I surveyed my 16 very bright first year college students about impeachment & Jan 6. Only 2 had watched any of the trial. A few knew who Eugene Goodman is. None knew Ashli Babbitt’s name. I asked how many read a newspaper & none raised a hand. Lowest response I’ve ever gotten.

Obviously point of my tweet isn’t any rebuke to the students. They’re good people, who want to be informed. But something about the never-healthy system of public knowledge is breaking down. We know that, but it becomes painfully apparent as moments such as these.

I don’t know the politics of most of my students, but I’m confident none of this group, left or right, wld commit themselves to lying about elections or violently trying to overthrow them. But the message that to stop that you to commit yourself to democracy hasn’t connected.

This disconnect has grown more pronounced over the ten yrs I’ve taught here. It’s gone from the complacency of thinking democracy is just something you *have* rather than something you must do to a kind of vagueness about democracy wld even be. That’s not their fault! It’s ours.

I think the Trump years accelerated this trend, if I can speak of my anecdotal observations w/such a grand teen, but I wouldn’t trust any singular explanation. I say it’s “our” fault, tho, because we’re the adults who’ve been making the world into which these students enter.

There are of course millions of brilliant exceptions! The students who marched last summer, & those who at least follow news, & those engaged w/ many causes. But in my limited observation, the baseline is eroding. W/ the coup, the floor has fallen out altogether.