decent people

i have a post up at the hand mirror on hate speech.

i didn't have time to write on monday night because we went to the end-of-year prize-giving ceremony for my elder daughter's high school. it's her final year, and i'm not allowed to tell what she got (fair enough, i used to hate it when my parents told my results!), but let's just say that i'm very proud of her.

one of the nicest things the assistant principal said just before she read out the names and awards for the group my daughter was in went something like this: "not only have these young people achieved excellence, but the most important thing about them is that they are all thoroughly decent people, each and every one of them". i have to say it brought a tear to my eye, and reminded me again (just as it did at exactly this time last year) that we rarely celebrate the thorough decentness of our young people.

we hear plenty about how rude, obnoxious, silly, or whatever else they are. we hear about it when they break the law. we denigrate the new technologies they embrace or their way of doing and seeing things, even though there is nothing inherently wrong, for example, with txt language or social networking on the internet. we just automatically believe that everything was so much better in our day, and that this generation is so much worse than the last.

well i don't think they are. not the young people that i see regularly, and certainly not the young people we briefly got to know on monday night. we need to celebrate these young people so much more, and to let them know just how wonderful they are both as individuals and as a group.

yeah, so that's what i was doing monday night, and last night i decided to have a break. so there!