They're watching Fox News on LaFortune's big-screen TVs. They're
using cell phones as umbilical cords to double-check decisions
with their parents. One professor reports they're often unnerved
about seminar classes, where the goal of lively debate seems to
repeal their usual model of avoiding candid disagreements that
might hurt someone's feelings. "They're deferential, almost to
a fault," says another professor.
These same students are starting up their own newspapers to
assertively defend Catholic orthodoxy in debates about abortion
and The Vagina Monologues. "When I'm defending a difficult
point of Church teaching," a priest says of his classroom, "I
get the feeling they're rooting for me."
Today's Notre Dame undergraduates impress a lot of people as
somehow different from their predecessors of five, 10 or 20 years
ago. From my vantage point -- firmly planted in midlife and largely
frustrated about American culture's coarseness and self-centeredness
-- I draw an unexpected hope from traits I see in these students.
But there's also a puzzlement I share with a lot of people my
age: How could this new generation be the offspring of parents
whose high school and college memories include Vietnam War protests
and Watergate scandals, rebellion against authority, and the celebration
of the "me" and the "now" in contrast to time-worn traditions
and institutions?
My recent reading of a few insightful books has reassured me
that a pendulum has indeed swung, and I'm not imagining a set
of new tendencies on campus. The explanation is as old and unsettling
as the history of intergenerational tensions; it's as new and
invigorating as a challenge to the stagnant status quo.
Naomi Schaefer Riley's God on the Quad captures this
mix of friction and hope in an exploration of a so-called "missionary
generation" that has emerged among the students in this country's
approximately 700 religious colleges and universities. Generations:
The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069, by William
Strauss and Neil Howe, presciently describes a "millennial generation,"
born since 1982 and now entering the college scene. Sequels by
Strauss and Howe, particularly Millennials Rising: The Next
Great Generation, carry the description further, suggesting
how and why current undergraduates see the world differently and
place greater value on such things as institutional rules, orderliness
and community-mindedness.
A perusal of the books' key points offers a theoretical view
of the people who shape our present and our future. The reality
has arrived on campus, and the books seem to be correct: The times,
they are a-changin'.
* * *
God on the Quad, which devotes a chapter to Notre Dame,
is hardly a definitive study of American undergraduates. Published
early this year, it is a work of journalism, not sociology, based
on the author's visits to 20 religious colleges. Riley's description
of a surging missionary generation -- rejecting "the spiritually
empty education of secular schools," "the sophisticated ennui
of their contemporaries" and "the intellectual relativism of professors"
-- may refer disproportionately to the growing populations of
conservative students at relatively new, small colleges marked
by evangelistic, if not evangelical, zeal.
The analysis glosses over the fact that America's 230 or so
Catholic colleges and universities are a significant phenomenon
unto themselves. By one count, they produce at least half of the
1.3 million students who graduate each year from all 700 religious
institutions. But the book does indicate that, even among Catholics,
this generation of students seems to be different from preceding
ones.
More significantly, when Riley focuses on Notre Dame, she zooms
to the heart of a subject that has distinctive appeal to both
the generation and the school she is writing about. "Notre Dame
is at a crossroads," she says. "Will it become more secular or
more Catholic?" The question launches the author into wide-ranging
snapshots of attitudes toward sexuality, social justice, diversity,
service learning and more. The University admirably leaves room
for debates on these issues, she reports, coming to a conclusion
that is perhaps correct but superficial. "Though they may be religious
and conservative, Notre Dame graduates do not become what many
think of as religious conservatives. They are more likely to end
up like graduates of East Coast Ivy League schools, as professionals
in the cultural, financial, and political centers of the country."
The role of Catholic tradition, spirituality and values in the
formation of such graduates -- factors that might make them truly
different from either the "religious conservative" or "Ivy Leaguer"
stereotypes -- is a more complicated matter than Riley's 17-page
chapter can grapple with. But the book does quote Notre Dame anthropologist
Rev. Patrick Gaffney, CSC, as suggesting that the role of Catholicism
in students' development has changed. An earlier generation came
to Notre Dame already acculturated into Catholicism but inclined
to use their college years as a chance to break out and explore
other perspectives and experiences, Gaffney says. "By contrast,
now kids are coming with a longing for a faith tradition." More
than 80 percent of Notre Dame students are Catholic, but Riley
notes that only a bit more than 40 percent attended Catholic high
schools.
