A Generation Adrift: The Decline of Curiosity in Education Noureddine Boutahar

Not long ago, I was watching a football match in a local coffee shop when a seemingly trivial yet telling incident unfolded. It rekindled a dormant sadness about the state of today’s education—the alarming shallowness of knowledge among young people.

Two Portuguese teams were playing, while nearby, two stylishly dressed young men sat watching, their attention divided between the match on TV and their gleaming iPhones. Their brand-new devices, pristine sneakers, heavy gold necklaces, and easy confidence spoke of a generation fluent in the language of consumerism. I soon learned they were twelfth graders at a nearby high school.

As they commented on the players, one suddenly turned to the waiter and said, “Karim, could you change the language, please? No one here speaks Brazilian.” He then looked at me and smiled, expecting agreement. I smiled back, but as a teacher, I couldn’t ignore the glaring error.

Curious whether it was a slip of the tongue, a joke, or a genuine misconception, I asked, “What nationality are the teams?”

“Portuguese,” he replied.

“And what language do people in Portugal speak?”

“Portuguese,” he answered without hesitation.

“And in Brazil?”

“Brazilian,” he said, brimming with confidence.

Gently, I corrected him, explaining that the language on TV was Portuguese, not ‘Brazilian.’ I added that Brazil’s official language is Portuguese, spoken by nearly all of its population due to Portugal’s colonization. I compared it to how Morocco and Algeria speak French due to French colonization or how India and Pakistan use English because of British rule. He listened intently, nodding in appreciation, as if a light had just switched on in his mind.

This brief exchange sent me down memory lane. At his age, my knowledge of geography and history was far more robust. I recalled my demanding teacher, Mr. Terrab, who made us memorize the names and geographical features of all the countries in the curriculum—their mountains, rivers, lakes, capitals, and even their political systems. Each lesson began with a rigorous exercise: he would call four students to the board and give each one a task—for example, one to draw Africa with all its countries, another to mark the world’s mountains, a third to trace Morocco’s rivers, and a fourth to outline the mineral resources of North Africa. By high school, I could navigate the world’s political, historical, and geographical landscapes with ease.

As students, we quizzed each other relentlessly on global knowledge, boasting about who knew more about world leaders, historical events, and political affairs. Though many of us had little, wearing threadbare clothes and barely owning a second outfit, we were hungry to learn. Knowledge was our currency, and we spent it lavishly.

But today’s students? Speaking from experience, many struggle to locate Mali, Botswana, or Sierra Leone on a map. Some mistakenly place African nations in Europe, confuse European countries with those in Asia, or mix up Latin American nations with disconcerting ease. Many pass through school relying on malpractice, flaunting the latest sneakers and chasing after the newest phone models, yet remaining indifferent to the vast world beyond their screens.

This realization filled me with frustration. The spark of curiosity, once the heartbeat of education, has dimmed. In its place, gossip, social media trends, and passive learning reign supreme. The classroom, once a vibrant arena of ideas, now feels like an abandoned shrine—students mechanically copying from the board, disengaged and uninspired. Education has become a hollow ritual, a performance where teachers and students alike simply go through the motions.

Who bears the blame? Governments have surrendered to market forces, parents have abdicated their roles, teachers feel powerless, and the entire education system has turned students into guinea pigs for so long. All share responsibility for this generational drift.

I honestly don’t know whether to blame, scold, or sympathize with this generation. It is a "depressed generation" swept up in a digital whirlwind, constantly bombarded with images of seemingly perfect lives. It measures status in likes, self-worth in followers, and knowledge in whatever Google can spit out in seconds. It fails to see that this curated reality is often a mirage—where the one preaching healthy living may secretly binge on junk food; the one presenting a virtuous image might lead a double life. This culture of superficiality has stripped today’s students of critical thinking, replacing deep understanding with fleeting digital convenience.

And yet, it is hard to remain hopeful when this generation struggles not just academically but culturally and intellectually under the weight of ongoing sociopolitical crises. They navigate a dystopian era plagued by stifling mediocrity, systemic rampant corruption, economic instability, resurgent diseases, brutal wars, nuclear threats, family breakdowns, and the ever-looming shadow of climate change. Hope falters when our public schools succumb to Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmares of so-called reforms, with students reduced to mere pawns in a bigger game. Optimism falters when our public education system, once a sturdy edifice, is collapsing inward like a house of cards, or, in Mohammed Gahs's stark words, 'a massive, upside-down corpse.'

The core issue extends beyond a failing education system; it’s a profound cultural shift. To reignite intellectual curiosity, we must all— governed and governors alike—radically rethink how we educate and inspire young minds. Otherwise, if the old saying holds true—'you reap what you sow'—then we risk raising a generation of passive consumers, exhibiting the Dunning-Kruger effect, adrift in a sea of information yet understanding so little of its depths.