How America Got Mean Summary

Brooks’ has some very strong ideas in his piece “How America Got Mean” published in The Atlantic September 2023. Brooks states “We live in a society that’s terrible at moral formation” (para 2). I can agree with him on some facts, but others, I have a different opinion. While explaining his point of view on modern society, Brooks’ gets me to start thinking about who we used to be as a society, how traditions have an effect on us and finally when times start to change, along with our morals. One of the first topics Brooks’ touches down on is the comparison of what we used to do and how we used to act back in the late 1900s to the modern era. The author says “The share of Americans ages 25 to 54 who weren't married or living with a romantic partner
Brooks speaks about educational institutions and their curriculums. He expands on it with a reference back to 1788 when Noah Webster wrote, "The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head? The progressive philosopher John Dewey wrote in 1909 that schools teach morality "every moment of the day, five days a week"(para 13). Growing up in school, as far as I can remember, we didn’t spend 5 days a week learning how to treat one another. Besides hearing the golden rule “Treat others how you want to be treated” that was it. There was clearly a shift in priorities, from studying how to treat each other to just the basic modern educational curriculum consisting of math, english..etc. We had to learn what morals were from our own experiences, our elders and households. We learned from watching and listening, but who says we were watching and listening to the correct set of morals? Not everyone had good influences growing up and it is showing now in our moldering