If Gen Z is sour on America, they’re being miseducated

We shouldn’t be surprised that many U.S. students find the American story distant, hollow, or irrelevant, since their first serious encounter with America may have been a list of its failures.In defense of the students, there is nothing inspiring about slavery, the forced removal of Native Americans from their traditional tribal lands, the Jim Crow era, or the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.But there’s far more to the American story than what we’ve done wrong. And even those dark chapters in America’s history have many heroes. Without their moral striving toward the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, America’s story would be incomplete. Perhaps the failure to focus on these heroes, and the human drama of courage, sacrifice, and invention, explains why so many members of Generation Z — teenagers and young adults born from 1997 to 2012 — are anxious, skeptical, and detached from America’s traditions, values, governance, and even their fellow Americans.The spring 2026 Harvard Youth Poll, for example, showed that just 26% of young adults aged 18-29 “feel hopeful about the future of America” — down from 55% five years ago.The poll also revealed that only 15% of young people trust the federal government (“the lowest level recorded” in more than 25 years of tracking), just 1 in 3 (33%) is confident our elections are conducted fairly, and a whopping 59% see the country on the wrong track, a finding consistent with a recent American University Sine Institute poll showing that 70% of the 18-34 demographic is not proud of “where America is heading as a nation.”These are not isolated examples. A national Quinnipiac University poll, released in June, found that nearly two-thirds (64%) of all respondents aged 18-34 don’t believe our democratic system is working, and more than a third (37%) in that age group do not consider themselves “proud Americans.”Asked whether they think the United States is “living up to” the Declaration of Independence’s overarching ideal — that all men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as the poll paraphrased it — just 28% of the respondents said yes, while 69% said no.These older members of Gen Z are not the only ones down on their country, however — so are the teenagers.The Springtide Research Institute, in early 2024, surveyed 6,669 young people ranging in age from 13 to 25, approximately half of them middle school and high school students. Asked “How happy are you with the current direction of U.S. politics,” nearly half of all respondents (3,115) said they were “unhappy” or “very unhappy” overall, with fewer than 11% (719) saying they were happy or very happy. (The remaining respondents were neutral on the question.) Regarding the current direction of U.S. society, the responses were similarly concerning, with 44.5% of respondents saying they were unhappy or very unhappy, and fewer than 15% saying they were happy or very happy.On the matter of trust, more than a quarter of all respondents indicated they have no “trust at all” in large corporations or businesses, the Supreme Court, U.S. elections, or Congress, with the percentage jumping to more than 36% when it came to the president, which was Joe Biden at the time.There can be only one conclusion from all this: We’re letting our children down.American educators have a responsibility to tell America’s story honestly, helping young people put into perspective why, from our country’s beginning, millions of people have risked — and continue to risk — life and limb to join us here.The obsession of some people with what’s wrong with America, past and present, has blinded them from what’s right with America. Two words say it best: freedom and opportunity.YOUR PARTY LOSING IS NOT AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT. YOUR TEMPER TANTRUM ISTo our detriment, we apparently are not teaching this to our young.Thomas Sowell, the prominent economist at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, has written widely on education’s important role in civilizing young people into the habits and customs of our free society, and inspiring each generation in timeless American principles. “Patriotism is more than a sentiment,” he reminds us. “It is a necessity.”Richard N. Lorenc, former executive vice president of the Foundation for Economic Education, is president and CEO of Lexandria, an education nonprofit organization that seeks to reignite the American spirit through innovative classroom content and tools.