I remember when David Brooks wrote about the “organizational kid” in The Atlantic nearly ten years ago. The takeaway was that our college students were – at the time – quite admirably hard-working, unquestioning of authority, and self-regarding as naturally on the top of the cognitive elite. Brooks’ darker, and I think, more provocative, claim comes near the end of the article in speaking with a Princeton professor regarding “the vocabulary of virtue and vice,” as he put it. Neither he nor Brooks was necessarily advocating courses on building character, but as the professor asserted, contemporary students were – in comparison to previous cohorts – less Augustinian, less self-critical, and less confessional. These were extremely pleasant kids, well prepared for class, highly organized, and willing to work hours on end for that A on the next final exam. But they didn’t seem to know that “a tragic dimension to life” existed, and that ultimately, Brooks concludes, to these students, measurable accomplishment trumped any abstract conception of virtue. Not enough was being taught or read to highlight the distinct differences between the two.
While it seems like each aging generation bemoans the shortcomings of its younger generation of leaders (“In my day, we used to have to chisel our notes onto stone tablets!”), Brooks and the Princeton professor made persuasive and suggestive points about the new millennial generation back in April 2001. But then 9/11 reoriented everyone’s moral compass, and suddenly evil was very much identifiable to these students while virtue was seen walking up the towers’ stairs into the fire. Into the fire.
We can certainly march through the memorable events of the rest of the decade, possibly culminating in the recent domestic tragedy of Tuscon and the international whirlwind of protest taking place in Cairo, as we speak. What I most focus on, however, is the global economic depression of, what seems like, the past ten years. One thinks of Bernie Madoff. Tony Hayward of BP. And other faceless fools who went the way of immediate gratification by gambling with derivatives, credit default swaps, and other people’s money, like it was a Monopoly game and the rest of us all went for a bathroom break trusting that the other players wouldn’t cheat.
The obvious connection between the organizational kids of 2001 and the economic malfeasance of 2008-2010 is that many of these young men and women, at the very least, came of age this past decade; some of them unfortunately were even active participants in the questionable practices in derivatives markets. But I’m less interested in laying blame specifically at someone (or a particular group)’s feet. For one, these “kids” weren’t at the helm of the major banks too big to fail. Second, to whom were Brooks’ “kids” and the other kids of the past decade supposed to turn as proper role models in the public square? Certainly the aforementioned rescue workers of 9/11 are worthy candidates, but our own Congress recently wanted to deny these heroes financial support for any health issues incurred by their brave actions (as if we had forgotten their selfless acts in a dusty bin of history). Some senators painted the rescuers absurdly as welfare kings and queens, while corporate welfare only seemed to balloon with each point-drop in Democratic polls. So our government officials have hardly proved exemplars: Eliot Spitzer; Minnesota’s Larry Craig; Mark Foley; Louisianan William Jefferson; David Vitter; John Ensign; Mark Sanford; and the (predominantly male) list goes on. What about our financial leaders? Did I already mention Hayward? Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein, a.k.a., in some lighting, George Costanza’s doppelgänger?
One only needs to read Chrystia Freeland’s engaging cover article for this month’s Atlantic, entitled “The Rise of the New Global Elite,” to understand our global plutocracy and our universal predicament. In short, almost all of the income growth in the past five years has only benefited and been consolidated by a handful of plutocrats she calls “the super-elite.” The rich are indeed getting richer, and the poor are growing beyond poorer. It’s the Davos, Switzerland crowd, and perhaps they all will eventually fork over their fortunes to charity (“philanthrocapital”), but as Freeland makes plain, this generation of rich is not the old-money rich of Beacon Hill and Greenwich, or the nouveau riche in vacant McMansions all over Florida and California. They’re a hard-working, intellectual bunch, she argues, and one that rarely apologizes for its part in the widening gap of income disparity. See, I could counter that I know twenty equally hard-working and exceptionally bright individuals at my institution and they’re not going to make or seek 1/1000th of the amount of money this super-elite accumulates. And that’s what it is: accumulation of wealth, but really of things, stuff, and in some cases, people. I get her point that the super-elite have indeed worked hard and earned their keep, but give me a break: I won’t cry for the person who cares about the aesthetic difference between 20 and 30 million dollars as evidenced by one’s apartment furnishings (see the Freeland article).
My roundabout, admittedly broad argument here is that on one level, the organization kids of a decade ago have grown up amidst this corruption, this collective drive for visibly significant wealth and ‘bling, and, let’s face it, they live a fast life. Maybe that Princeton prof was right ten years ago: vice, virtue, and sin. We should be teaching more about character and ethics, on every level of the educational ladder (and at home?). I wonder how this past decade of uncertain moral activity has inevitably affected the organizational kid. Is s/he now a “young adult of chaos”? (What twenty-year-old isn’t?)
In my first year of teaching at my current institution, only a half-year after the 2008 election and the economic meltdown, I remember sitting at a lunch with the Provost and a cadre of new faculty hires, one of whom was a pleasant young business professor. Undoubtedly, he was an “organization kid” with braces and bad acne in 2001. But I asked him: “Have you seen the recent New York Times article querying whether our nation’s top business schools are appropriately changing their curricula to include ethics instruction in light of what’s happened on Wall Street, throughout the U.S. (and world)?” No, he hadn’t, and he tried to deftly parry my next question by complaining to the Provost that the university had not done enough to acquire his partner a proper visa for their move to this new city. But I wanted to probe a little more: “You know, every top school – HBS, Wharton, Stanford – except ours has agreed that future curricula will include such ethics courses.” The Provost wasn’t too happy I raised this point, and the twenty-something professor seemed to not hear my point at all, as he moved on to more important issues, like unaffordable, multi-room apartments in the heart of the city on a business school professor’s salary of six figures. Virtue. Vice. “Vocabulary of tragic dimensions.”
So, is this whom the harmless, apolitical organization kid of 2001 has turned into? Lesson remains unlearned: the notion of a virtuous life and virtuous acts still don’t quite hold a match to the materiality of accomplishment. Or, is it that the captains of industry and banks of this last decade were the ones who rode unregulated waves to untold treasures, and then neatly packaged their offspring for St. Paul’s and Exeter, or Crossroads and San Francisco University High School, and further “organized” them for Harvard Yard or Stanford’s Arcade? This isn’t a scientifically supported argument by any means, but rather an educated guess and an opinion. I mean, when more students come to class and complain (perhaps appropriately so) that their tuition is too high, one’s antennae go up. This has long been a collective moan from most undergraduates. But, now, in light of the past decade, the rise of the organization kid, the packaged school experiences, and the latter-day plutocratic parents, these complaints take on a wholly new timbre and substance. “Listen,” I was once told. “The parents are paying a lot to send their kids here, so if you have to miss class for a funeral, then I’m not sure what to say.” This was someone in administration who was chastising me for paying my respects to two close friends who died from cancer within days of each other in another city. I had to miss one class as a result, but at least one or two students complained that they wanted their pro-rated money back for the missed class. Seriously. And, they hadn’t even spoken with me but went straight to the dean (after e-mailing me their condolences: they really are organized). Sounds like the children of adults used to “transactional relationships.” First, this is another reason why people like me are leaving the profession. Second, now that I know the administration will side with the paying customer and leave its own employee virtually unprotected, I have two of the best lawyers on retainer.
Guess who’s the organized kid now?
