Worried about the future of society? Concerned that youngsters these days do little other than play video games and send text messages and cultivate a lazy ethic where their work ethic should be?Well, with The Columbian recently profiling members of the high school Class of 2012, we’re happy to declare that such stereotypes couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Take, for example, Stephen Moran, a senior at Camas High School. As reported by Ray Legendre in The Columbian on Monday, Moran spent six months building an 18-foot-long i550 racing sailboat for his senior project. The project required an estimated 300 hours, leading Eric Rimkus of the i550 PDX fleet to say, “It’s pretty amazing … for a kid to start with 20 sheets of plywood and finish with a boat.”
Amazing, indeed. And it makes us wonder how we were wasting our time when we were 18. Oh yeah, probably video games and TV, seeing as how our youth predated text messaging.
And then there’s Silas Matson, a senior at CAM High School in Battle Ground who works as a Web developer.
And there’s Micah Lewis, a senior at Union High School who plays classical music with a high school group and jazz for the Portland-based Metropolitan Youth Symphony. He is headed to New York University to study trombone performance.
And there’s Amaury Ferrer, a senior at Skyview High School who plans to turn her passion for the outdoors into a degree in environmental science.
With graduation season upon us, the dreams of these students — and others with bright futures — have recently been profiled in The Columbian. The result is a glowing portrait of what the future holds for these students — and for us.
One of the hallmarks of being an adult, it seems, is to curmudgeonly denigrate younger generations. Kids today are spoiled, or they don’t understand hard work, or they listen to vile music. And the way they dress … sheesh. The rants are as old as time itself — or at least as old as rock ‘n’ roll. But as Thomas Edison once said, “Maturity is often more absurd than youth and very frequently is most unjust to youth.”
There is much truth in that. Although, suggesting that all adults view the world in such a fashion would be just as egregious as heaping stereotypes upon teenagers. There are people of all ages who work to make the world a better place, just as there are those of every age who make the world a little bit worse.
Yet we hope that even the most entrenched of us can find inspiration in the many high achievers who help make up the Class of 2012. We hope that ambition is not the sole purview of the young, and that a desire for achievement does not come with an expiration date.
Many graduates entering the real world over the next two weeks are carrying big dreams and the big talent necessary to make them come true. We wish them well, hoping they encounter a society that is open to their ideas and their skills.
As Ferrer, the future environmental scientist, said about her family’s desire that she become a nurse, “I don’t want to live their dreams. I made my decision.”
Sounds like a strong foundation for a sturdy adulthood. As the saying goes, children — or, in this case, teenagers — are the future. If that is true, then the future appears to be in pretty good hands.
