cell phone – Blue Star Press

By Ken Grossberger, PhD

The media, both liberal and conservative, would have us believe every paranoid notion they foment, like Biden will sell us out to Iran and Trump will be a dictator. Believing this nonsense is the intellectual equivalent of going to a bar at 2AM and taking notes. Journalism, as we used to know it, was about providing information on the critical topics of the day. Now it’s an opinionated free-for-all with a can-you-top-this attitude in sensationalism where commentators cannot pile it on enough in a desperate attempt to bash the other side on a daily basis. They are down to name calling on a level that would embarrass the occupants of a junior high school locker room.

So CNN beats up Trump and Fox beats up Biden. Every day. All day. Each candidate is described in the most horrific, belligerent terms, and each is labeled a criminal and an existential threat to democracy, depending on the media outlet (oh yeah, and our guy is the savior). They would have us believe (whichever side they are on) that we certainly could not survive the election of the guy they don’t like. Yet we just survived a combined seven years of both.

Too many politicians, like many media types, cast ethics to the winds, and have no more respect for civility and honor than a storm has for the grains of sand on a beach. The negative lessons for the young may have lasting effects, as many continue to be lost in the dark hole of the internet/cellphone void. Yet, oddly, the percentage of voter turnout has been on the rise in recent elections. Below is a chart of the presidential elections since 2000:

US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION TURNOUT
2000-2022

YEAR	TURNOUT
2022	66.6%
2016	60.1%
2012	58.6%
2008	61.6%
2004	60.1%
2000	54.2%

ave.	60.2%

This represents an increase from the 1990s and 2000s when the average turnout was in the mid-fifty percent range. Perhaps voters are driven by party loyalty, anger, or fear but certainly not by respect for the political system. Below are the average approval ratings for the last 3 presidents in their third year in the White House:

Biden 40%

Trump 42%

Obama 44%

All three were disliked by more than half the country. All were in office during the attack-media period. Not that the media was all that kind in previous years, but it has gotten much worse.

It is routine to tune into one of the major media outlets and witness outright bashing of politicians and candidates, even making jokes about them in these “panel” discussions of so-called experts. They make up alternative realties to suit their tribal narratives, and facts don’t seem to be a concern. To add fuel to the neurotic fire social media is a sea of uninformed opinion, vindictive hyperbole and hysterical vitriol and it seems more like a therapy session on steroids than a marketplace of intelligent ideas.

So where does the voting public go from here? Perhaps the one critical issue that is not mentioned is the need for political education, so people know more about how government works and what the candidates really stand for. Maybe then voters can intellectually separate legitimate policy ideas from the hysteria.

Ken Grossberger, PhD

Generation Z comprises a group of Americans born around 1997 and after, meaning they are about 27 years old or younger (Dimock, 2019). They are going in a direction much different than their parents and grandparents, as one study reports that almost half of that generation supports socialism (Acton.org, 2020). This requires more analysis and definition, but this may be due, in part, to the automated tech world they are growing up in, the instant news cycles, and the dependence on cell phone and technology. But somehow the values of prior generations have been, to some extent, filtered or ignored. A concerning observation as we have learned that values and customs typically are socialized from one generation to the next.

Concurrent with this development, Catholic school enrollment has been dropping. A plurality of private school student enrollment in the United States (elementary and secondary) is within the Catholic church (about 38% in 2015 according to the National Center for Education Statistics (n.d.). Yet the number of Catholic school students has been decreasing over the years, from 2,647,301 total enrollment in 2001 to 1,878,824 total enrollment in 2017, a 41% drop over that time period (National Center for Education Statistics, 2, n.d.).

The correlational denominator between these two phenomena is American social values. As Boland (2009) states, the purpose of Catholic school education is to “to build community, not just as a concept to be taught but as a reality to be lived; and to serve all mankind, which emanate(s) from a sense of Christian community” (from Carper & Hunt, 1984. p. 15). She infers that the observations of educator Michael O’Neill explain the experience of Catholic education: “when people in a school share a certain intentionality, a certain pattern or complex of values, understandings, sentiments, hopes, and dreams, it deeply conditions everything else that goes on….”. Boland (2009) further states that the recent downward attendance trend in Catholic schools suggests that “in the 21st century the greatest challenge for Catholic schools will be to maintain faith as their focal point and service as their manner of speaking as society around them continues to adjust to a revolutionary age of human achievement and self-focus.”

Yet much of American youth seems to have carved out a different path, with divergent, and apparently, competing values, based on a rather confused approach to power: “how can young Americans distrust the government to look after their interests yet endorse socialism, which entrusts the government with the power to redistribute wealth, direct all economic activity, and control their access to such necessities as healthcare?” (Acton.org, 2022). Young people’s apparent superficial view of socialism notwithstanding, these considerations are based on different values than those they might have encountered in a Catholic school. Is this an educational failure? Are technology and isolation predominant enough that we have a large proportion of young American adults rejecting ideals that nurture families and futures in favor of government control of the means of production (and perhaps even distribution)? Or is this a philosophical argument between perceived good and perceived bad, however flimsy the factual support?

Socialism does not leave much room for God or faith, as that system of government replaces the need to believe in a power any higher than the ruling central committee. As those of us who went to Catholic institutions learned and absorbed, faith and education are not mutually exclusive. We make choices as to what we will and will not accept, whether faith in God or trust in a certain form of government, but our foundation comes, in large measure, from the schools we attended and the families we lived in. Those are the defining environments of our early lives, but we now observe, with bated breath, the rollout of the transition of the early adult generation into post-graduate responsibilities, with, in large measure, a different view of engaging the world. One can only hope that their steps forward are in a direction that serves their souls, as well as the world they are inheriting.

Acton.org (10/23/20). Half of gen Z supports Marxism/Socialism. Here’s Why.Half of Gen Z supports Marxism/socialism. Here’s why. – Religion & Liberty Online (acton.org)

Boland, P. (2000). Catholic Education in the 21^st Century. Catholic Education, A Journal of Inquiry and Practice. “Catholic Education in the 21st Century” by Patricia Boland (lmu.edu)

Dimock, M. (2019). Defining generations: Where Millennials End and Generation Z begins. Pew Research Center. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/

National Center for Education Statistics. (n.d.). Private Schools and Enrollment. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/schoolchoice/ind_03.asp#:~:text=Of%20the%205.8%20million%20students,religious%20schools%2C%20and%2024%20percent

National Center for Education Statistics, 2. (n.d.). Enrollment and instructional staff in Catholic elementary and secondary schools. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_205.70.asp

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The Challenge of Catholic Education in Challenged Times