by Selwyn Duke, The New American:
A recent survey showed that 40 percent of Generation Z believes our Founding Fathers are more akin to villains than heroes. This stat is just a reflection, too, of a generation that studies show is the least patriotic in American history. In fact, laments one Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) member writing at the New York Post, while she’s a “Zoomer” who loves her country, “sometimes it feels like I’m the only one.”
Young Rikki Schlott isn’t surprised by this reality, stating that her generation has never been taught why they should love their country; in fact, they’ve been taught why they should hate it. From “what I remember of my own US history courses,” she writes, “there was a lot more self-flagellation for our country’s shortcomings than celebration of our strengths.”
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The results of this educational malpractice are evident in surveys Schlott cites. A summary:
- A 2023 Gallup poll found that while four in 10 American adults overall are “extremely proud” to be American, a mere 18 percent in the 18-to-34 age group express this sentiment.
- Democracy Fund (DF) voter-study-group data reveal that three quarters “of Gen Z say that the nation requires ‘significant change,’ while two in three agree that ‘America is an unfair society,’” writes Schlott. It should be added that, as with a poor physician who renders incorrect diagnoses, the deeper issue is that virtually none of these young Americans knows what kind of “significant change” is needed.
- The DF also revealed Zoomers’ aforementioned dim view of the Founders.
- According to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 14 percent of eighth-graders reached the “proficient” level in history; only 22 percent did in civics. The history score is the lowest it has been since the NAEP began in 1994, too. An anecdote: While tutoring a 14-year-old approximately 25 years ago, I discovered that he didn’t know who Adolf Hitler was.
Schlott asks rhetorically how people who don’t know their nation’s history can take pride in their country or recognize how blessed they are to be living in modern America. But it goes beyond that: Just as a champion runner only knows he’s fast because he has a frame of reference — the rest of the competition — we can only know we’re the best if we have a frame of reference.
Clearly, too many people today don’t fully grasp that man’s historical norm was grinding poverty until the West’s market economies (and other triumphs) created wealth; that slavery was the historical norm until the West, most strikingly in the U.S., ended it; that human-rights abuses were the historical norm until the West, quite notably in the U.S., developed our whole modern concept of human rights; and that danger and death looming large was the historical norm until the West, inclusive of the U.S., made security and longevity expectations.
There was no “upward” mobility for a medieval serf or low-caste Indian. Much of the world was living in the stone age when Westerners finally set out upon the seas in their journeys of discovery. It’s no coincidence, either, that the dream of having that modern, luxuriant lifestyle (which most humans in history couldn’t even dream of) became known as the “American Dream.” It was born in the West — and was epitomized in the U.S.
Yet Zoomers’ problems run deeper than just lack of patriotism. As Schlott also relates:
According to generational expert Dr. Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, Gen Z’s patriotism is part and parcel of their general pessimism and malaise.
“They are markedly more pessimistic about everything than Millennials were at the same age,” she told The Post. “The rise in young people’s pessimism parallels their rise in depression, which makes sense.”
Twenge is right. A staggering four in ten Zoomers agree with statements like “I can’t do anything right” and “my life is not useful.”
“They see their country negatively because they see almost everything negatively,” added Twenge….
“Depression is not just about emotions. It’s also about how you see the world, and depressed and unhappy people see the world more negatively.”
Surely true, but does this analysis perhaps ignore that having a negative conception of your country can be a cause as well as an effect? A nation is properly defined is an extension of the tribe, which itself is an extension of the family. And how uplifting is it when children are raised being told their national family is essentially evil?
Yet it goes beyond even this. Numerous studies have demonstrated that Zoomers are America’s least religious generation, with the percentage of them who identify as atheist “double that of the U.S. adult population,” reported the Barna research company in 2018. So think about the message too many of them have absorbed:
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