Motivation is what many teens lack today. They lack the enthusiasm to sit in a classroom without needing to listen to their iPods once the teacher starts talking. They slack off during class, come late, turn in little if no homework and refuse to participate in class. They are satisfied by Ds just to pass. They walk, simply dragging themselves from room to room, barely raising their head, barely looking up to see the teacher who smiles and wants to help them succeed.
But success isn’t really a goal anymore for many. The goal has become living easier, having more, more money, more drugs, more pain relivers, more sex.
Living easier is possible in America because we have too much of everything. We have too many cars, too many wire-less communication devises like cell phones and computers, too many resources. We have so much that we’ve forgotten their values.
Values are almost meaningless as the media continually influences our perspectives and outlooks. The media is our way of seeing the rest of the world. We get a single image of a single event that happens somewhere across the Atlantic, and the rest becomes Hollywood, Madonna, Britney Spears and Donald Trump.
So why is it that we’ve become almost immune to what goes around us? Why do we not care anymore? Why is being rich suddenly more important than having an education? Why have we become so desensitized?
“We’ve seen it all,” my friend S tells me. That’s why.
My English teacher worries. He worries because we don’t care. Because we just sit and stare at him and have no answers. I’m sure he is not the only teacher who is troubled by how little we care for our education, how little we strive, how little we give a damn, how little we step up, how little we think.
“Apathy is not an option”
The poster reads.
But here in our classrooms, apathy has become the only option.