Y is for Youth

I am worried. In the eight years I’ve taught high school, I’ve watched a steady decline in the hearts and minds of young people. The youth of today—our future leaders and creators—is on a downward spiral morally, educationally, and spiritually. I find it frightening.

Just the other day, a female student in my English 9 Honors class boldly proclaimed that she does not believe marriage is intended to be for more than about twenty years. “It’s unnatural!” she announced. “People aren’t supposed to stay together that long.” It saddened me that at an age where girls often have romantic visions of marriage, they are already hardened and jaded.

Commonly I witness the desensitization and inappropriate reactions to violence. Students sometimes laugh at violent depictions in literature or movies when they should be horrified and shocked. They show little regard for anyone else’s feelings, and they often feel entitled rather than privileged. Addiction to cell phones and video gaming is rampant—so much so that most students cannot be without their phones for more than a few seconds. Many of my “regular” students refuse to do homework, read in-class books, or write as much as a paragraph.

I spy some hope in certain kids—ones who have been given a moral compass and display a sense of right and wrong, but there are others who already evidence sociopathic tendencies, and at fourteen years of age, display an existentialist world view.

I can only hope there will be a backlash at some point. The laziness and apathy I see on a daily basis will only increase if we continue to coddle kids rather than making them accountable. Kids need more responsibility, not less. Otherwise, I fear for future of our country at large.

 

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. –2 Timothy 3: 2-5