re: [Marxism] unpleasant trends with today's youth

[Mike Friedman <mikedf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Fortunately, as a parent and a teacher, I don't believe this is a dominant,
or even a new trend among youth. I taught high school for a decade, up to
five years ago, and I currently teach at community colleges that receive
the same population, working class youth, principally Latino and African
American. And while I haven't conducted any polls, virtually ever
discussion I get into with my students finds an expression of outrage at
the rulers' attacks on constitutional rights, their wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, their attacks on social security, their failure to address our
disastrous health care system, etc. We are not talking about political
activists, but young people who are studying and working hard to try to get
a decent job. My son is in an alternative public elementary school in
Manhattan's Lower East Side. The population is somewhat whiter and more
well off than the schools in which I taught, reflecting something of the
demographics of the area. The children with whom I've spoken, both as a
parent and a substitute teacher at the school, are ignorant of formal
political institutions in this country (at least I think I remember
learning about the branches of government and the constitution in fifth or
sixth grade), but are quick to condemn George Bush and the war in Iraq. A
good number of these kids have gone to anti-war demonstrations. They also
criticize things like violations of freedom of speech and the deterioration
of the schools from the point of view of entitlement. And I reserve
bragging rights with regard to my own 11 year-old son, who was invited to
speak last summer at the UN, where he attacked racism, sexism and national
oppression. And no, he didn't develop his critique from me: about three
years ago, he became concerned about stereotyping in his classroom, and
took it from there. Children are still the future. And even if they adopt
erroneous ideas, they are still our children, and shouldn't be written off,
as is implied by this article which bemoans the dismissive attitude of
those kids polled toward *formal* capitalist democratic institutions.

Mike

At 01:08 PM 2/13/2005, you wrote:
> Message: 13
> Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2005 11:18:33 EST
> From: Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx
> Subject: [Marxism] unpleasant trends with today's youth
> To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, greenallianceus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
>         njgreentalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Message-ID: <24.6a7dda1a.2f40d7d9@xxxxxxx>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
> If the children are the future, we're screwed:
>
> Last  week was a busy one on the creeping-fascism index. So busy, in fact,
> that I  finally accepted there is even such a thing as a
> creeping-fascism  index.
> http://www.nypress.com/18/6/news&columns/AlexanderZaitchik.cfm
>
> http://tinyurl.com/4rkm4


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