The youth of today

Dear readers,

[SPOILER ALERT: what I am going to say is going to make me sound like a grumpy old man. I leave you to judge on the grumpiness, and I will be 40 later this year, so I am not yet old, though some days it feels it.]

Not long ago, I was having dinner with my parents, both whom have, if I may be diplomatic, the wisdom of years behind them. We were discussing The State of the Nation over some wine, and my stepfather said that what he regretted about Britain today was the loss of public politeness and civility. I agree with him. It boils my blood to see the elderly or infirm standing up on the Tube or the bus, while children loll about in seats. Even in my childhood, that would not have happened. When I was young, Victorian as it sounds, you were seen and not heard in adult company. Most assuredly, you were not treated as a small grown-up. But I digress.

Anyway, my stepfather asked me if there had been any changes in society I had noticed in my (relatively) short lifespan. I thought about this, and I decided that there was. It is a lack of curiosity in younger people. All too often, it seems that people in their teens and twenties decide that their earliest memories constitute a Year Zero, and anything before that it both incomprehensible and of no interest.

I shall give you an example. Years ago, when I was a postgraduate at St Andrews, my flatmate and I hosted a party. Those in attendance were largely undergrads, and one, a lad of 18 or 19, pointed at our proudly-displayed portrait of Sir Winston Churchill, then said “Who’s that?” After picking his jaw off the floor, my flatmate explained it was Churchill, at which the young man shrugged. The implication was clear: Sir Winston’s life had happened outwith the young man’s experience, and therefore he could not possibly have been expected to know who it was. Moreover, he didn’t much care.

You get it on quiz shows too. My father is a great fan of Pointless (or else he subjects himself to it a lot if he isn’t), and you see contestants who don’t know answers, and, when given the information they lacked, simply roll their eyes: how could I have been expected to know that? I am an enthusiast for pub quiz machines, and if I’m stumped by a question, I am curious to know what the answer is. It can be on any subject, even those I despise like football or soap operas, but it’s something I didn’t previously know.

Back in the days of my postgraduacy, I was a tutor to second-year students in modern history. Teaching them about the early modern period (roughly, we did 1450 to 1660) was a challenge, because it was often a subject they had not studied before, many school curriculums consisting of Hitler, Stalin and the world wars, and it required an ability to be empathetic with people who were very different from you and me, yet were still living, breathing people all the same, not just names on a piece of paper.

(One of my favourite quotations of the 16^th century is from the Emperor Charles V, the Habsburg who ruled a polyglot empire: “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.”)

A very few students really ‘got’ the 16^th century. That was terribly rewarding; to help a young person see the world through new eyes and understand a period of history previously unfamiliar to them. Most did enough to get the credits for their module. But some never got it at all, and that’s what I mean. Haven’t experienced it directly, don’t care.

I suppose I just don’t understand incuriosity. I find the world a fascinating place, and if I could spend all my days just reading and finding out new things, I’d be a very happy man. There is so much I don’t know, even in my own field of history: the formation of Canada, for example, or the shogun era in Japan. I may never get around to reading about them, but it means there’s always something else to read. And I like knowing things, especially, to be smug for a moment, things that other people don’t (which probably says very bad things about me). I like knowing that a cappuccino is named after the habits of Capuchin friars; that the sister ship of RMS Titanic was RMS Olympic; that the Germans topped the medals table at the 1936 Olympic Games.

Yet this doesn’t seem to be the case for many young people today (yes, I’ve just used the phrase “young people today”). I can remember when I was a student, mentioning Patrick McGoohan’s performance in The Prisoner, and someone saying “But that was in the 1960s!” Well, yes, the Gallic Wars were before my time as well but I still know about them.

I have, I must confess, always been a bit old before my time. (I almost typed “odd” there, which would have worked just as well.) My musical tastes run largely to music before I was sentient, and my critics would say that my dress sense can be old-fashioned. But things in the past matter. To understand why things are the way they are, you need to understand how things were. The past informs the present.

So, if, like Baz Luhrmann, I can only offer young people one tip for the future, it would be: curiosity. Just find out about things. You never know, you might even enjoy it.