Mandatory Public Service

I work with a guy who is in his second attempt at college. He's paying his own way this time, living on his own, and from the time I met him, struck me as one of the more mature twenty-something's I'd ever met. Instead of blaming anyone or making excuses about his first attempt at college (in-residence at an Ohio university famous for its rabble-rousing) he readily admits to, as he puts it, "lighting $20,000.00 of my dad's money on fire." I only mention this to establish him as a fairly normal young adult who has reached one of those maturity epiphanies, therefore placing him above average on the "insight" scale among the twenty-something's I've dealt with.

The other day we were talking about the state of the world when he asked me how I felt, as a former teacher, about the people you see on things like "Jay Walking" who have absolutely no clue about the world around them. I told him I didn't put much stock in those isolated, perhaps, staged "interviews," but he said that's not really what he meant. I don't remember his exact wording, but it was something along the lines of, "I can't believe how much stuff we sweep under the rug in this country... how much people don't learn in school."

When I asked him to clarify, he rattled off a few events like Japanese interment or McCarthyism or Watergate and I interrupted with "the rationale for the war in Iraq." He agreed, but then stipulated that that particular event is the result of what he's talking about, but not necessarily a direct example of what he's talking about.

I told him that I thought one of the reasons for that was the growing emphasis of public education on VOcation over EDUcation. I went on to add that it's one of the reasons I use to rationalize leaving a profession that I, for the most part, loved. I then added that I figured I gravitated toward English in college for some very related reasons because, as I saw it, Literature was one of the few areas where real issues, including bad things good people have actually done, still get debated and discussed thoroughly. That just doesn't happen anymore in the world of Fox vs. CNN. Thanks to that kind of polarization, it doesn't happen in bars or at sporting events and it surely doesn't happen in schools anymore because standardized test prep doesn't leave any time for actual debate or learning how to learn, or formulating arguments and consider those of others

Shortly after that, I was talking with another co-worker about the lack of commitment of younger folks these days. We cited specific examples of people we'd known who promised to do something that affected many other people, events, schedules, etc. and the then just flaked out and didn't deliver but didn't show any sign whatsoever of any remorse or even acknowledgment of having even remotely inconvenienced anyone. Now I won't ever go so far as to say this never happens among older folks, but they, more times than not, at least pretend to feel guilty about it.

As we discussed it, I recalled that last few times I'd taught Romeo and Juliet. One of my favorite lessons involved the responsibility that Friar Laurence gave to Friar John to take the news of the plan to the banished Romeo. (Juliet would fake her own death in order to get out of marrying Paris). Friar Laurence knew that if the message didn't get through, and the "news"of Juliet's "death" made it to Romeo, our young lover would probably rather take his own life than live without his Juliet. Friar Laurence told Friar John how important this mission was and assumed John would take care of it.

The lesson I taught ended in debating, writing about, etc. the degree to which Friar John contributed to the deaths of the main characters. I was increasingly surprised each year as more and more students argued that John bore little responsibility in the situation. "He was quarantined in that house, he couldn't leave. It wasn't HIS fault he didn't get the message to Romeo." they would argue. And that's true. It wasn't his fault that he couldn't leave the quarantined house, but it was HIS responsibility to get the message delivered and in spite of the obstacles that prevented HIM from leaving that house, HE still accepted the responsibility freely, thus leading others to depend on him making good on those expectations.

So let's call the two perspectives on this situation the Responsibility perspective that older folks generally levitate toward, and the Obstacles perspective that younger folks cling to. The Responsibility argument follows the "Letter to Garcia" story by Elbert Hubbard, wherein a sailor accepts an order to deliver a letter without question and makes good on the order in spite of the incredible efforts it requires. He doesn't ask where to find Garcia. He doesn't balk when he learns that Garcia is deep in a dangerous jungle, he just delivers. Because he said he would. And that's great.

The Obstacle perspective relies on the idea that when obstacles beyond one's control get in the way, then one is absolved of previous responsibilities directly prevented by those obstacles.

