Aggressive Nostalgia

October 15, 2026 Aggressive Nostalgia “Schools are getting worse and worse; young people today can barely read and write! In the old days, education standards were higher, kids were less self-centered, and people were more moral.” Except…social scientists have shown that none of this is true — and that people have been insisting that things were better back when they were young pretty much forever. Such pronouncements tell us more about the individuals making them than about the reality they purport to describe. Moreover, myths of a halcyon past are wielded by right-wing demagogues and are used to justify authoritarian, “Because I said so!” parenting and back-to-basics, bunch o’ facts teaching. RESOURCES David Berliner & Bruce Biddle, The Manufactured Crisis (Addison-Wesley, 1995) Richard Rothstein, The Way We Were​? (Century Foundation Press, 1998) Adam Mastroianni & Daniel Gilbert, “The Illusion of Moral Decline,” Nature, June 7, 2023 – https://tinyurl.com/ypurm6j4 John Protzko & Jonathan Schooler, “Kids These Days,” Science Advances, October 16, 2019 – https://tinyurl.com/4cejw3ax   A note from Alfie Kohn: If you’re enjoying Kohn’s Zone, please tell other people about it. If you have feedback about an episode, send it to https://www.alfiekohn.org/contact-us/. And if you’re willing to do your part to keep the podcast ad- and paywall-free, please click on the donate button or visit https://coff.ee/kohnszone. Thanks! Please click the button below to donate. If you don’t see a button, please go to this page (https://coff.ee/kohnszone). Donate PRODUCTION SUPPORT: Ultraviolet Audio ART: Abi Kohn