This week’s reflection comes from Andrew Miranker:
COVID-19 and the Youth of Today
Teachers, including me, have a very strange perspective on life. We keep getting older, but the people around us, day in and day out, never age. In my case, my workplace is always 18-25. Always. Now that I am 55, and the unsolicited AARP mail has begun arriving on my doorstep, I now comfortably, perhaps glibly, sometimes gleefully, refer to this group as “the youth.”
What’s up with the youth these days? What was the deal with all those youth on Spring Break most definitely not “leaving room for Jesus” as they frolicked on the beach? Do they want us all to die? Really? Don’t they want to keep Bernie safe?! I work in the sciences which means I chase data. It turns out, all age groups are equally guilty of flouting social distancing rules. Don’t believe me? Come to Guilford Green on a sunny day. You’ll soon change your mind.
And so, a long-established pattern repeats itself. The youth invent terms like “safe-space” and “microaggression” to champion the vulnerable and get met with derision. The youth shout down hate speech and are accused of undermining the first-amendment. The youth demand institutions divest from companies with interests in South African Apartheid, and they are patronized on their lack of understanding of world economics. OK, maybe this last one was me in 1985.
I look after over 30 youth who are graduating college this year. I watched their world crumble before their eyes. Their plans, opportunities, job-prospects have all vanished. One student is home alone because both parents are health care workers who must quarantine after work every day. Another has lost a grandparent to COVID-19 and only narrowly escaped losing his father. One of my foreign students went home only to be held in government-enforced isolation. Meals are brought to her three times a day by police in full hazmat suits with respirators. She has never shown a symptom or tested positive for COVID, but her country is simply too poor to risk outbreaks.
On this backdrop, they are studying, learning, taking exams, writing papers AND…. raising money to support custodial staff at hospitals, advocating for their less well-off peers and for racial equality in COVID testing. One of my recent graduates was the lead advocate in her organization that successfully lobbied to move a homeless encampment into vacant hotel rooms in New Orleans. All this while keeping to social distancing rules that predominantly exist to protect the “not-youth.”
I have never been more inspired to teach and mentor my 18 to 25-year-olds. I’ll do it for a few more years before opening those AARP envelopes. These youth are a worthy investment. I suspect they always were.