With the 2016 Presidential Election right around the corner, I began to ask many of my friends if they have yet to register to vote. Most of their responses include, "No. I don't really care," or "Why does it matter?" From these responses, I am considerably frightened. I am frightened by their lack of caring, lack of interest in our future, and lack of intelligence as to why they think it is OK to not care.
Does this mean our generation is doomed, or does it mean that our generation hasn't been taught properly? My answer is both.
Throughout every typical college student's life, they were at one time required to take a government and economics class. This requirement was fulfilled either your junior year or senior year of high school. For most students, including myself, education about the government and our economy stopped after those two classes. This is something I noticeably regret. But why do our school systems and colleges not force us to take follow-up classes? Instead they are making us take "required classes" like history, music history, art history, or health; all classes that we could live without and really don't teach us anything that is happening in our now. They make important classes like introduction to the legal system, political science, problems in public policy, and state and local politics optional classes.
This is our future we are talking about and so many people have little to any knowledge on information pertaining to our country. Some people can't even say who the presidential candidates are for this upcoming year. Some people don't even know whether they are Democratic or Republican, and if they do it's usually based on their parents' influences.
We are going to be doomed if we don't do something to change this. When our generation's twenties and thirties roll around and we're dealing with taxes, income taxes, social security taxes, interest rates, etc. no one is going to know what to do or how to handle themselves because we are so uneducated. It honestly scares me so much that it makes me question how stable our future is going to be. We are that next generation that is in control of who goes into office and whether or not that individual is going to make our country great again. We are that next generation that can help our country get out of its overflowing debt. We are that next generation that is in charge of making the proper change that this country rightfully needs.
