Here's the Class of 2000: Start Running

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Here's the Class of 2000: Start Running
by Heather Roscoe

Recently, I was asked to attend a local high school graduation ceremony. I am always reluctant to attend these functions because they are so long! Not only was I close to several deadlines, including one for The American Partisan, but I was also cranky and exhausted from traveling.

I couldn't help laughing, however, as the school principle asked the advanced study students, who had been awarded honors, to stand. These students, the brave knights of epistemic achievement, the cream of the high school crop, the intelligencia of the intelligent, sat and stared dumbly. Finally, one, lone boy stood cautiously. The principle realized what was happening and giggled slightly.

"It's the red cord, guys. Will the students with the red cords on please stand."

I'm sure they were so dazed at the prospect of finishing high school that they weren't paying attention. Of course, there is the possibility that they simply couldn't comprehend the complex language the principle was using. After the fog in their heads cleared, about 50 students noticed the red cords dangling around their necks and rose to an amused applause to be acknowledged for their scholastic valor.

I sat, glassy eyed, and listened to a class president who was too nervous to speak, three valedictorians who gave long halting speeches and amused myself by pondering the 500 student names printed on the program.

One particular blonde, perky, valedictorian gave a speech relating to cartoons and television characters. Enthusiastically she chattered on about how she and all of her friends related to different television characters at different stages in their lives. In grade school it was the Rescue Rangers, middle school, Saved By The Bell and high school, Beverly Hills 90210.

If I remember correctly, the Rescue Rangers were two chipmunks. I can't see how she could relate to two chipmunks, but if she can more power to her. Just keep her far away from me. Saved By The Bell was not an accurate portrayal of school life and, having never seen Beverly Hills 90210, simply because I <I>knew</I> it would be impossible to relate, I decline comment.

When these kids were in their early teens, a movie entered theaters that was also about kids in their early teens, Alicia Silverstone's Clueless. It was all about spoiled, bratty high school students and their trivial obsessions with sex, drugs and driving. Clueless is the first word that comes into mind when trying to describe this class of 2000.

These kids will go on to be the "future leaders of America," one speaker said. I didn't exactly shiver when she said that -- it's a standard boilerplate line at graduation -- but I did think hard about what we, as a country, are in for.

At least they have potential and, fortunately, cluelessness can wear off with time. These kids truly did seem more thoughtful and subdued than high school students I've known in the past. They were certainly tamer at their graduation than most I've been to.

All of their fresh faces, smooth and unmarred by burnout and stress, are now looking toward the future -- their future being the summer and their freshmen year of college, which most of them are incapable of looking past.

Those excited, clueless youths briefly lifted my spirits. At least they are blissfully unaware of how hard life can get. Then the disturbing thought came: Those students really are utterly and completely unaware. Will they shortly become so? What will happen when they wake up from their collective happy daze? I suppose only time will tell, but what will it tell us?

It's difficult to find answers because these students have never heard the questions in the first place. For example, most of the graduating young men would hesitate when asked if they would be willing to die for their country, not out of cowardice but because in this time of Pax Americana, the question simply hasn't been asked.

The valedictorian (cartoon girl) wondered why her problems couldn't be solved in a half an hour like on the sit-coms. These kids have lived in an instant gratification world, and all of that is about to change with their last step off the edge of childhood into the abyss of the real world.

Now the freshly liberated teens are on their way to tackle college, and more power to them. They're leaving their lives of idiocy, where they've been grown and cultured like bacteria in a petri dish for four years, and are moving on to be the scourge of someone else's classroom.

At least they have time to grow.