Not all children are nice. Not all of the insights of young people are wholesome

By Chris Trotter*

There is a school of thought that dismisses formal education as a cruel hoax: a human sorting system; nothing more. Those promoting this argument insist that all of us take in and use information in our own way, developing unique personal strategies for surviving and thriving in this world, a process to which the official education system contributes, when it offers us anything at all, more by accident than design.

It was a school of thought that grew out of the “cultural revolution” that swept across the western world in the 1960s and 70s. “Systems” of any kind, the revolutionaries insisted, were oppressive by definition, serving only the wielders of power and control. Nowhere was this spirit-crushing imperative more in evidence than in the education system. Here, the only way to beat “The Man” was to foster the “Inner Child”.

It is difficult to conceive of a more crushing rejoinder to this school of thought than last week’s “Fit & Fresh After Hours” podcast – since taken down – in which a group of young “influencers” were encouraged by host Myron Gaines, to talk about Jews.

According to the 25 July 2025 edition of the London-based publication The Jewish Chronicle, the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the world:

The panellists were in conversation about Jews when one of them started to talk about Adolf Hitler. She suggested that Jews “did something to the Germans that made them act a certain way but nobody wants to talk about [it].

“The Jews don’t want to take accountability.

“They were up to something so the Germans wanted to take them out. It had to be something. They wanted to take out all of them.

“The Holocaust was the only way [Hitler could] take out a huge population — a huge amount of Jews all in one setting.”

Deeply shocked, US Congressman Ritchie Torres responded:

It is profoundly disturbing to see young social media influencers casually rationalise Hitler and the Nazi regime’s systematic extermination of six million Jews during the Holocaust.

“The only thing more terrifying than Holocaust denial is Holocaust glorification.

“The comfort with which these commentators defend the most evil man ever to roam the earth should send chills down the spine of every decent person.

The huge advantage enjoyed by those who received their education pre-Internet is that they possess a store of knowledge that allows them to read and/or watch something posted online and appreciate immediately that what they are looking at is bullshit.

The contrast with those who not only received their education post-Internet, but also were taught in an education system that encouraged them to do their own research; find their own answers, discover their own truths; could hardly be sharper. It throws into sharp relief the acute vulnerability of those who do not know that they do not know.

Also highlighted by the present education system’s (especially at the tertiary level) retreat from the idea that reality is describable, and that the descriptions provided by highly-educated professionals are reliable, is its destructive impact on the maintenance of social cohesion.

The young influencer who spoke out so unhesitatingly in support of Adolf Hitler’s attempted genocide of European Jewry appeared to be entirely unaware of the historical origins of the Holocaust. Indeed, the visceral public response to her remarks was driven not only by what she felt entitled to say, but also by what she so obviously did not know. People all around the world were horrified by the social and political implications of such extraordinary historical and moral witlessness. Their fears were in no way allayed when, far from being rebuked and condemned by her fellow influencers, the young woman’s utterances were validated and encouraged.

When confronted with such objectionable material online, the temptation is to hare-off down the “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation” side track, jettisoning in one’s determination to minimise “harm” all the hard-won political guarantees of free speech and freedom of expression. The Free Speech Union’s standard rejoinder: that the most effective counter to false and hateful speech, is speech which exposes and condemns the falsity and  hatefulness of the original communication; is not less correct for being oft-repeated.

The deeper significance of the “Fit & Fresh After Hours” podcast lies in the challenge it poses to the educational philosophy that celebrates the innocence and inherent wisdom of young human-beings. Kids unspoilt by the institutions of power and control within which their elders are so eager to enmesh them. William Golding’s novel “Lord of the Flies” is merely the most celebrated of many commentaries on the ubiquity of evil – even among the young. Not all children are nice. Not all of the insights of young people are wholesome.

The Christian doctrine of “Original Sin”, so oppressive in many ways, nevertheless served as a powerful social glue. That men and women are weak and susceptible to temptation is not a wholly inaccurate summation of the human condition. Certainly, it points to the social utility of angels with flaming swords dedicated to enforcing the edicts of … higher authority.

Until relatively recently, those flaming swords took social form in the common cultural narratives by which societies bind themselves together. As the efficacy of religion steadily faded in the second half of the Twentieth Century, societies were required to supplant the uncompromising stories told by God, with the forbidding stories vouchsafed to them by History. In this regard, no historical lesson is more forbidding or uncompromising than the lesson of the Holocaust.

That is why teaching young people the history of the Holocaust is so important. In that one, singularly terrible historical event at least three, crucial, moral and political lessons are embedded. The first, is the mutually dependent relationship of human rights and freedoms and the core institutions of liberal democracy. The second, is the extraordinary moral danger of linking fundamental questions of human worth to matters of ethnicity and/or ideological conviction. And, the third, is the powerfully corrosive effect upon social cohesion and human solidarity of relentless propaganda ineffectually countered.

The tragedy of the “Fit & Fresh After Hours” podcast is that it demonstrated the American education system’s desperate failure to send the young people seated around the studio table out into the world with any sort of grasp of either these three vitally important messages, or of the hideous historical event that delivered them. Somehow, the teachers of these young people had persuaded themselves that it was not their place to dictate the beliefs of the students in their classrooms; that the nation’s youth can be trusted to develop their own beliefs, construct their own values, and draw their own historical conclusions.

In the defence of American youth, it must be said that most of them, aided by less naïve teachers, their churches, and – most importantly – their parents, can be relied upon to see the Holocaust for what it truly was. It nevertheless remains a fact that a 2023 YouGov poll, published in The Economist, showed that 20 percent of 18-25-year-old US citizens either “strongly agree” or “tend to agree” that “The Holocaust is a myth”.

Clearly, in the United States – and quite possibly here in New Zealand also – there is work to be done in terms of shoring-up the core common narratives so vital to maintaining both social cohesion and morality. In this context, Education Minister Erica Stanford’s championing of a common New Zealand curriculum is a very encouraging development.

In his recent book, “Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West”, R.R. Reno argues:

Freedom comes when we bind ourselves to something worth serving. Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized this in his letter from a Birmingham jail, an evocation of the double-barrelled authority of America’s founding principles and God’s revealed word. A culture of freedom requires legitimate authority. Freedom is fullest not when it serves itself but when it serves truths freely held.

And truths rigorously inculcated in the young.

*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.