Children and the myth of the new apathy
It is on my mind that children and teenagers don't know anything about what is happening in the world - NOTHING!!! When I was little, we sometimes watched John Craven's Newsround and then the six o'clock news would come on. Now, we don't have a TV, and this is supposed to be a good thing, promoting greater inclination to read Donne's sonnets and imagine new imaginary numbers. But my children - and the children around me - hardly even knew about Gaza. A beheading - this terrible beheading of James Foley - just about makes it. The downing of the Malaysian airliner, for instance? Nothing. I keep having to check that they have heard of things - the answer is almost always no, and then there is the indignation (the ordinary kind, the kind that we have) at what is actually going on.
Is it because of the new "personal" nature of gadgets, promoting ever-increasing isolation? Is it because their spare time is spent anxiously clicking "like" on each other's Instagram pictures? I am not just moaning about this: I think we should lobby for a 45-minute session in school each week - primary and secondary - where a teacher just talks to the kids about current affairs. It could be a different teacher each time, it could be a forum where the children are encouraged to ask questions, and argue. It might promote a greater inclination to watch or listen to or read the news. The teacher doesn't have to know everything; the teacher just has to want to talk to the kids and help them explore.
The apathy that we see about politics is partly because to them it seems something that has nothing to do with them, or that they can have no influence, but a lot of it is more straightforward - they don't even hear about it. Of course you are not going to care about Gaza if you haven't heard anything about it. So many violations of human freedom, both domestically and abroad, so many infringements on what our predecessors fought for so hard, are slipping along without comment or protest not because young people are more apathetic, but because the structures have changed to make ignorance the default, because Instagram and the like are standing in the way of the news. Right now, "each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom", and there is no freedom unless we are all aware of all the other cells. There is no freedom in boring self-regard.
Is it because of the new "personal" nature of gadgets, promoting ever-increasing isolation? Is it because their spare time is spent anxiously clicking "like" on each other's Instagram pictures? I am not just moaning about this: I think we should lobby for a 45-minute session in school each week - primary and secondary - where a teacher just talks to the kids about current affairs. It could be a different teacher each time, it could be a forum where the children are encouraged to ask questions, and argue. It might promote a greater inclination to watch or listen to or read the news. The teacher doesn't have to know everything; the teacher just has to want to talk to the kids and help them explore.
The apathy that we see about politics is partly because to them it seems something that has nothing to do with them, or that they can have no influence, but a lot of it is more straightforward - they don't even hear about it. Of course you are not going to care about Gaza if you haven't heard anything about it. So many violations of human freedom, both domestically and abroad, so many infringements on what our predecessors fought for so hard, are slipping along without comment or protest not because young people are more apathetic, but because the structures have changed to make ignorance the default, because Instagram and the like are standing in the way of the news. Right now, "each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom", and there is no freedom unless we are all aware of all the other cells. There is no freedom in boring self-regard.
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