Students today won't debate anything

Hee are excerpts from a letter from Morgan Southwood, a graduate student, in Nevada, to Joe Bageant. Students today won't debate anything. I have a number of students who don't fit this description, yet most of them would, I think, accept this as a description of many of their classmates. I also think that Southwood's discussion bears upon the current postings on democracy at Long Sunday.

Most of my students are completely apolitical. They seldom watch the news and they seldom read newspapers. They get their synopsis of current events from Jay Leno and David Letterman. They are not rebellious; in fact, they usually make a great effort to get along with each other and be friendly in the classroom, to the point of not wanting to offend anyone else with their social/cultural opinions, which are viewed as being "relative" anyway -- everyone's opinion is "equally valid." I cannot get these kids to debate anything, because most issues are thought to be a matter of "personal interpretation." Postmodernism strikes again.

They are also very enthusiastic consumers. Generation X, at least, had anxiety and guilt about rabid consumption. Generation Y LOOOOVES to shop, I mean, they LOVE it. They like commercials, cell phones, electronic gizmos, all that shit. No hesitation at all. Most of them have credit cards. Credit card companies open up shop on the quad all the time and give out T-shirts and water bottles to people who sign up.

Many of them love pop culture. They love TV and video games. Popular music. There isn't much rebellion; most of them are very close to their parents -- the professors and teaching assistants remark frequently about "helicopter parents," or parents who "hover" around their grown children and still "take care" of them, to the extreme of petitioning teachers to change the student's poor grades so they don't lose a scholarship.

Consumerism as ideology manifests itself in the academy, an unfortunate development that I hear professors griping about on a regular basis. In my personal experience, for example, my students fill out "class evaluations" at the end of every semester, offering critiques of the class they have taken. You wouldn't believe how many of them view education as a commercial transaction, saying that they don't believe that they "should pay money to attend this required class (science, history, whatever in the core curriculum) that has nothing to do with my major." They seem to think that college is like Burger King -- Get It Your Way! There is much resentment against the core curriculum amongst the student body in the academy. Many students don't like being "forced" to study what they don't want to study, especially since they're PAYING for it.

This ethic has resulted in some universities eliminating their core curriculums and allowing students to cherry-pick their courses of study. Students leave college with huge holes in their education. Emerson? Homer? The French Revolution? Calvanism? Hobbes? Never heard of any of it.

In sum, I call Generation Y the "Anti-Boomers" -- in many ways, they are the opposite of their parents (when their parents were college-age). Emphasis on conformity (notice the amazing popularity of tattoos, for example -- the youth get tattooed to FIT IN now, instead of to stand out; it seems like I am the last young woman in America who does not have a tattoo), moral relativism, cheerful embracing of consumerism, etc. Interestingly, they are enamored with consumer culture and shopping, but they do not intelligently/eloquently advocate Capitalism -- it's like they are oblivious to the economic system. No militant defenders of Adam Smith or Keynes here.

The children of the baby boomers. I don't mind telling you, Mr. Bageant, that I am somewhat hostile to your generation, nothing personal. I often feel like they were asleep at the switch when my country turned into a huge goddamned chain-store strip mall and whatever genuine American culture we had got flushed down the crapper in favor of whatever the hell it is we have now. Not all of American culture was so great, Lord knows, Jim Crow, for example, was pretty revolting, and as a woman, I wouldn't have been able to get into many Ph.D. programs fifty years ago -- but it must have been nice to live in a nation without obesity, bluejeans worn as the national uniform, and Taco Bell from sea to shining sea.

Young people have never known anything else. Consequently, many do not expect or envision anything else. So, how are we going to work towards anything better when the Boomers fall from power in ten or twenty years? How can we preserve the Republic if we don't even know what it is? If the Republic even exists anymore. Usually, I think it's hanging by a thread. We are just barely civilized. Just ... barely. This experiment in liberal democracy and capitalism is grinding along like an old Ford with dirt in the motor.