The truth is, both are reasonable perspectives. Certainly we must apply degrees of reasonableness to each situation, but it doesn't take a lot of imagination to come up situations in which both can be understood. If the Letter to Garcia carried news along the lines of "I changed the kitty litter," then the messenger's efforts seem a little extreme. If the obstacles that get in the way of, say, picking up a quart of Ben and Jerry's involve events that may trigger one's life insurance policy, then one would likely be absolved of the responsibility of delivering said ice cream. No problem.

What's sad is that the best explanation I can come up with for the differing perspectives and the divergent views on reliability as a hiring trait completely shoot down my underlying theory on education. The quickest argument older folks in the Responsibility perspective group will likely make is that no one would want to hire anyone who gave up as easily as Friar John, or, conversely, that employers would pay good money to keep someone like the guy who delivered the Letter to Garcia. So the common argument is based on VOcation, not education.

On the other hand, younger folks, or anyone who favors the reasonable application of the Obstacles argument might point out that a person of even a little intelligence, perhaps the product of a good EDucation, might be able to better discern what point at which to give up on a mission plagued by obstacles... and that Friar John, not adequately apprised of the Romeo/Juliet tension, figured if this message were that important, it would have been FedExed.

Believe me, I've made every argument in class about why that last excuse won't fly... it's not up to John to decide that... he made a deal... no one is ever aware of every detail of every situation so he should have just focused on what he promised to do and make damn sure it gets done, but that's not the point.

The point is, this little conflict between the old and the young is kind of our (the olds') fault. The products of a solid EDucation will eventually try to think for themselves, even if they don't quite have the worldly wisdom to do so the way we want them to in a given situation. And though we may not agree with their explanations or their application of the new-found knowledge, we have to accept it sometimes. If we don't, we may well close the door on any innovative, creative solutions to problems we old folks haven't been able to solve yet. And that doesn't take into account new problems that are bound to crop up that we're too antiquated to deal with.

So why bother discussing all of this, you ask? This very conflict, boiled down to such simple terms, represents the larger issues we seem to have with teens and early 20-somethings these days. First we expect them to pour themselves into their studies and become mature independent young adults through almost complete self-motivation, but then we hamstring them to practically useless roles in society until they're at least 21 or 22, when most of them will graduate from college and join "the real workforce." Then when they join the real workforce, we're surprised to find out some of them don't take their responsibilities as seriously as we do, or require a little extra reinforcement. We don't want them taking jobs away from "real" adults and yet we don't provide them with many readily available opportunities to do much else. Then we criticize them for skateboarding, hanging out, or playing video games. Only the most bored or industrious among them find meaningful uses for their time because they must go out of their way, above and beyond their normal, expected routines to do it.

This is one of many arguments I would make for a public service program that offers alternatives to the skateboarding, hanging out and game playing. There's nothing wrong with those activities, I just think the kids who do them would appreciate them more, and pick up some useful life lessons as well as employability and responsibility skills if they had something better to do with their time. Rather than condemning these kids, criticizing them, and then laughing at them and blaming them for the fruits of where we keep them, we need to offer them some better options than the ones that are currently in front of them. Whether it's military service, local, state or national civilian service, doesn't matter, but we should offer it. Will it be complicated? Sure, and while that has stopped us from instituting a national health plan, we shouldn't let it stop us from providing our kids with better opportunities to become better citizens.

OK, that's out of my system now. If anyone out there knows about existing programs with web pages, send them to me and I'll put the links up. I bet we'd be surprised by the number of average and even under-achieving teenagers who would jump at the chance to do something like this if only the opportunity were easier to find. We basically tell young people indirectly that they don't have a place in the adult world so we can't really criticize them for not going out of there way to find a chance to do so. Let's do it for them.
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And just for the record, this post started out, based on that same conversation with a remarkably mature 20-something, about the importance of learning from and not repeating the lessons of history. That post is still incubating.

Luth
Out