David Brooks

They said, it'll be good for your character if you major in your worst subject.

And then they had the phrase there, do what no one wants to do, go where no one wants to go.

And Frances Perkins spent her life traveling around serving the poor and became secretary of labor.

And now colleges, we've sort of gotten out of the morality business and

in part because we decided, well, people are naturally good, they don't need morality, in part because we're a diverse society, people don't know what to say.

But we've left people naked and alone.

If you've got a world where 58 percent of college students don't have any sense of purpose and meaning in their life, they're lacking something pretty core.

We've also got out of the business of training people to be considerate to each other in the concrete circumstances of life.

I had a student who said, I have had four boyfriends in my life and they all ghosted me at the end.

Nobody taught those young men that they have to have a breakup conversation, and probably nobody taught them how to break up with someone without crushing their heart.

These are just basic social skills, like how do you criticize somebody at work in a way that's respectful?

I mean, how do you sit with someone who's depressed?

How do you sit with someone who's grieving?

Morality is not mostly about what you think about abortion.

Morality is mostly, are you considerate to people in the concrete circumstances of life?

Nobody ever taught me how to get out of a conversation gracefully.

I remember I was at my fifth high school reunion, and my only move to get out of a conversation in a cocktail party-like setting was to say, I'm going to go to the bar and have a drink.

And 20 minutes in my reunion, I'm so drunk, I have to leave the reunion because I had like six drinks in 20 minutes because I would just say, I got to go get a drink.

But see, so aside from the big moral issues, just the loss of social skills.

First, a revival of humanistic ideals.