Although they may stand and deliver the Catholic answers on
today's cultural hot topics, she observes that they often lack
the "Catholic intellectual formation" that would provide theological
and philosophical underpinnings for their stances. David Solomon,
director of Notre Dame's Center for Ethics and Culture, is quoted
saying that students acknowledge liking his courses "because I
show them why their arguments are right."
Can Riley's generalizations about Notre Dame undergraduates
be extended to include other Catholic colleges, which represent
quite a spectrum of approaches and demographics? Is the "missionary
generation" at religious schools an overblown exception when one
considers the entire student population at public universities
and nonsectarian private campuses?
A study reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education in
April implies that Riley's discovery of a religious renaissance
does indeed extend beyond explicitly religious schools. A survey
of 112,232 freshmen at campuses around the country, conducted
by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the University
of California at Los Angeles, found that 79 percent of first-year
students say they believe in God; 69 percent say their religious
beliefs "provide strength, support and guidance"; 80 percent say
they have discussed, occasionally or frequently, religion and
spirituality with friends; and 64 percent say their spirituality
is a source of joy.
There are some counterweights among the findings. Fully 48 percent
of these freshmen describe themselves as "doubting, seeking or
conflicted," as opposed to 42 percent who are "secure" in spiritual/religious
matters. Only 40 percent say they consider religious teachings
essential or very important in everyday life. Nevertheless, HERI
reports that students have "high expectations for the role their
institutions will play in their emotional and spiritual development."
The article quotes academicians worrying that many universities
have not recognized their students' craving for discussion of
basic, universal questions -- a craving that doesn't fit today's
usual parameters of intellectual inquiry. An associate professor
of religion at Swarthmore says three times as many students sign
up for his "Religion and the Meaning of Life" seminar as he can
accept.
* * *
Generations, an engaging analysis of age-group traits
as they reappear cyclically through American history, offers some
ideas about why today's undergraduates might have caught their
professors off-guard. A new generation of young people -- those
born between 1982 and 2002 -- has indeed taken center stage at
colleges and universities in the past few years. These "Millennials,"
as the authors call them, now have replaced (at least among undergraduates)
the so-called Generation X, born in the 1960s and 1970s. The Millennials
are the children of Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers, this latter parental
group now aged roughly between 45 and 62.
According to the sweeping vision of the authors, the combination
of Millennials' reactions to Boomer parenting and other historical
experiences and forces has made them distinct from the generations
before them; this is the stuff of which generation gaps have been
made throughout history. The sense of change and tension that
arises on a university campus when a new age cohort arrives on
the scene is nothing more than a society's generational reshuffling
in microcosm. Since Millennials will constitute the student body
for almost the next two decades, it behooves all other members
of the Notre Dame family to get to know these Millennials better.
The picture Strauss and Howe paint of this up-and-coming generation
is remarkably compatible with Riley's picture of the "missionary
generation," but the focal point is different. In their four books
focused on the subject of generations, the authors seldom delve
into religion. However, in their Millennials Rising,
published in 2000, a brief section is devoted to Millennials'
religiosity. The authors make points that may ring true about
current Notre Dame undergraduates -- and which suggest to me some
broader truths:
• "Millennials think and talk more about faith, and do more
with it, than older people realize." God and church do matter
to them, although their upbringing has often treated churchgoing
as a family activity, not necessarily as an exercise in individual
faith development.
• "When Millennials do get to church, they are preached at to
behave more than to believe -- a message they are taking to heart."
Boomers, who grew up in the spiritual free-for-all of a highly
secular era, have not transmitted much theology or spirituality
to their offspring, but parents have incorporated the notion of
religious values when issuing codes of conduct and agendas for
action.
• Religion matters most to Millennials "when they can apply
it in the usual Millennial manner -- by organizing it themselves,
by forming clubs, by bearing witness collegially, by focusing
on team deed-doing ahead of solitary spirituality." This observation
may help to explain why Boomers and Gen-Xers, two generations
of individualistic, anti-establishment types, have been surprised
to see young people gravitate toward the Catholic Church, both
as a global institution and as a collection of local institutions
that serve as launching pads for clubs, teams and other forms
of community activity.
