There are many factors that make up one's life and well being. If you're like me, you may have teenage or adult sons and daughters or teach kids you want to to see live life to the fullest. Last night I read a sobering article called, 'America's toxic societal problems are crippling millenials' https://nypost.com/2019/06/06/americas-toxic-societal-problems-are-crippling-millennials/ . The article puts the blame on increasing inequality economically and educationally which is correalated with home ownership decline and student loan debt. It also mentions the death rate for those between 25 to 34 is up 20%. The article is brief, but very important. It gives superficial reasons for what's happening but doesn't go deeper into what's really happening in our society.
Our society is more divided now than at any time in my life. There are deep divisions delineated by gender, race, political party, economics, ethnicity, nationality, religion, economics, education, age, sexual orientation and physical appearance. We are constantly being classified and classifying others. The recent nastiness concerning race and the chancellor is indicative of what's going on in society. The NYCDOE should not be staking its flag in any camp - it should strive to be above classifications that separate us. Even our beloved UFT denigrates itself and latches on to whatever is preceived as politically correct at the moment - be it radical political views or abortion - regardless of how it may marginalize and exclude wide swaths of the membership. (That part of the membership include some who voted Trump into office and is called the silent majority by many.) As young adults, millennials, may not have found their footing and are often above the fray. They have found their voice via AOC and Bernie. The older generation is both repelled and afraid by their choices. The number one fear of most of the camps is that the US will turn into Cuba. Unfortunately, the same people don't understand that young people are using pragmatism to view a deeply diminished society and the pathetic choices presented them.
Let's talk about education, as it was for millennials and is currently in NYC. If Sue Edelman wants a story, she should go to any NYCDOE high school graduation with some money and pay some grads to take a fifth grade reading or math test. If you're a teacher in the system you know what the results will be. There is massive fraud being committed on the graduates (and on the public) with not a word from the UFT. Many of those students will attend a community college and will be unable to graduate. Some will incur large debt from for profit schools. All will find themselves without a college degree and a meaningless high school diploma. Well why didn't they take vocational classes? Bloomberg closed virtually every vocational high school (and trade program) and they haven't been reintroduced. What kind of opportunities will present itself to those 2019 graduates? Perhaps retail, like fast food, or military service. Many NYC high school grads can't pass the military's basic entrance exam of basic reading and math - so that may be closed to them as well. What does that leave - crime or corrections. Many of our prisons have the same populations on both side of the bars - neighbors from the same block with the same abysmal choices.
Death rates for millennials is horrifying. What's happening? Many are looking for an escape and finding it via drugs. Opioids. The term is somewhat misleading. The term is used so as not to further upset large groups of our population who once saw this perennial nightmare as being solely in the realm of the poor and miniorities. It's heroin and fentynal. Millennials are ODing. Most fentynal is coming from China and is hundreds of times stronger than heroin. Suicide is also up. Why? Depression, deminished choices and despair is every day life for many millenials.
What can we do as parents and teachers? I believe we have to start saying, No! No! to academic fraud, No! to identity politics, No! to those who don't represent us, No! to those that are destroying society and the planet and No! to our continued silence.
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Stories herein containing unnamed or invented characters are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.