As a teacher, I think a lot about the future generations. On the nature vs. nurture debate, I fall right in the middle. But one thing I wish people would think more about is the effect of a child's--really any person's--experiences on his/her worldview.
Cognitive dissonance is defined as having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes. I think a lot of cognitive dissonance happens when that which you know to be true is contrary to the experiences you have around you or that which you have experienced that is true is contrary to what everyone is telling you. For example, the news media tells me that my society is going nowhere fast, is full of racists, and is run by corrupt people who don't care about anyone but themselves. My experience tells me that humans are, as a whole, wonderful people who would move Heaven and Earth to help the disadvantaged and who love people regardless of their race, religion, or background. Most people I know are genuinely trying to "do the right thing," though they may not always agree on what that looks like.
I wish that people would understand that the generation in front of us has not had the same experiences we had. MY generation (I'm 30) has not had the same experience as those who grew up in the 1960s-1970s. When we teach them worldviews based on the problems that happened in previous generations, we are creating cognitive dissonance.
I will pause here to say that I am not advocating ignoring history. In fact, it's quite the opposite. We seem to take historical events in isolation and teach them out of context, not allowing our students and children to see the real progress that has been made in a lot of areas. The experiences of history are supposed to be different than the experiences that children see around them. This is how history should be taught, as a different experience and time that has affected and birthed this time, but is not at all the same. Historic problems should not be the focus as we teach children how to see the modern world. This generation has enough of their own issues to deal with without bringing problems from the past forward to show children who have never actually seen them in their own lives. Some people are fighting dragons that have already been slain. They are trying to teach children to fight these dragons as well, and when the children become confused because they don't see the dragon there, they invent the dragons to go with the swords they have been given.
Perhaps instead of teaching children how to solve problems that we have faced, we should take the time to get to know what the problems of THIS generation are--both those which we share across the generations and things we never imagined facing. Cyberbullying was a problem that began with my generation and continues to this day, but the next generation is facing a whole new slew of technological problems that my generation never had to think of. I didn't have Facebook when I was thirteen, so I didn't have to consider what it might to do me in 10-15 years when I was applying for jobs if I posted the silly little things that ran through my 13-year-old mind. Kids today need more foresight than ever before because everything they are doing is memorialized online.
Kids today need to know how to deal with and navigate a world that exists both online and in person. As digital natives, there is no separation for them between what they do online and what they do in real life. This idea that my generation was taught of online anonymity is largely a thing of the past.
In an increasingly polarizing society, kids today need to learn how to validate their own experiences while also validating those of others. I have never seen racism in real life. I've read about historic racism, but that's not what racism looks like today. I've seen the media's portrayal and definition of racism, but I don't trust the media to form my worldview as they play politics and grasp at the most controversial headlines in order to make more money. I've listened to people of other races tell me of their own experiences of racism, and that's where I find truth. My own experiences of having never seen racism are true. My friends' experiences of having seen racism are also true. They don't have to conflict because they are different. I, as an adult, am aware of how this is possible, but many people still see in such black and white that they cannot accept that both of these experiences can be true. They will say either that I am "white-privileged" and am ignoring what's happening all around me or that my friends are crying wolf and saying things are racist when they're really not. Yet, both are real experiences.
This is not to say that there aren't universal lessons or truths to be taught. I absolutely believe that we can gain wisdom from previous generations. History is one of my favorite subjects and I will be the first to admit that I have a lot to learn from the people who have lived longer than I. However, we cannot take the experience of one generation and assume that it is the same or even similar to the experience of another. In order to bridge the "generation gap," we need to spend a lot more time listening and thinking. The world today is completely different than it was when I was 15 or 10, let alone 30-50 years ago. This means that the worldviews are completely different as well. Instead of dismissing the worldviews of the past, or judging them based on modern worldviews, we need to acknowledge where those views were formed and what good we can take from them now. Sorry, guys, not every historical figure needs to have their name removed from monuments because they did something that, by today's standards, would be considered colonialist, racist, imperialist, or whatever other -ist there could be, but which in context was patriotic, adventurous, and pioneering. Neither should we dismiss the views of the upcoming generations because they haven't had the experiences we've had.
We don't need to impose our own experiences on our children because we assume that they are more valid than what our children are experiencing. Neither do we need to hide our experiences from them in order to shelter them from the harsher sides of our own lives. Instead we must understand that "different" doesn't mean "right" or "wrong," and that every generation's experience of the world is going to be different. We can share the worlds together if we would learn that more than one worldview, more than one experience, more than one "world," can exist simultaneously.
As a nation, we make policy decisions based on things of the past without asking if that is going to serve us in the future. Foresight is key! I say all of this because we continually make these choices based on past or present needs without thinking of what that's going to look like in 30-50 years when the people grappling with these policies are not aware of the world or worldview--even the needs-- in which the policy was written. There is a huge difference between telling someone what needs that policy was written to address and having experienced those needs yourself. No matter how many times you explain those needs to the future generations, if your policy is successful, they will not be able to truly understand them. Those needs will be history, and should be taught as such. It is then that the policy must be done away with without fear of returning to the problems of the past.
Reactionary policies and reactionary decision making will only lead to a perpetuation of that which you are reacting to. The ability to work together across the generations to prepare for a world that doesn't even exist yet--because we are still building it together--is a key to our success as a society. This requires an open-mindedness founded on truth, a willingness to listen and consider other points of view, and the time to communicate. This requires flexibility within a set of fundamental guidelines--what's called "universal truth," such as the value of human life.
If we want the future to be brighter, we need to start seeing things differently than the way we've always seen them.
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