Strauss and Howe make a number of other generalizations about
Millennials that offer useful insights into the "missionary generation"
template, as well as the students who are now becoming part of
the Notre Dame family.
The authors acknowledge that plenty of counterexamples exist
to their usually upbeat observations about Millennials, and plenty
of forces are active in history other than the cyclicality of
generations. They recommend that readers focus on the new direction
taken by each successive generation as a group, and the different
center of gravity for each generation, rather than expect
any immediate sea change or reprogrammed typecasting of every
human heart.
Some new directions are clear, as are their root causes. Millennials
have been the recipients of strong parental protection. With a
low child-to-parent ratio, Millennials generally have had close
relationships with their parents and were raised to be "good kids,"
shepherded to team sports by soccer moms. They have been governed
by careful timing and thorough organization of their activities,
all intended to yield good order, use time efficiently, avoid
the ambient social chaos and ensure eventual high achievement.
Remember that the Boomers who parented these kids grew up at
a time when America was enjoying a hope-filled sense of stability
and solidarity after its victory in World War II. As we Boomers
entered our teens and 20s, our idealism found expression in a
rebellion against our elders -- the "Silent Generation" that had
been born during the Great Depression or wartime, and the "GI
Generation" that fought the war. Our parents had learned the virtue
of pulling together sacrificially into a cohesive civic unity
for a good cause.
As generations will do, Boomers came to see a dark side in the
virtues of the past. We resisted the "establishment" and its call
for conformity, especially as it was expressed in the debate about
the Vietnam War. Disillusioned by our elders' misdeeds, we wanted
to forge a better path that expressed our individuality and fulfilled
personal goals. Gen X was born during our time of rebellion; they
picked up this message of distrustful individualism and ran with
it. We Boomers have remained idealistic but, finding ourselves
largely impotent in improving the world en masse, have focused
instead on making life better for ourselves and our families.
We gave birth to Millennials, who think it might be nice to give
cooperation and social cohesion another try.
Strauss and Howe argue that this cycle of rebellion and return
is nothing new. History tends to repeat itself in seasons that
follow the rhythm of generations as they pass through the four
principal phases of life (each roughly 20 years in duration) --
from childhood to young adulthood to a mid-life peak of institutional
power to an advice-giving, tone-setting elderhood, then retreating
from the public stage of life's active phases into the dim afterglow
of advanced age. The four cohorts "on stage" at any one time always
have their own personae and intergenerational dynamics. The four
personae, as described in Generations, are the civic,
the adaptive, the idealist and the reactive.
Today's grandparents, now slipping away from us, are largely
the GI Generation. Their persona was the civic generation, with
community as their watchword -- interested in team spirit, playing
by the rules, aspiring to heroism and service to the common good.
News anchorman Tom Brokaw has honored this age segment as "the
greatest generation."
Four groups are currently active in the arena of public affairs.
As described by Strauss and Howe, the cohorts show these general
tendencies if not individual traits:
The Silent Generation, now in their 60s and
70s. Their persona is adaptive, with pluralism as their watchword.
Their team spirit tends toward responsiveness to individual expertise
and specialization. Their consciousness of "the other" takes the
form of a desire for social justice and fairness. Their peak of
institutional power may be waning, but they still influence what
is valued, what is invested in.
The Boomers. Their persona is idealist, with
principle as the watchword. They want to do what's right (by their
own lights). Education and the world of ideas are important to
them. Many become writers, preachers and teachers, but this doesn't
always lead to team or community commitment, and they're not good
joiners. They are now at the summit of influence in government,
business and other institutions.
Generation X. Their persona is reactive. Their
watchword is liberty. They want to be autonomous and unfettered.
Pragmatism is valued, partly because they are anxious about survival
in a chaotic, competitive world. In their current phase of life,
they provide much of the au courant energy reflected
in everyday culture.
