People say that Basking Ridge is a bubble, an oasis.  With its quaint stores and expansive pastures, it is far removed from the “armpit of America” that outsiders picture when they think of New Jersey.  Home to rich history, picturesque foliage, and one of the best schools in the state, Basking Ridge is more like a town in a snow globe than a town in the overcrowded, polluted, and industrialized twenty-first century. We are incredibly lucky, of course, to be able to live in such an oasis. Yet many Basking Ridge teenagers seem trapped inside the snow globe, unable and unwilling to see anything beyond their immediate futures.

Our town epitomizes the American dream; our school embodies successful American public education.  As for us, though, we hardly exemplify perfect American citizenry.

Attending such a competitive school, we often sacrifice political awareness for our pursuit of knowledge.  Working into the darkest hours of the night, few students would choose to read the news over texting friends or going to sleep.

Shaila Saifee ’18, who runs cross-country and track, laments, “I generally don’t finish [my homework] until 11 PM or later… I don’t really have time to keep track of things outside of what directly affects my grades.”  Ultimately, college, the finish line of an eighteen-year race, consumes our thoughts and actions.  If colleges don’t require us to read the newspaper and resumes don’t record our knowledge of current events, then anything that happens outside our snow globe will not matter to us.  We excel in academics or sports or clubs or all three because this is what we think the world wants, but we ignore the world itself.

If lack of time doesn’t kill our interest, doubt often does. While we might memorize the Bill of Rights or study the structure of the federal government, schools do not facilitate the leap from theory to application.  Instead of doggedly learning by trial and error, then, we prefer to hide our weaknesses, fearful of criticism.

After all, how often have we been told that we are too young to understand, too naïve to comprehend?  Adults call young Democrats idealistic and ignorant, yet young Republicans are viewed as bigoted and traditional. They say that we’re too liberal and principled; that once we have to pay taxes, we’ll all become Scrooges; that once we have to fight for jobs, we’ll all become xenophobes.  Why should we bother to care about a world that shoots down all of our youthful optimism?  Why should we try to understand world relations, poverty, or war if any solutions we dream up are called silly and unattainable?

We tell ourselves that once we graduate—once our futures seem secure in a college name and degree, once our credibility is cemented in adulthood—then we will have time to talk politics.  We tell ourselves that caring now doesn’t matter anyway, because what’s the point of having an opinion if no one will listen to us?  What’s the point of trying to fix the world when we are still ruled by parents and teachers?  The anthem of all teenagers resounds: “I’ll do it later.”

To which the U.S. Census Bureau says, “Yeah, right.”  In 2012, over 60% of citizens ages 18 to 24 failed to find time or care enough to travel to their polling stations on Election Day.  Freed of high school pressures, reveling in adulthood, when surely every new voter would want to voice his or her beliefs and vote for his or her future, over half of young adults remained silent.We are too complacent.  We live in our little snow globe and think that the glass walls are made of diamond, that our perfect town is indestructible.

“Apathy towards [our] local societies and country in general” keeps us from voting, explains Collin Montag ’17.

Does it ever occur to us how easily our snow globe life could shatter if not for our fragile democracy?  No, because we never take the time to truly learn what happens outside the snow globe.  Voter turnout reveals just how few people truly know how much suffrage and freedom are worth.  We have voices, concerns, and golden dreams of the future, but we don’t mind staying silent because we are used to it.  We’d each like to think that we’d be the exception to the rule, one of the 40% who did vote in the 2012 election.  We can’t all be the exception.  Objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force; uninformed, silent people tend to remain ignorant and hesitant for their whole lives.

Consider this article—these deplorable statistics—the “outside force”.  Perhaps we can rightly blame our school or our culture for our ignorance and apathy, but we will remain ignorant and apathetic unless we choose otherwise.  It’s not particularly difficult.  There’s an app for everything now, as our generation knows well. Skimmin provides short summaries of the major news of the day, and Flipboard allows you to customize your own magazine, updated daily based on the interests you select.

Honors Government and Economics students have the opportunity to participate in Project Citizen, which provides students with the opportunity to attempt to fix a problem. Here is the opportunity to learn and to apply, to finally look up from textbooks. We can easily form a skeleton of knowledge and a baseline of awareness, which will foster our concern and bolster our confidence.  If we can make time for friends and family, for football games and dances, we can make time for the news.  We don’t have to be called ignorant and childish.  We don’t have to feel helpless and tiny.  We can be the generation to change the world, if only we look outside our snow globe.