The
1960’s were a time of social progress and ingenuity, a decade shaped by the
youth in terms of creativity, experimentation and bohemianism. The youngest president
in U.S. history was holding office and the direction of American culture was
controlled by young adults. In Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a book about the history
of science published in 1962, he describes the phenomenon of paradigm shifts.
He describes a paradigm shift as a change in basic assumptions, or the change
from “one conceptual world view to be replaced by another view"[1].
While Kuhn first applied this principle to the scientific community, he also
applied the term “paradigm shift” to describe culture during the 1960s.
The
counterculture era of the 1960’s is defined by opposition to both the authority
and social constructs in place at the time, anti-establishment movements that spread
infectiously across the nation, and the reinvention of the American Dream. It
was a departure from conservative culture that was favored by white, middle
class men and a radical advocacy for broad civil rights and feminism. Instead
of Orthodox traditionalism, the youth of the 1960’s relished in experimentation
of both sexuality and drugs. The counterculture of the 60s, inspired by
catalysts such as war and strict hierarchies, created rapid change that altered
the nation forever. However, the 1960s was also the decade where future leaders
such as Kenneth Lay and Jeffery Skilling, CEOs during the embezzlement of
Enron, as well as Timothy Mayopoulous and Donald Layon, CEOs of Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac during the housing bubble of 2007, spent their adolescence. The
ethics and morals of students in the 1960’s were clearly not as pure as we make
them out to be. The leaders formed in this era are the ones that held positions
of power during monumental events such as the MLB steroid scandal, the Great
Recession, 9/11, and the Iraq War. l bring up the history of the 1960’s and its
products because in order to compare the youth of today to the youth of the past,
we must understand the social structures and paradigms both operated in, and
how they are similar to each other.
The
focus of the Joesphson Institute’s survey is the behavior of students towards
schoolwork, family, and society, as well as their ability to come to terms with
themselves and their actions. The youth of the 1960’s, whom the Josephson
Institute seems to hold in the highest regard, developed their moral values in
response to the major events of their time. I believe that this “cause and
effect” trend is true for all paradigm shifts, and that any notable change in
ethics is due to a change in the overall culture. The leaders of today, the
ones that grew up in the 1960’s, had the heaviest hand in deciding the course
of American culture. The early 2000s where plagued with corruption in some of
America’s most trusted institutions, it was the elegant destruction of the
meritocracy that this country is built upon. No other nation pays higher
tuition costs for university education, and the economic relief that is
provided by the government is minimal. According an article published by NPR,
pell grants leave much to be desired, and students who come from the weakest
economic classes are left with, on average, $9,000 in “unmet need”[2].
We must question the society we live in, and how these conditions exist within
it.
A
student is constantly pressured to aspire for a job that does not pay minimum
wage. The mere concept of raising the minimum wage disgusts many Americans. The
current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour cannot support a nuclear family, yet many
claim that a minimum wage job is not a job at all, but rather a “stepping
stone” or “motivational tool” used to inspire workers to get a degree and acquire a job with a larger
salary. So, the student cannot settle for minimum wage work and must get a
degree. The culture of education in this country is not one that is geared
towards the act of learning, but one that focuses on claiming a high salary
career. It is a concept that is fed to students from the beginning: that the
only way to get even a glimmer of happiness is to attend higher education. Just
last week a classmate of mine, one of the moralless monstrosities of the
millennial generation, said, “What college you go to decides the face of your
children”. So the student is always in a manufactured fervor over higher
education, but what if they cannot afford it? The tuition costs are
astronomical and federal aid is scarce. It seems that merit based scholarships
are the only way to find relief, but because of the culture of education, the
application pool is highly competitive.
Only the brightest get financial aid, only the best get the degrees,
only the strongest get the jobs, and the rest are stuck with wobbly stepping
stones and broken motivational tools. So then how does one achieve merit if
they’re not Kwasi Enin? They cheat. Cheating on tests and homework, which
happens among 74% of students according to the Josephson Institute, is not done
out of malicious intent, but rather out of desperation. The culture of cheating
that runs rampant in schools today happens because students are trying desperately
to find success in a world that puts value on only a small percent of talents.
A
common trend can be found in the relationships between the figures that the
Josephson Institute provides and youth culture. 76% of students admit to lying
to their parents about something significant. What is something significant a
teenager would prefer to hide from their parents? Topics such as sex, drugs,
and cheating are very taboo in our culture, but why? Instead of using fear
tactics such as “If ethics continue to decline as much over the next 50 years
as they have over the past 50 years, the future of your grandchildren is
frightening”, we should ask why students
are afraid to be honest with their parents and teachers. According to the CDC, in
1960 the number of babies born to women ages 15-19 was near 580,000. In 2010
this number dropped to 367,752. Dare we ask: what changed? Was it the availability of sex education
courses in schools? Was it better access to reproductive health products? Or
was it the open conversations between parents and their children about
premarital sex? If this attitude of
education and support was extended towards drug use, where the culture is one
of shame and incarceration, then we would have fewer drug related deaths, fewer
youths in prison serving extended sentences, and more success stories. Also, we
would probably have less children lying to their parents out of fear.
There
is no need to resort to moral panic, we do not need to sit in fear and wonder
if today’s youth are falling into an
endless chasm of moral ambiguity, and
there is no need to fret over the morality of our non-existent grandchildren
(as many have been doing since the 1960’s). When it comes to finding the
impetus for the “corruption” of today’s youth, there are many outlets for those
who wish to avoid blame. We often blame rap music, the genre that was a call to
action against police brutality and a lack of civil rights for America’s most
targeted minority. Or we blame violent videogames, instead of pointing the
finger at easy access to guns in America, which comes 1st on a list
of gun-related murder rates in the developed world[3],
or the stigmatization of mental diseases. These are the real problems, the aggressive competition
and overall desensitization we have towards violence. What can be done to
reverse this trend? Stop blaming the students for their reaction towards their
environment, and take responsibility for the moral corruption that exists
within us all. We can promote better ethics among students by creating a safe
environment for students to exist. This calls for a wider spectrum of talents
to be acknowledged, so that fewer kids are forced to cheat their way up the
narrow path of success via standardized testing, and are instead able to focus
on their skills. As it was in the 1960’s, and as it will remain to be for the
foreseeable future, culture, ethics, and morals are always a direct response to
the environment.
The
youth of the 1960’s were not perfect. It was not a time were “personal property
was rarely stolen, if ever” (according to the Disaster Center 3,888,600 cases
of larceny were reported in 1969)[4],
and it wasn’t a time where lying was unacceptable (Richard Nixon took office in
1969). How can we change the outcome? We change the culture, starting with the
authority figures of this time. There is not one group to blame, and there is
no “problem child”. There is no morality crisis, only the inability to see the
wreckage of a culture that is obsessed with vices.
[1]
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962)
[2] Westervelt,
Eric. “Maze of College Costs And Aid” NPR:
25 March 2014. (www.npr.org)
[3] Fisher,
Max. “The U.S. has far more gun-related killings than any other developed
country” Washington Post: 14 December 2012. (www.washingtonpost.com)
[4] FBI:
Uniform Crime Reports. (www.disastercenter.com)
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