Comments

[Jodi]

um, Ryan, what conservative 'thinkers' do you have in mind? And, why do you put the 'thinkers' you were 'taught' into contemporary dichotomies of liberal and conservative--most don't fit there, after all. And, if there were conservative thinkers that interested you, did you go ahead and read them on your own? College isn't supposed to teach you all you need to know. It's supposed to provide you with skills for finding out what you want to know and challenge you to broaden and question what you want to know, why, and how.

[rwilson]

I love how quickly you respons to my posts on here. Honestly all but a few of my poli sci classes at HWS taught me anything meaningful in the real world except to drive me to stand up for my own beliefs and not believe any of the opinionated left wing BS you hear. The main reason I decided to major in poli sci as well as econ is because I knew it would challenge me. I knew I would have to sit through semesters listening to profs BS the entire class just because they have the power to do so. That has helped me in the real world because unlike the world of academe you can't just pass a few reviews you receive total job security and can therefore say whatever comes to your mind because you cant be fired.

[Kaj]

Hi Jodi,

I don’t know if I count as a member of the Y-generation. Soon to be 25 years old, but I have never owned a cell phone, I never play computer games, the first time I used the Internet was when I came to college in the U.S. (in high school, in Sweden, I wrote my papers by hand!), and an I-pod – what’s that? But I have one specific answer why I, personally, rarely debated in class in college and one more general note about students today.
Firstly, to reply on my own behalf: I think slowly. I need time to form an opinion in my mind. I often felt like getting involved in debates, but I got, and still get, into trouble when my opinions are attacked; “Sorry, let me just think for a few minutes before I can reply” is not the sexiest thing you can say in a heated debate. If anything could be described as characteristic for discussions in our time, it’s this: there’s no patience! No time for deliberation! Just look at talk shows like The O’Reilly Factor – people are not even allowed to finish their sentences.
I often felt, at least in the beginning of my time in college, that I had every reason to be humble about my knowledge. Therefore I listened and observed, and developed my opinions through my writing. Finally, as my knowledge grew, I also became more confident to speak out. Perhaps, then, I’m also trying to say this: shouldn’t there be a greater respect for silence? Can’t silence, in some cases, be productive and nurture a better environment for debate? Could it not, sometimes (or always), be preferable to be quiet instead of talking without saying anything?
Secondly, the general observation – and this goes specifically for American students: they don’t follow the news. And the news they get are often packaged as action films. In other words, they come poorly prepared; more often than not, they lack the necessary width of knowledge to make the depth knowledge of college truly meaningful and tangible. It’s difficult to form an opinion when you can’t apply your theoretical knowledge to reality, in lack of better words.

Kaj

[Randall]

I have had a very similar experience to Kaj regarding the preference for quick response over serious reflection, and that tendency has made me take serious pause (appropriately, i suppose) when deciding whether to continue on an academic career path.

I believe that the privileging of the quick is partially, as you say, the result of modeling behavior on what is available for mass consumption in the media (after all, the people who tend to create promiscuous output are also going to be disproportionally represented in the public sphere, normalizing the pace of their output). It's also, I think, a defense mechanism to the psychological impact of the overall input/output disequalibrium. With so much noise out there, how can people know when they have appropriate/enough knowledge to be ready to speak?

This is one reason why I am slow to embrace the 'democratizing internet culture' narrative. Democratization does not, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, mean the same thing as the erosion of authority and the equalization of all voices. Once equalized, once democratized, it must seem onerous to be asked to think carefully about an opinion, to study history, to identify and become familiar with relevant discourses.

It's also why i'm slow -- though i'm beginning -- to participate in the blog culture. At what point does a proliferation of content also become a diffusion?

[Jodi]

Kaj and Randall,

Thanks for your comments. Randall, I share your concern about diffusion and your criticism of democratization via the internet.

Kaj, your points regarding respecting silence are important. I need to keep them in mind as the term starts. Quickness can well be a cover for lack of preparation, a way of mimicking inane television debate shows. Good questions should require some thought, not just immediate responses and debate. To be honest, it can be scary to ask a question and look upon 25 or so silent faces. Harder still is it to accept the silence and let it linger for a while.