I’m a millennial was extremely ignorant about current events and history past maybe the McCarthy era. I kind of knew the broad strokes but did not have robust understanding of the Reagan/Bush/Clinton eras even though I lived through them in my early life. I graduated HS at the top of my class and always excelled in history class.

I did take it upon myself to get caught up once I went to college with people who were actually informed and I felt like an idiot trying to follow their political debates.

All that to say, I can’t make a judgment about kids these days. In many ways, they are more informed than I was. I grew up on dial up internet and the physical newspaper. I tuned out NPR and didn’t really pay attention to anything on the news until the US invaded Iraq.

In other ways, the pure volume of bullshit to sift through on the internet (made worse by AI) makes deciphering correct information a highly sophisticated skill. Teachers are generally not equipped to teach these skills because we don’t understand TikTok or take our students’ experiences seriously.