By Charles Dahan
Other Voices
On June 14, I along with 300 of my peers graduated from Los Altos High School. Tens of thousands of students across the country go through the same act each year, sent away from high school with trite words describing their ‘promise’, their ‘unlimited opportunity,’ and how the future of our great nation is in their hands. Unfortunately the tools to utilize the resources won’t be imparted upon students by schools or society. Never during a calculus class were life skills discussed. Teenagers lack a vision of what to do with their lives and how to better society and themselves when they walk away from the brick and mortar buildings of America’s high schools which insulate, not prepare them for the real world. When my parents were growing up, organizations such as the Peace Corps provided youth with opportunities to become involved in society.
Political discussion abounded (or so I am told) and a sense of hope was infused in Americans. Such a sense of hope, from my personal observations and those of my friends, doesn’t exist amongst youth today. As summer approaches and the lives of teenagers are often filled with boredom or awaiting the next challenge, I believe it is the responsibility of our leaders to provide young people with the will to go and find and solve such challenges, instead of apathetically waiting for them to approach.
While our grandparents could go and fight in World War II, giving them a sense that they were proactively helping the nation’s cause of preserving freedom and liberty around the world, today my peers and I attempt to be distracted from and avoid the new great challenge of chaos and terrorism. With such a lack of foresight by our nation’s leaders, my generation wastes its potential on drugs, alcohol and pop culture distractions instead of putting it to use to better society.
Along with graduating, most of my schoolmates and I recently turned 18. As I fill out my voter registration form and draft card, I am left to wonder why a sense of apathy toward the new privileges and rights I’ve gained and responsibilities I now must assume falls over me. Perhaps the president and federal leaders are to be faulted by failing to provide programs and leadership through which youth can see how they can be of service to their nation (other than joining the Air Force and dropping bombs over the Middle East). National leaders, although being the most distant of political officials both literally and figuratively, still are the most visible and thus have the largest pulpit from which to espouse advice. However, it seems to be common sentiment amongst those in the youngest voting demographics that those in power are a bickering lot of power-seeking bureaucrats who seek to serve themselves and their parties above the nation. Thus, the pragmatic call would be to ask local leaders to take charge and provide my generation with the opportunity to become the greatest generation. While our parents may have gone to other nations to help the starving in places such as Africa, we can, with the help of our elders, help create an atmosphere of prosperity and hope in even the most desolate and poverty-stricken region of our own nation. Through such programs and efforts a sense of pride, not apathy, could be achieved; a sense of community, not petty partisan politics, would be created; and Americans would possess the ability to respond to future challenges when they arise.
Dahan will be attending the University of California at San Diego in the fall.
