The Road Ahead

With the advent of a new decade, it seems like a good time to identify some political issues that may not be on our collective national radar at the moment, but should be. When I started thinking about this idea, five issues came to mind almost immediately.

1. Food Security
2. Healthcare Cost Containment
3. Water
4. Cynicism
5. The challenge of order versus liberty

I'll be writing about all of them in the weeks ahead. I offer them not necessarily in order of importance, or in lieu of other important issues, but as a collection of concerns and ideas that should matter to us, both as Americans and as citizens of the world.

First up: cynicism.

I have been teaching at the college and high school level for nearly 20 years; the last 8 of those years have been at the high school level.  One of the things I like about my job is the time I spend with young people.  I'm 42 years old and when I first began teaching I was working with college students who were basically a part of my own generation.  When I started teaching at my current school, I was 34 years old and now teaching teenagers, mostly young men and women in the range of 15 to 18 years old.  These students aren't really of my generation; in fact, increasingly I am old enough to be their mother (eeep!).  One of the things that has been most satisfying about working with young people has been their natural optimism about both their lives and the world that they live in. 

But in the past five years, I've seen some of that optimism be replaced with a more cynical world view.  At some level, I find that cynicism appealing.  I'm a cynic myself, and it's always nice to find community, even if that community is misery loving company. 

But I also worry about a group of young people, and privileged ones at that, who do not see a hopeful world ahead.  In the starkest terms, I fear that means we, the adults who run their world, have failed.  In more general terms, I worry that means that as a nation we are losing our belief that we can make the future better for all of us.

I blame the mainstream media, intent on presenting a world of conflict (these days, disagreement is always more news worthy than cooperation) and foolishness (talking to you, national media and the balloon boy story).  And I blame a set of leaders who do not seem to understand that winning elections isn't everything; that the long-term good of the nation might require some short-term innovation and cooperation and that old-fashioned virtue: working for a common good.  

I am officially breaking up with the mainstream television-based media.  I'll read the New York Times as long as it exists; I'll maintain the Newsweek subscription I've had since I was 14 years old.  I will continue to proselytize the virtues of National Public Radio by sharing relevant stories with my students. I will direct my student's attention to real issues and discuss real solutions to our national problems.   I intend to take my student's ideas and concerns seriously; to remind them that the political system belongs to us, the citizens of this nation and world.  I will remember that we the people are empowered to make change.  And then I will fervently hope that these bright young people will forgive us for the mess we've left them.