Late this week the local high school signboard noted the last day of school for 2023-24.

This morning I found myself humming pieces of the tune “Schools out for summer…“.  I remembered the tune, but not performer Alice Cooper, nor that the song was released in 1972 – the year I left Junior High teaching and embarked on my career of representing school teachers.   (No, I was never into shock rock!  And all I know about Alice Cooper is what I just read in Wikipedia.  I thought I heard once that he had been a teacher; the wiki article gave me a bit of education on that!)

The kids now commencing life out of school are mostly at or fast approaching 18 years old.  They were born about 2006.  They are part of the post 9-11-01 generation, the Iraq War generation; veterans of the Covid-19 year of 2020-21.

An easy exercise: think back to when you were 18, just out of high school.  What were your thoughts, your environment, the future that you didn’t know at the time….

Today’ 18 year olds have experienced a great deal.

Their inauguration into adulthood will be the Nov. 5, 2024, election in the United States of America and they are the ones who will likely live their entire adult lives in this country.  Who will be elected to all offices matters a great deal to their future.  And they will be among those who have the right to vote for whoever it is they think should represent them as their lives proceed.  More than most of us, this election has very long term consequences.

They have a daunting responsibility…to themselves.

Traditionally, the post-18 cohort is relatively detached from voting; by extension hoping that the older generations will make life easier for them.  This is not the way it works, folks.

Take a pass from participating in the 2024 election and you’ll have to wait 2, 4, or 6 years for the next opportunity.

An additional development in the post 9-11-01 world especially is the refinement of the business of individualism, tribalism and the politics of grievance.  Each have gotten much worse, in my opinion, looking back just in my own lifetime.

This week, President Biden has represented the U.S. at the Normandy Beach areas in France in  observances around the 80th anniversary of D-Day, where immense numbers of young people, not only allies, but Germans, slaughtered each other  representing their respective countries. (Directly related post: D-Day)

What the young combatants in early June, 1944, mostly kids in their late teenage years, learned 80 years ago, was stark.   In a terrifying way, they picked up from experience  knowledge that today’s youngsters need to draw from as their own adult lives begin.  In a sense, todays young people have the benefit of experiences similar to those of the Great Depression and WWII, learned by the earlier generations.  Todays young people have an opportunity to learn from the past.  Whether they will or not is truly up to them, going forward.

Graduation parties – we’ll be at one today – “schools out for summer” and on and on will soon be over…but most of the graduates have long lives ahead of them which are going to be enhanced or damaged by who they choose to lead in all elective positions in this still great democracy – the United States of America.

POSTNOTE June 9, 2024:  We spent part of yesterday afternoon at the graduation party in rural exurban St. Paul.   It was about an hour travel each way, and two hours on site.  It was a beautiful day.  Like you, probably, I’m a veteran of these events.

This day I  decided to just watch the kids who attended, friends of the graduate, a quiet, nice young man,.   Enroute home I thought about another 18 year old, me, at the time of high school graduation 66 years ago.

The physical circumstances were very different, of course.

What I thought about was hopes and dreams of those kids; their access to technology; their mobility – things like that.

Graduation in 1958 was a few months after Sputnik jolted the nation like few other events have.  The Russians have beat us into space!  This resulted in expensive initiatives for advancing science and technology, programs like the National Defense Education Act, the National Science Foundation.

That was the year that Eisenhower successfully advanced the idea that resulted in the Interstate Highway system, much of which is being rebuilt this summer in all parts of the country.  We were definitely in the Cold War environment – missile emplacements all over my part of the country.   Etc.  Etc.

One of the first things every 18 year old male had to do was register for the Draft, but it was abstract to us, though one classmate dropped out of 12th grade to join the Air Force at the urging of his older brother.

Looking back, it didn’t take too long to discover that young people like me were the cannon fodder for the elders in case of crisis.  I say this not facetiously.  I was in the Army during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 – I watched JFK speak over a television set in an Army barracks a few miles from one of the presumed Soviet missile targets in Colorado.  I entered the Army at the beginning of the Vietnam era.  I was lucky enough to get out before my unit ended up in Vietnam.

I could make a much longer list of things we casually noted as young people in a different era.  Then we couldn’t vote till we were 21; last year for the first time Minnesota requires young people to register to vote when they register for a drivers permit, and voting age is now 18, as it has been for many years.

Young people today have their own thoughts.

It was an interesting exercise, yesterday, watching those 25 or 30 or more kids that dropped in, and just watching them.   And wondering what they were thinking.   Best to think now of how they exercise their rights as a citizen.  It was a useful day….

POSTNOTE June 10, 2023: The public radio announcer this morning commented on Jazz legend Wynton Marsalis commencement address at the University of Michigan in 2023.  You can listen and watch here.  It is extraordinarily powerful, about 15 minutes.  Do watch.