Right now, our youth are virtually ignorant of the American story. According to the most recent data from the Nation’s Report Card (NAEP), students know almost nothing about the nation’s founding.
On the last National History exam in 2022, only 13% of eighth graders scored proficient. Roughly 40% scored below the NAEP basic level in U.S. history — the lowest performance category.
Glenn Beck is deeply concerned about these numbers.
“We are raising a generation that cannot explain the country they’re standing in,” he laments.
But that’s not even close to the biggest threat facing our young people.
“It’s not just the [American] story that is thinning out,” sighs Glenn. “It is everything that used to hold a person in place.”
Stories, family, friendship, and church, he argues, are all vital to the human spirit. But these cornerstones have been slowly crumbling with each generation. Today, much of the country struggles with “loneliness” — a condition that has become so rampant, former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy declared it an “epidemic” in 2023.
“Try to hold all of that in your head at once and then say, ‘What do you think’s happening to our kids?’” says Glenn. “No shared story, emptied out churches, emptied out clubs, a friendship drought, a loneliness the doctors are calling a health emergency. Now picture being born into that.”
“You don’t even know where you are. You have no map. You have no name for who your people are. There’s no seat saved at any table for you. You just have a screen in your hand and a thousand strangers glad to tell you who you ought to be. That’s the ground our kids are standing on,” he continues.
Kids, he argues, come into the world not knowing who they are. Slowly, over time, they develop an identity “piece by piece” based on “whatever is reflected back at them.”
But what’s reflected back at them today is largely determined by screens controlled by algorithms designed to mold and condition.
“Some of the voices reaching your kids, they are not random, OK? You’ve got people who know exactly what they’re doing. They have a vision for who your kid should become,” Glenn warns.
These visions are often incredibly alluring to the floundering youngster.
Glenn imagines a young child still in his most formative years “swimming … in an ocean of a thousand voices,” desperately trying to nail down his identity.
“And then one of those voices steps forward and offers the whole package: Finished identity. Here’s who you are; here’s your people; here’s your club; here’s what you stand for,” he visualizes.
This promise of “finally becoming someone” is “the hook” that so many children fall prey to today.
“When a kid feels invisible, a ready-made identity stops becoming attractive and becomes irresistible because they’re looking for a shore,” says Glenn.
It’s the job of parents to provide them with a different shore.
Glenn has two pieces of advice.
“Give them a place where they belong … where they can sit and disagree, and it’s allowed,” he says, highlighting how so many of the poisonous movements kids get swept up in today demand absolute conformity as a prerequisite for admission.
“If the only place you’re offering your kid belonging is a place that demands their silence, they will pay that price,” Glenn cautions, “and when they’re hurting, when they’ve gone quiet and pulled away … that’s the moment to move towards them because somebody’s going to fill that void in your kid.”
His second encouragement is to “tell them about the trap.”
“[Tell them] if anyone ever tells you that you have to stop doubting in order to belong, run — run from them. If they promise that they will transform you, and all that you have to do for payment is be compliant, that’s the tell,” Glenn urges.
The key, he says, isn’t creating the perfect bubble to shield them from the world’s dangers. The key is “[making] sure that when they walk out your door, their eyes are wide open, and they have a home worth coming back to.”
To hear more, watch the video above.
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