Boomer to Alpha
Much has happened since I was born in 1947. My birth date makes me a boomer. The name makes sense. Babies were booming. Business was booming. Life was good. Throughout my life there have been good times and bad times, but no times like the present time. Our current generation has been coined the alpha generation. The beginning. The beginning of what? Naming this generation Alpha makes no sense.
I teach United States history in a private high school. In theory my students should be rich and carefree. A few are rich. You can tell by their new expensive cars in the parking lot. Many are not rich. One-fourth are on financial scholarships. Their parents struggle with tuition payments to provide a better education than is available in public schools. Carefree is not a word we would use to describe most of our students.
The immediate reason is obvious. The COVID-19 pandemic has made life difficult for everyone. As vaccinating slows and as new variants emerge, student angst increases. Literally 100% of my students have been vaccinated. None understand why people are refusing vaccinations. All are worried about mutations and what new viruses might be on the horizon. If alpha means beginning, does it mean the Alpha generation is looking forward to the beginning of an era of deadly viruses? If alpha means power, does it mean the Alpha generation will have power over controlling these viruses? Not likely.
Another reason for their despair is global warming. These kids live in California. They need no convincing about global warming. Wildfires abound. Temperatures are rising. Water is disappearing. Fire insurance is being cancelled. And every year it is getting worse.
And we do live on the Pacific Ocean, home of the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the first of many discovered in the oceans. Students know that soon there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean and that plastic microfibers and mercury reside in the flesh of most saltwater fish. They know critical fish populations are down by as much as 90% due to overfishing and ocean pollution, foretelling the collapse of ocean marine life.
Then there is the land pollution caused by the decimation of natural resources, wasteful agricultural practices and more. How much land will we destroy mining aluminum and lithium? Fracking at least sounds funny when you say it. But then you think about what it is doing to the groundwater.
When it comes to problems for the Alpha generation to worry about, these are just the beginning. Along with world destruction students worry about racism, sexism, terrorism, corruption, starvation and more. The real question for these young people, ”What is there left to feel good about?”
