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An Open Letter to the Class of 2020
On the occasion of your graduation from high school
I was browsing the news recently when I came across some commentary that aptly sums up where we are in human history. I’m paraphrasing, but the author mused: imagine being a freshman in the Fall of 2016, and ending your time in school in the Spring of 2020. What an unimaginable four-year period to experience and then move out into the world.
That about sums it up. Your four years in high school have been marked by some of the worst political chaos and disfunction modernity has seen. And you know that because you were all my students at some point! The adults in your life are probably wonderful people, all of them, but we have all failed you. We have created the conditions for conflict and disorder, and we haven’t taken the necessary steps to stop this slide into polarization. Many of us have ignored science and expertise, and instead retreated into our bubbles and echo chambers where truth has ceased to have meaning. We have again allowed fear, selfishness, and greed to dominate. In short, the world we have left you falls short of what you deserve.
But I write this letter from a profoundly optimistic place. I have had occasion to witness, first-hand, how you are all agents of change. How you are all capable of rising to challenges when they are…
