Posted on 07/16/2025 2:41:02 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
“N.Y.C. art schools see record-high application numbers as Gen Z-ers clamber to enroll,” Gothamist’s Hannah Frishberg reported earlier this month. Art school has a reputation for being totally impractical and mildly dissolute. But what members of Gen Z like about art school, Frishberg explains, is that it has “a comforting, human sense of purpose.”
The art school trend sounds counterintuitive at first. During times of economic uncertainty, the cliché is that young people usually go to law school or do something else that seems pragmatic, steady and lucrative. Yet art school can offer young people a set of tangible, hands-on skills and a road to employment that is set apart from an increasingly artificial-intelligence-driven corporate world.
I have been interviewing 20-somethings about dating, politics, faith and their aspirations for a couple of years now. Dozens of conversations with members of Gen Z have convinced me that the most prominent aspect of their generational character is that they’re small-c conservative.
This is frequently misunderstood as politically conservative (more on that in a second). But what I mean is that they’re constitutionally moderate and driven by old-fashioned values. It might be hard for us to recognize just how wholesome Gen Z is, or what that represents for America’s future. But we should try.
It’s not just their “Shop Class as Soulcraft” disposition — their bias for the local and the handmade and against tech overlords — that makes this generation seem like a throwback. Or their renewed and unironic interest in things like embroidery, crocheting and knitting...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Generation “Z,” generation “X,” Generation “LMNOP,” they all run together. Why not refer to them by age so we know what is being talked about?
I don’t think it’s wholesomeness.
“Clamber to enroll”? That’s some great copy editing there, NYT.
I don’t think it’s wholesomeness.
What is it?
I think it’s leftist fatigue. They’re burned out on all the bs.
“Wholesomeness?” That sounds like a euphemism for something she doesn’t want to say. I don’t know what.
She may have a point about the conservatism. Each generation has a different starting point, and if conservatism is staying close to or getting back to the starting point (or what’s good or best in the starting point), one generation’s conservatism won’t look much like the previous generation’s Gen Z’s version of back to basics or traditions won’t look much like a Boomer’s or Xer’s to say nothing of earlier generations’.
They are returning to nature. They are bombarded with so much crap they are consigning most of it to fantasy. My grandson is about to turn eighteen and marry his eighteen year old girlfriend just like I did fifty years ago. They want four kids. Back to basics.
Scorecards, get yer scorecards here. You can’t tell the players without a scorecard.
Politics is downstream from Culture.
The culture of Gen Z is going in a pretty good direction. Their politics will follow.
I like the sound of that and hope this is a part of the change we are seeing in this generation. An instinctive pressing of the reset button. The real one, sorry Hitlery.
What's wholesome about studying art is that, if you're serious about developing a following (a.k.a. a market for your work), you have to be serious about your physical and technical competence and your focus on what the customer actually wants.
Plenty of Leftist airheads run around in art schools--as students and as faculty--but art is a hands-on craft, which also attracts practical people, who tend to the wholesome and conservative.
Such students don't necessarily advertise that about themselves while in school, but they are there, and the disciplines they learn are serious.
The teacher and I were the only men in the class. The other dozen of so students were women, mostly young and attractive.
I guess it's true. Men gravitate to STEM. Women to softer courses.
Those are often anti-anxiety pastimes. Given the craziness of modern society I don't blame then.
Wholesome??
The “hookup culture” generation??
The myriad STDs they are spreading are sure “wholesome”
Women are getting most of the college degrees today. But it's mostly crap like you've said.
Many young people seem to want to turn back the clock on what they see as libertine overreach. I was honestly shocked to read that “Close to two-thirds (64 percent) of men under age 25 say they favor making it more difficult to access online pornography,” according to new research from The American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life — that’s up over 10 points since 2013.
I like it.
That’s comforting.
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