COLUMN: Fix the generation gap or face the consequences

From Amanda Bergson-Shilcock's, "A Few Good Words," Fall '99 From Amanda Bergson-Shilcock's, "A Few Good Words," Fall '99Recently, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist David Boldt suggested that because most teenage voters are "doofuses," the voting age should be raised from 18 to 21 or even higher. That may sound like an exaggeration. It's highly unlikely that the Constitution is going to be amended anytime soon, no matter what David Boldt thinks. But the voting question is just the surface issue. The problems our society faces today are too large for any one generation to solve. Some, like nuclear waste disposal, are probably too big for civilization. Even as society faces these tremendous challenges, we insist on segmenting people along generational lines. Artificial age-segregation is the rule beginning in early childhood and continuing through years of schooling. With the exception of family and perhaps romantic relationships, it continues in modified form throughout our adult lives. Putting age barriers between people is like trying to solve a puzzle with one hand tied behind your back. It makes it that much harder to give workers good job skills, fight nicotine addiction or create an educated electorate. It's only when we stop assuming that we make progress. Although adults can boycott and politicians can make speeches, when a child becomes a child-labor activist, it widens our definition of who can resolve conflicts. Barring young adults from voting won't prevent them from volunteering for campaigns or lobbying Congress but it will send a message that their input isn't valued. To say, as columnist Boldt does, that "what makes teenagers terrific combat soldiers, reckless disregard for danger, is precisely why we should be wary of them as voters" is not just a stereotype but a false distinction. If I said that Asians were hardworking isolationists and thus unsuited for management positions, there would be an outcry -- and deservedly so. But it seems acceptable to some to bash an entire generation. Some argue that cross-generational conflict is as old as humankind. I agree that some differences are natural, if only because life experiences increase with age. But it is simplistic and counter-effective to set up groups of people in opposition to each other just because their birth certificates have different dates. The adult friends I had as a child were among the most important people in my life. They mentored me and also treated me as an equal -- not a contemporary, but an equal. It wasn't because they thought I was out-of-the-ordinary; they had similar relationships with other children. Now I am in my 20s and they are in their 30s and 40s. When I talk with them today, we aren't shouting across a generational gulf. We build on each other's solutions and ideas, share experiences and news clippings and discuss the work we do. Susannah and I talk about incarceration and whether restorative justice is a better idea than punishment. Patti and I talk about education and whether my learning style is similar to her son's. When Patti hears a sentence beginning, "College students are all?" she has something real to test it against. But I'm afraid that there aren't enough Pattis in the world. Boldt's column scares me not only because I don't want to be disenfranchised but because I don't want disenfranchisement -- or anything else -- to be justified on the grounds of age. The man who sculpted Mount Rushmore died before the presidents' faces were finished. But the monument was finished, and stands to this day, because he trusted the next generation to work with him and then to carry on alone. If we can't trust each other, then future generations are going to be left with problems a lot tougher than an unfinished carving.