One Saturday in June I was happy to attend my grandson’s second birthday party, during the course of which he opened three gifts. First, a small scooter. Then, to go with it, a safety helmet. Third, a toy vacuum. It was the Hoover that won his heart. Once batteries were installed, he set about using it around the house – and garden.
It made me think about what life would have been like when I was two years old. No chance of being given a toy vacuum cleaner! And I didn’t get a scooter. But if I had, I certainly wouldn’t have been given a helmet.
It is obvious that the world into which my grandchildren have been born is very different to the one into which I was born. I am a Baby Boomer. He is a “Polar”, according to the American psychologist Jean Twenge. This summer’s graduates from King’s College, Cambridge, where I am dean of chapel, are members of Gen Z.
Depending on when we are born our lives are shaped by different forces. My life contrasts with that of my parents’. Neither of them completed secondary school. Like many of my students at King’s, I was the first member of my extended family to attend university. That transformed life for me and for my children.
When I ask myself about the detail of the difference university has made to my life, what springs to mind is a whole new set of friends, the experience of living in a different part of the country, the opening of completely new intellectual horizons, a lot more knowledge tempered by a sense of the limits of knowledge, more confidence in my own thoughts, and a hugely expanded sense of personal freedom.
Dig a bit deeper and I realise that going to university supercharged my privilege. The same will have happened to all Cambridge graduates. I say this not to embarrass them or to inflate their egos. I say it to enliven their sense of responsibility. When we graduate we step forward into the world with disproportionate freedom, power, potential. It’s a real responsibility.
At King’s we are deeply committed to giving carefully selected young people all the advantages of higher education. We work to create an environment that will draw out of our students their best qualities; that will enable their minds to grow, their characters to flourish, their strengths to be consolidated and their weaknesses to be overcome. We do this because we believe that education is life-enhancing and that it is intrinsically good to educate people. But we also do it because we believe that the world’s greatest problems will be solved by the application of the best-educated.
Some may think this naive, believing that it is education that is the problem. We have eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, plucked by a hand with an opposable thumb controlled by a curious and easily tempted mind. Whatever the religious fundamentalists and anti-intellectuals proclaim, the genie of critical thought leading to research and development is out of the bottle and is not going back in.
Today we are super-aware that we do not live in the paradise of God’s making but in a world of which previous generations have made a mess. Gen-Z graduates know this, and see the phrase “elders and betters” not as a truism but as an oxymoron. But the challenge to those who are educated is to dedicate that privilege not to moaning about what we have inherited, but to taking responsibility for what we might pass on.
Think back to that toddler’s birthday. The surprising gift was not the vacuum or the scooter, but the helmet. It was a responsible gift, but also a potent symbol of how we think about the young today. In The Anxious Generation Jonathan Haidt calls out the “safetyism” that robs children of experiences needed to develop creativity and resilience. Never have parents been so aware of the dangers children face. Never have children grown up so concerned to be safe. And never have the dangers they face been more human-made and unavoidable. The truth is this: there is no safety.
The Anthropocene has been shaped by graduates. Those of us who have benefited from the privilege of education need to recognise our true potential and to act – not out of anxiety, or selfishness, or competitiveness, or desire for personal safety – but out of hope-filled concern for the generations yet to come.
Our Gen-Z graduates will be acutely aware of life’s difficulties and probably internalise them – sometimes as anger, sometimes as anxiety. As graduates, they understand that they only have limited scope to address the problems created by their forbears, or to make opportunities for their successors. But they must not let their wise and justified humility depress or diminish them.
Next time you see a toddler on a scooter in a helmet, think: I’m glad that kid is having fun and that they have someone who cares about them enough to give them a helmet as well as a scooter. But also ask yourself what the real dangers are for children today, and what you might contribute to giving their generation a better future.
As I told our graduating class of 2024, my grandson and his generation need us to do all we can to give them the chance of a great life. Enjoy yourself but don’t focus on yourself, focus on them. For it is by working for the fulfilment and well-being of others that we ourselves find fulfilment and joy – and it is in joy, not anxiety or anger, that we find wellsprings of genuine, realistic, constructive and world-changing hope.
This is an edited version of an address Stephen Cherry gave to the graduating students of King’s College, Cambridge
[See also: Rishi Sunak’s D-Day apology reveals the limits of saying sorry]
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This article appears in the 25 Jul 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Summer Special 2024