Some of the Kids Are All Right

You might expect that new high school graduates would be depressed and dejected. They are inheriting a shaky economy, a world at risk of becoming uninhabitable, and a country whose president makes a mockery of what they learned in social studies about American democracy.

But at my grandson’s recent high school graduation, I saw kids who were wonderfully normal—eager to get on with the next chapter of their young lives, cherishing friendships, pursuing the same struggles and triumphs, from sports to theater to senior projects to college plans, that have long engaged students.

They seem to have resolved, without even thinking about it, that they are not going to let the larger national and global mess wreck their present and their future. And that has to offer some hope in dark times.

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Granted, this is a slightly unusual high school. It’s a public charter school, with a deep ethic of personal kindness and service. The school is small enough that the highlight of commencement comes when each graduating senior stands, and a teacher describes what the student has achieved and overcome.

My high school was too big for any such personal touch. Yet there was something familiar about this very moving ritual. I was reminded of a favorite quote by the novelist Willa Cather: “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”

Some might say that the values shared at this commencement were liberal ones. But even in deepest-red states, parents and teachers surely want the same values for their kids as the ones that I saw on display here in Massachusetts: integrity, honor, compassion, striving for excellence. Maybe they have a more Christian flavor in Texas, and more of a communitarian one in my home state, but there is a common wish for human decency.

Imagine if Donald Trump were the commencement speaker. Would he commend his own values and ethics to the graduating seniors? Cheat your way to the top. Cover up your ignorance by making up facts. Revel in sheer nastiness. Humiliate both your friends and your enemies.

With the exception of a mercifully small number of Americans who are as personally vicious as Trump, I wondered how parents who try to instill good values in their kids could possibly vote for this travesty. Then I remembered that ours is the Republic of Cognitive Dissonance. All men are created equal, except for slaves who are not quite human. This is an empty continent to be tamed, except for the natives who are savages. America is a beacon to the world, except when it isn’t.

Nor do we elect presidents to be personal role models. Presidents who have exemplary personal lives, like Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter, are the exception. More cognitive dissonance.

I hasten to add that many of the kids are not all right. My grandson is privileged, but not because he lives in a wealthy community. His hometown is what might be called upper working-class. Few of his classmates come from affluent families.

He happened to get very lucky. He got a fine, nurturing education at the equivalent of a small private school because his community organized a public charter school, with admission by lottery. He might have drowned in the local regional high school.

Public charter schools like those in Massachusetts are an exception. The Trump administration is promoting private, for-profit voucher schools, which are something else entirely. Kids without affluent families depend on the system of public education, which needs far more imagination and support. But Trump is doing everything he can to destroy it.

I come from an idealistic generation. At Oberlin, our commencement speaker was Martin Luther King Jr., a figure as mythic and distant to my grandson’s generation as Lincoln was to mine. The idealism of my generation crashed on the rocks of Vietnam, assassinations, and Nixon. Yet we have retained a lifelong commitment to an America that lives up to its promise.

Even in the worst of times, to be young is to be inherently hopeful and to know right from wrong. It falls to my grandson’s generation to lead us to a better rendezvous of private values and public ones.