After a career change, I had the privilege of beginning my teaching career this past year at St. John Paul II High School in Avondale, AZ which is run by the Sisters of St. Cecilia, better known as the “Nashville Dominicans.” I was blown away by the fidelity of the faculty and staff of the school. Everyone is on the same page about our commitment to Jesus Christ and His Church, which makes working there a real joy. I wanted to briefly share my reflections on a few unexpected lessons I learned from today’s youth culture.
Not all of the students are Catholic and more than a few come from what could be called “culturally Catholic” families. The vast majority of the student body is Hispanic – mostly from Mexico. So, the students, by and large, were either practicing Catholics or comfortably around Catholicism. I taught two History courses and two sections of beginner’s Guitar. This was an interesting combination because I was able to interact with the students in a “core” class as well as an elective; these are two radically distinct classroom experiences. Though, the students are the same.
Today’s youth are associated with TikTok and Instagram. Although our school does not allow cell phone possession or usage during school hours, the conversations amongst the students made it clear that these were regular stomping grounds for most. As with every group of teens, likely from time immemorial, they possessed a lexicon of their own. I had to learn quickly what “cap,” “riz,” “you ate it,” “that slaps,” and many other words and phrases mean. At first this “language barrier” made it difficult for me to understand what the heck they were talking about sometimes. I’m only 31, but I felt much, much older. However, they were always willing to teach me what these different words meant – I learned plenty of Spanish slang as well. This was all based on forming properly-ordered mentor/mentee relationships with my students.
Today’s Youth Experience Loneliness And Isolation
This is, I think, where I learned the biggest unexpected lesson. I had an intuition that the teens (like everyone) wanted authenticity, but what I was not ready for was the overall lack of feeling jaded. If you look at Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and iGen, there is a distinctive desire for authenticity, but an often even louder sense of suspicion and jadedness about the world. What I learned quickly is that my students had a fairly open minded view of the world. But rather than suspicion and jadedness, the accompanying feeling was overwhelmingly isolation and loneliness. I think it is easy to see that this is due, in large measure, to isolating technology use by parents, siblings, and teens at home, combined with the often negative effects of unhealthy comparison on social media.
Most of the time, when the teens wanted to date someone, for example, they would take weeks to talk to them and then they would “talk” to them for another few weeks – if not months. I asked one of my students one day, “You like her and you know she likes you. Why don’t you just ask her out?” He responded, “No. Too risky! I have to do it right. I have to figure out when and how to ask her.” I had no real response to give. It sounded like he was trying to propose to her, not ask her to be his girlfriend. But I think this points again to the open minded desire for authenticity while being held back by a serious sense of both inadequacy and isolation.
Catholic Teens And Religion
In terms of religion, the teens are all over the place. Some of them understand the objectivity of truth and embrace it. Others take moral relativism as a given. But the unexpected lesson I learned here is that the teens are not dealing with modernism. Modernism is a denial of the supernatural and the mediation of God. Instead, they are steeped in a new paganism. In this worldview, which is “post-Christian” and running rampant in our modern culture, there are spiritual forces at work. Some of the teens wear New Age crystals and say that they give off power. This is not someone who is denying the supernatural. We are not dealing with the “New Atheism” of Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris anymore. No, we are back in Ancient Rome and contending, like St. Paul, with the pantheon of gods. For some of the teens, these gods are Scientism, for others it’s New Age ideas, and for others it is their own personal conscience.
What I expected to see and did not see was Nihilism. I thought I did at first. The boys, especially, were hard to motivate. They would ask “what is the point?” But this, ultimately, is not nihilism, the belief that nothing matters and there is no greater meaning. Instead, it is the effect of postmodernism. In postmodernism, words only have meaning in the context of the words to the left and to the right of them. There is no greater meaning or narrative. There is only the here and now and it does not have to mean anything. The teens intuitively reject this and are left without a foundation. They have a deep human understanding that there is meaning. They want to know their place in the broader narrative. Ultimately, this greater narrative is the one narrative: the story of salvation history. We enter this great narrative when we are conceived but then especially in our Baptism when we are grafted into Christ. The teens need to know this. They need to experience it by encountering Jesus Christ. When that happens: stand back and marvel!
In an educational context, I realized this most acutely when I led a group project based on the Socratic Method. I presented a hard historical problem, gave categories that they needed to address, and the decision to be made. Then, I did not offer any direct help. I would answer their questions with other questions. The decision was theirs and it needed to be well thought out and presented. I also put a little skin in the game by making their grade competitive with the others groups. The result was the most motivation and enthusiasm I had seen all year! The students who seemed to lack even basic intrinsic motivation were unstoppable. They were not nihilists. They lacked agency. Once I empowered them to find answers on their and make decisions that they would have to explain, they stepped up to the plate.
In sum, I would caution anyone looking at today’s youth against approaching them with low expectations.
Expect great things from them and empower them to be a force for good in the world.
Show them that their identity can only be found as a son or daughter of God.
Show them that they are an important part of their community, on various levels.
Remind them that they are endowed by Almighty God with mind, heart, body, soul, and strength.
Give them difficult problems that require critical thinking and create structures where they can rise to the occasion.
They want to be taken seriously. They want to be seen and heard. They want authenticity. Give it to them.
https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/whjW8s3/CatholicLinkNewsletter
