This is the viewpoint of one person who spends a good part of his waking hours with adolescents, younger than the college students described in the recommended diary by irishwitch.  I teach from 10th thoroughly 12 graders.  I teach government.  And the vast majority of my students may feel disillusioned by their government, by those in positions of power.  But they care, even if they do not fully understand.

I also interacted with many relatively younger people during the recent campaign.  Well, let me clarify, since I am 60, and people might think I consider anyone under 40 as a young person!  I am talking about college age through about 25.  There were many involved with the Webb campaign, just like a few years earlier there had been with the Dean campaign.

What many younger people lack is context.  They may have some general ideas about Vietnam, but there is a generational gap:  I teach teenagers whose parents were not of draft age while there was a draft.  Do the math.  The US participation in Vietnam officially ended in 1973, after the lottery system had changed the nature in 1969. Someone who was minimally eligible, that is, age 18, in 1973, would today be 53.  But I teach students 14-18, some of whom have parents in their late thirties and early 40s.  For them, unless there are older aunts and uncles, or it is subject about which grandparents and great-uncles speak, have no connection with experience of that time. 

When given the opportunity to find out, to understand, many young people are curious.  To be sure, they have seen movies about the Vietnam period, but it is not quite the same.

Or were we to look back at Iraq in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, some of my students were not yet born, and those who served were almost all active duty military who were there by volunteering.  The kind of experience that enables one to make the connection between the events of Iraq and the period of Vietnam are simply not part of their consciousness.

And yet … when given any opportunity to explore, my students are eager to find out more.  They are at first excited to discover that i was in the Marines during Vietnam, but then disappointed that I cannot talk about what the combat experience was like.  They will often ask questions about the protests at the time, and many will themselves raised questions about possible parallels between the period of Vietnam and that of today. 

The more astute and knowledgeable are far more likely to raise questions about the first Red Scare, or the period of Joe McCarthy, the latter perhaps fueled somewhat by George Clooney’s movie last year on Murrow and that period. 

I guess if I were to summarize what I am trying to say, it would be this.  My experience of young people is that they are far less selfish or unconcerned that they are often portrayed.  Their approach is different.  They may not march in the streets as we did in the 60s, but they might challenge authority in different ways.  As a teacher, I can assure they are just as willing to challenge rules laid down by adult authorities, whether it is listening to Ipods or wearing their trousers halfway down their butts to argue against restrictions on electronics or rules on dress. 

It seems to me that rather than criticizing our young people, those of us who are older should be challenging ourselves and our peers:  what are we doing to engage our young people?  How do we help them make the connections that can make a difference in their understanding?  Do we really provide ways for them to participate meaningfully in our political activities?

Just a thought, not a sermon.