The Price of Innocence

The educated guesswork of investing in happy childhoods

The following piece is one in a series of letters to my prospective granddaughter.

February 15, 2025

Dear Baby,

For many years, I have run a periodic forum called Roundtables, where I moderate conversations concerning school or wider social issues—everything from dress codes to abortion. The idea is to create a venue where opinions can be freely expressed and alternative views can be presented without rancor or invective. Last week, I hosted one on what I called the vibeshift of 2025—a sharp social change in which policies and attitudes that had prevailed in recent years were suddenly silenced or abandoned. People fired; grants canceled; web pages removed. Much of this was a matter of the new presidential administration, but was also reflected more widely in business, social, and personal life. It will be interesting to see if the jarring quality of the moment will be seen as such years from now.

Anyway, I’m never entirely sure who will show up for these Roundtables—they’re open to the school community—or what the tenor of the conversation will be. In this particular case, the audience was overwhelmingly represented by faculty. As they expressed their opinions, two things became clear. The first is that a significant number of teachers were anxious, even frightened. The second thing that was obvious, mostly as a matter of absence, was a lack of student interest. This vibeshift, insofar as it’s real, has no obvious relevance in most of their lives. Which continue to turn on sports, friends, and college admission. They may be dealing with any number of serious issues in their lives. But the state of the nation is not typically one of them.

And that, I believe, is exactly what their families want. Security is the most important thing a parent can provide for a child. To the extent it can be bought—to some degree it can—it’s understandable, even natural, to seek insulation for one’s progeny. Parents from all walks of life do this in all sorts of ways ranging from baby bumpers to trust funds. A safe school environment is a luxury well worth stretching for, whether as a matter of a private school tuition, an affluent public school district, or a strategically located residential address in a country where education funding is an ad hoc matter of local taxation and politics. A legacy of Anglo-Saxon libertarianism that the Brits themselves have long since left behind.

A secure environment was not something my parents—who experienced evictions, the effects of alcoholism, broken families, and other upheaval—had in their childhoods. They were determined that it would be different for my sister and me. Although their resources were scant, they rode the rising tide of the American Century and procured good and secure educations for their offspring. This was not something they could take for granted. But I did, not only in terms of my own education, but in terms of what your grandmother and I provided for our children, among them your father. The logistics were complicated, to be sure, but we regarded our goals as attainable. And they were.

It may be more difficult for your parents and you, dear grandchild. This is less a matter of financial resources, which appear adequate if not effortless, than the larger climate in which you are coming of age. If your great-grandparents rode an empire at its crest, the defining circumstances of your lifetime will likely be navigating its decline, which now portends to be a good deal sharper. Maybe this will be a matter of capricious tax audits or lawsuits that ensnare enemies of the powerful; maybe it will be casual—or organized—crime waged on and by an underclass. Or maybe something beyond even my dark imaginings. (Of course there’s always war.)

But that’s not where we are right now. And for the moment at least, my students continue to nestle in the precious security of an affluent suburban milieu, blissfully unaware of the angst of those whose livelihoods rest on teaching them in the nicest possible way. It may well be true that security now will foster resilience later. It may also be true that what they are experiencing now is a form of cossetting that will ill prepare them for the challenges ahead. But maybe no parent or teacher can help you with that; life has a way of throwing things at you and teaching you things in ways no school or parent can ever do. For what it’s worth, formal education is a guessing game about the future, and, finally, an act of faith. Only you will know what’s useful to you, and that will likely be in retrospect. We’re doing the best we can, sweetheart. I just hope it will be useful. And if not that, comforting.