Most
visitors to the San Francisco Bay area take in the usual popular sights: Fisherman’s
Wharf, Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz.
Not
me. I am in Moraga, a small town of about 16,000 nestled in the eastern hills
overlooking the Bay area. It is the home of Saint Mary’s College of California,
a small liberal arts college established roughly 150 years ago.
Saint
Mary’s is the venue for a one-day college fair, one of hundreds taking place
across North America at this time of year.
Spring
is when universities and colleges send out their admissions representatives
looking for the right future students for their institutions. For students, the
fairs are a chance to gather information about course offerings, admissions
policies, financial aid and college life in general.
In
short, they are an opportunity for students to kick the tires of their
post-high school education choices.
Post-secondary
schools from more than half the U.S. states, the United Kingdom, and
Switzerland are represented here. So are the Canadian institutions of Queen’s,
Ryerson, McGill, Waterloo and the University of British Columbia.
Why
I am here and what I am doing is not important. What I am seeing here is.
The
young women and men talking with the college reps are much different from those
of my blackboard jungle high school days.
These
are not goofy teens going through the motions of being here because someone told
them to be. They are interested and focussed, asking probing questions and
taking close note of the answers.
You
can’t identify them by uniform dress or look-alike hairstyles. They are more
diverse – more individualistic – despite all being closely connected through
online culture.
Many
people say today’s kids are growing up more slowly than other generations. They
often are viewed as social media addicts disconnected from the real world.
I
disagree completely.
So
does Dr. Lisa Damour, a psychologist, author and New
York Times Well Family columnist.
“Those of us who live with teenagers and are
around them can see something that is different about this generation,” she
said recently.
These
kids have been slapped hard and toughened – and enlightened – by significant
changes in our society. They know about gunfire in schools, have seen the
middle class evaporating and the gap between the haves and have nots expand
into a chasm.
They
have watched politics in their country, and other countries around the world,
turn into clown shows in which unsuitable people work for themselves and their
parties instead of the common good. They are growing up in a time of massive
change that has brought economic upheavals, climate change and serious
environment worries, plus catastrophic human displacements.
These
are kids who appear ready to work hard and create a society that is more
diverse, more cooperative and less partisan. They are concerned about equality
and social justice and what is happening to the global environment.
We
have seen a glimpse of this new and different generation through the ‘Never
Again MSD’ teen movement formed from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
shootings in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen students and staff died and 14 others
were wounded when a former student stalked the school halls with a semi-automatic
assault rifle.
Students
from the school created the Never Again movement to demand tighter, common
sense gun control laws. They succeeded in getting the Florida legislature to
pass laws raising to 21 the age limit for buying guns, and establishing waiting
periods and background checks.
They
also exposed the dark side of the National Rifle Association, which funnels
money to politicians who support its interests.
Tens
of thousands of teens across North America joined the movement to stop gun violence
and to influence the U.S. mid-term elections this fall.
“I am fascinated by
the phenomenon we are seeing in front of us, and I don’t think it’s unique to
these six or seven kids who have been the face of the Parkland adolescent
cohort,” says Dr. Damour.
Even more
fascinating is a comment from one of the Stoneman Douglas survivors:
“We are no longer just high school students,
that much is true,” Delaney Tarr wrote in
Teen Vogue magazine. “We are now the future, we are a movement, we are the change."
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