I was invited by the good people at “Minding the Campus” to write a response to the recently released 2011 American Freshman Survey. My brief essay is now available on their website, and might be of some interest to FPR readers. My main point:
What the data also demonstrates is [not only an increase in libertarian toleration, but] a keen and intense emphasis on the self. Today’s students simultaneously urge toleration toward others, but also expect to be left alone. Their overarching emphasis upon individual achievement–particularly in the area of career advancement–suggests that the message of “toleration” and “diversity” seamlessly co-exists with a self-centered focus on material success and personal lifestyle autonomy. At risk is a cultivated belief in civic membership, a sense of shared fate and even forms of self-sacrifice.
One telling aspect of the survey has, to my knowledge, received no attention: while 72.3% state that the “chief benefit of college is to increase one’s earning power,” only 2% of current college graduates are enrolled in an ROTC or other military program. While likely career choices are fragmented among many possible choices (with the largest numbers of responses clustering around the choices of engineer, physician and business, together totaling 28%), only 1.5% responded that they foresaw a military career; 0.9% intended to enter government or public policy; and .1% stated an intention to become a member of the clergy. As many respondents indicated a likely future of unemployment (1.5%) as those willing to serve in the military!
…
Several disquieting questions should come to mind: what kinds of citizens will these people grow up to be? What kinds of parents and what kinds of neighbors? They will likely be willing to leave other people alone–but will they care about others? Will they love? Will they serve? Will they sacrifice? According Charles Murray in his recent book Coming Apart, it is the upper classes (which will be composed by the students in this survey) that have largely abandoned any idea of trusteeship and moral and civic responsibility toward those who have not won the meritocratic sweepstakes. The survey suggests that this divide will only deepen in coming years.
I fear that we are not ushering in a utopia of toleration and sensitivity, but one of indifference and self-absorption. Today’s young people have deeply absorbed the lessons that have been taught them by their elders. Do we truly think a civilization can persist when it teaches its young that the most important thing in life is indifference toward others and that the means to happiness is earning the most money?
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Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments
We certainly have become a society in which “having money and things” is very important. I think that sucks…but that is the reality.
But I am not disposed to think that because this is so…we necessarily will go further down the path of “hooray for me, screw you.”
Let’s see if I can relate that to another salient in your theme.
I am happy that we have become more tolerant. And I guess in order to become more tolerant; a certain amount of “don’t invade my space” is to be expected. That reduces to a variation of the Golden Rule.
But since the two almost have to exist together for either to exist independently, there is no reason to suppose that it is motivated by a desire to be more self-absorbed and indifferent to others…nor that “more self-absorption and more indifference to others” will necessarily result.
It may…it doesn’t necessarily have to…and I hope it doesn’t.
Good essay...something well worth considering.
It would be much more interesting to see a sampling of all American youth or all America.