in the public schools for forty years.  When I was in high school myself, I asked him, "Dad -- you were a teenager in the fifties, and you've been teaching teenagers since the sixties.  Have we changed?"

He thought about it for a moment and then replied, "Teenagers are pretty much the same as they've ever been.  I guess the only difference is that they seem more alone these days."

Eleven years later, his comment was echoed by my own students.  My juniors had just read an article by a (non-teacher) adult in the New York Times claiming that today's teenagers couldn't identify with The Catcher in the Rye because social media made it impossible for teenagers to realize what it was like to be lonely.

My students erupted in protest.  "Honestly," one of them said, "I think social media just makes us more lonely."  The rest nodded indignantly.

Oh yes -- they're quite aware of what they're going through.

(Sorry, David Bowie and John Hughes.  I couldn't resist.)

Actually, that's one of the reasons I love to teach them.  Pretty much every teenager is aware that he or she is a walking disaster.  Teenagers know that they're works in progress in a way that many adults just can't fathom.  Those teenagers that you thought had it completely together back when you were in high school?  The cheerleader, the arty hip poet, the Homecoming King, the Plastic, the kid who is perfectly average and perfectly mid-range-popular and perfectly affable?  Yeah, they're all a mess.  And so were you, and so was I.

And so are you, and so am I.  We are all of us imperfectible.  Those of us that remember this can continue to grow, to strive for greater learning and empathy and humor.  We're not done yet.  We're never done.

Teenagers know they're not done.  Even when they resist academics, they are still alive with a spark of curiosity, of learning, of beauty.  When their minds expand and they raise their joyful eyes to yours, the energy created is electric.

Every teacher knows what I'm talking about; it's why we do our jobs.  I teach The Great Gatsby as often I do in order to see it through their eyes.  I learn more through watching them.  As their minds and souls expand, so do mine.  Often I feel that I'm about to burst out of myself, that I've grown too full of love and awe and joy for my own skin to contain it all.  It's freaking beautiful, is what it is.

So, to those dear people who are so concerned about "kids these days," and their general inferiority compared to "kids in those days," and how teenagers are going to be the downfall of society:  Now that you are no longer tattooing my friend's arm or making my (admittedly delicious) coffee or checking me in to my flight, and now that I can hide behind a computer screen in a cowardly manner, I am going to respond to you in a way that is decidedly not socialized, and that I would never express to my current students because I will set a good example in the classroom, dammit:

Fuck you.

Fuck you for forgetting who you are and who you were.  Fuck you for underestimating teenagers and fuck you for not mustering up the empathy to try to see the world from their point of view and fuck you for trying to pass off sympathy as empathy.

Fuck you for not recognizing your own complicity in creating the world as it is now and fuck you for putting it all on a bunch of children who are so young that they do not remember a world in which 9/11 hadn't happened yet.  Fuck you for thinking you're not a walking disaster in a world in which we are all walking disasters.  Fuck you for blaming young adult literature for being "too dark" in a world where dark is easy and kindness is hard.

Speaking of young adult literature, fuck the authors who don't realize how hilarious teenagers can be, and who transform the gonzo fluidity of their conversations to insipid tripe.  Fuck you if you think you're somehow better than they are.  Fuck you if you think you know more about politics when some of my students live police brutality and international relations and gang violence every day.  Fuck you if you think you get to matter more than they do.

(Incidentally, fuck you for not thinking I know my job.)

If you're reading this, I'm probably not talking about you.  If you're reading this and you made it this far, you actually care what "kids these days" are like, and you're willing to listen, and that's all anyone can ask for.  We need you.  (And, um, also, thank you.  Like, a lot.)

So, since you're asking -- what are they actually like?  Kids these days?

The answer:  kids are kids, and pretty much the same as they ever were.

The world, on the other hand, might be a whole lot scarier.

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