I mean on the one hand kinda yeah, and it was always going to be thus. On the other hand, allow me to encourage you by reminding you that your job was not to teach them about freedom & open-source goodness so much as critical thinking skills. So even if they don't get it NOW, so long as they have the tools to get it LATER that will be enough.

If you are in America, then realize that No Child Left Behind did a grave disservice - sorry if you said that earlier and I forgot, though also, I am hearing of similar occurrences all around the world as the wealthy do not see a need for the middle class to exist any longer, hence are pushing to cut back funding for edumacashun.

Add to that how the current generation is all about achievements involving "scores", not really intellectually curiosity - plus, how could they truly know much of anything anyway when the body of knowledge is now so much vaster than what a human brain could hope to comprehend? Which was always true in our lifetimes anyway, but now it's true even for one field or even sub-field underneath a field, plus Googling existed - or at least did, whereas its demise lately might feel like a blip while we merely await its return, being rebirthed from the ashes of a purifying fire, a Phoenix of internet searching if you will? :-P Anyway, in the absolute height of irony, they literally cannot afford to be too curious, or they will be kicked out of college for refusing to "learn".

But give them a few years after leaving it and... maybe they'll turn around, some of them anyway? Perhaps your REAL job is to inspire in them a lifetime love of learning? :-P

It does bug me that spez was correct though - he really did see clearly into the hearts of the lazy bums who endlessly mindlessly scroll through content regurgitated from decades past, plus those actual niche subs that are too frightened to move away. Then again, we can be pretty toxic here as well, just like there, so is it really all that different here, vs. there, except that here we lack the content that they have there? I strongly, vehemently maintain that the MAXIMUM experience here is better, and probably the average is too but e.g. I was reading a post this morning where someone said that they thought that lemmygrad.ml was named that way as a joke and almost joined it, before realizing that it was serious - if they had though, then its being defederated by almost other instance would have enhanced its echo chamber effect enormously, by bringing in next to no outside material, only what is local on that instance itself. And could you imagine joining hexbear, or even making a post there unawares? I still shudder from my own experience of merely making a singular reply to a comment there, all of ONCE (something middle-of-the-road such as "at least Biden brought gas prices down just prior to the midterm elections, which helped Dems win those crucial Congressional seats, which isn't nothing" - and I got my ASS handed to me for several WEEKS and WEEKS where they would just all pile on, long past when I was so done with it, and ngl after I made the same mistake in lemmygrad.ml I very nearly left Lemmy myself rather than put up with such a barrage - all from different accounts, mind you, so that blocking is horribly inefficient).

We are still fairly new, and dynamic, and all of us still learning how to make things work - e.g. https://slrpnk.net/post/15217190. But that's also what makes it "exciting" for some of us. And yet, the interface and interactions are legit less polished overall, so it really does seem to endear itself more to those of us with an "early adopter" mindset. And maybe that's okay, especially for now, and all the more so if that is what keeps us kind and worth coming here to:-).

Don't lose heart. In the assignment sure, but deeper than that, you're doing a good work - which I can say with certainty b/c you care, and that right there is basically everything? The details you'll work out later:-P.