The Millennials. They are the new, rising civic
generation, and they've already spotted the need to update their
predecessors' thinking. I'm reminded of an essay in the new edition
of Fresh Writing, the Notre Dame publication highlighting
the best work from First-Year Composition classes. The book's
sampling of commentaries reminds us that Notre Dame students are
individuals, not marching in lockstep with any author's (or authority's)
decrees. But freshman essayist Gregory Wagman, for one, also captures
the directional shifts between generations as he critiques the
U.S. Army recruiting slogan "An Army of One" (viscerally GenX
in tone), which replaced "Be All That You Can Be" (perhaps a bit
more Boomer). He now recommends a slogan both more honest and
Millennially compelling: "A Band of Brothers."
A new generation to follow the Millennials may be just aborning
in hospital delivery rooms, but it hasn't been named yet. If patterns
hold, it will be a silent generation, shaped by a childhood lived
in a time of major crisis. That crisis, too, remains temporarily
undefined.
* * *
Strauss and Howe thereby give us an elaborate lens through which
to study not only the behavior of the Millennials but also the
perspectives and attitudes of other generations in relation to
our new undergraduates. We non-students can hardly be mere spectators
in this century-spanning saga of rebellion and return. As in an
ideal family, our cross-generational relationships help to shape
everyone's future and even extend to the very old.
It is instructive that the Millennials and the Greatest Generation
share the same civic persona. This helps to explain the remarkable
attraction young people felt for Pope John Paul II, with his summons
to community both locally and globally and his drive for clarity
about reasoning, rituals and rules around which people can unite.
He also made young audiences feel cherished as important emissaries.
Youths looking for models of stability in a chaotic world preferred
this out-front leader over Boomers simply improvising their own
private, spiritual quests.
It is humbling to think that a generation's search for larger-than-life
heroes must stretch back four generations, back to a cohort that
isn't even on the society's radar screen anymore. But it is also
comforting to note that, at least according to Strauss and Howe,
it has always been thus. They write: "The affinity between grandparent
and grandchild is universal folk wisdom."
It is also stirring to think that an institution such as the
Catholic Church is a place where young people -- indeed, members
of every generation -- might constructively look for role models.
Some see the Church's pursuit of doctrinal continuity over time
as a sure way to exacerbate generation gaps by stifling the need
to modernize. Others see this persistence of belief and belonging
as the best way to bridge generation gaps. This latter
view comports with my experience of seeing the admiration on Notre
Dame students' faces whenever Father Hesburgh makes an appearance.
At such moments, a torch is being passed; faith and hope become
not only tangible but timeless.
This generational analysis also reminds us that no single age
cohort has the last word. We are all products of the historical
experiences and formational influences we have shared. The Millennials
may well be seeded in an enviable position of being future heroes,
ushering in a springtime of civic awareness and community spirit
on a global scale. Or they may be in the unenviable position of
being the "special forces" during a time of great crisis when
the stakes are no less than society's survival. Both scenarios
may be true, and Millennials need and deserve to be prepared for
these.
If this "missionary generation" is hungry for faith so as to
properly value life and love in a materialist marketplace, then
we had better give it to them. If they are clinging to parental
protection and in danger of trusting "conformity" or "authority"
too blindly, then we had better overcome our own insularity and
broaden their experience -- sharing our best examples of the Silent
Generation's pluralism, the Boomer's idealism and the Gen-Xer's
independent pragmatism. The successful "missionary" needs a complete
set of equipment.
If Strauss and Howe are correct, the drama of world history
is written such that, during any given cycle of 80 years or so,
a society has access to four distinctive, rich reservoirs of capability
and perspective. But it takes time for generations to
pass through life's phases, to learn from mistakes and chastisements,
to reap the integrity that's incipient in the system. Societies
too often have focused on the cycles of cross-generational rebellion
-- or on the myopic expectation that tomorrow will mirror today's
trends. A resilient culture needs generations that relate and
respond to each other, work and learn together in the here and
now.
Today's Notre Dame students already seem to have an instinct
for intergenerational relating and responding. They trust that
advice and support are only a phone call away. Now they're eager
to find those resources on campus.
William Schmitt is communications manager in the Office of Public
Affairs and Communication at Notre Dame.
(October 2005)
