Style over Substance

How many times do we value style over substance? How many times are we convinced of importance by the presence of the package? The reality of this thinking becomes deeply challenging when you begin to work with young people. Right now, I am working with young people at a local highschool and it is very difficult to provide them with messages that have no weight in the real world. Whether it is the notion of being a good person, or simply the notion that hard work pays off. In the real world, these messages conflict with the adverse messages that society teaches. It seems that in the real world, the unjust get ahead and that some will work all of their lives only to survive, but never thrive. The contraditions are enough to cause extreme disappointment. When virtuous ideas are crushed under the weight of structural cynicism, you begin to wonder, are young people tuning us out because we are not feeding them the truth? More importantly, are we simply feeding them the same lines that we were fed in the process of American socialization? And if so, how well did these messages work out for us?