IF Dunkirk is a movie about an extraordinary event in history, it’s also a snapshot into the values of another era.

There are the young soldiers full of courage and camaraderie; fighter pilots sacrificing themselves for their countrymen; jolly nurses setting out on boats to tend the injured but unsure if they’ll ever make it home.

Then there’s the ordinary people, the owners of the private vessels who set out to help with the evacuation and would later be heralded as heroes for their bravery.

Of course Dunkirk is a dramatisation but it’s not a stretch of the imagination to believe in characters such as fishing boat skipper Mr Dawson and his son Peter who show fearlessness, tenacity, understanding and kindness in rescuing dozens of soldiers and a drowning Spitfire pilot.

I won’t give away the plot but there’s a scene of such empathy from young Peter that I dare any parent to leave the cinema at least a little reflective about the generation we are now raising.

media_camera Tom Glynn-Carney and Cillian Murphy in Dunkirk. (Pic: Warner Bros)

Dunkirk — and the youth it showcases — has lingered with me all week as I’ve watched the hand-wringing over the reported sexual assault crisis in our universities, the fall in our children’s writing standards and a decision by a primary school to stop girls and boys playing together.

Add to it the fears that the use of fat models endorses obesity, our compensation culture and the under 30s lamenting that they can’t afford inner city homes and it all adds up to a monumental whinge. In the 77 years since Dunkirk, it’s as if the “V” for victory has been replaced with a “V” for victimhood.

To watch the ABC this week was to believe that the report by the Human Rights Commission had unearthed endemic sexual assault in our universities. On 7.30, two women were trotted out as alleged victims of this alleged terrible culture.

The report lacked balance and rigour. There was no explanation of the definition of sexual harassment or that fewer than 10 per cent of students responded to the survey. Further, of the 6.9 per cent of students who reported being sexually assaulted in the past two years, only a small fraction of those said it happened in a university setting.

media_camera A model walks the runway for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2018 Collection. (Pic: Frazer Harrison/Getty)

Likewise, there was no reporting of the fact that 94 per cent of those who said they’d been harassed and 87 per cent of those assaulted did not report it because they didn’t feel it was serious enough or because they didn’t need help. Instead, the report finished with a question as to whether schools needed to do more work on issues like attitudes to women.

Seriously? As we also learned this week, schools can’t teach kids to write because, as one education boss pointed out, they were too busy teaching “bike education, pet education, grooming, financial literacy, drug education, stranger education, bushfire awareness”.

The fact is our future pivots on two pillars: good parenting and self-determination.

Good parents, like Mr Dawson in Dunkirk, teach their kids good values. They teach respect for the opposite sex, they discuss pornography and consent, they imbue their daughters with a sense of worth beyond their looks.

But more than just teach, they live their values: they uphold rather than denigrate their children’s teachers; they respect rather than abuse from the sporting sidelines; they listen to others’ views with curiosity and tolerance. They understand that you need to be a decent parent to raise a decent child.

Further, they encourage independence and self-determination in their children. Sexually harassed at university? Call it out and embarrass the perpetrator. Assaulted? Go to the police. Find writing difficult? Practice. Can’t buy a house in your preferred suburb? Buy one somewhere else.

media_camera Decades on from the event that inspired the movie, we must remember the “Dunkirk spirit”. (Pic: Warner Bros)

Suffering body image issues because the models are too skinny or too fat? Foster a self worth founded on who you are and what you do, not what you look like.

Our children are growing up victims because we’re failing to show them another way. That life is what they choose, not simply what happens to them. That resilience is not genetically bestowed but a habit and practice that can be improved.

Hope, gratitude, love, optimism, a positive identity, good relationships, empowerment, sound health and determination are not concepts that airily float round like butterflies choosing who’ll they’ll land on. They’re within us if only we’re taught how to seize them and use them.

As Andrew Fuller, psychologist and director of Resilient Youth, writes: “Life is an improvisational art. At times we need to shape and reshape ourselves to bring the best of life into view.” If you’re a parent who feels ill-equipped to teach this stuff there’s books and experts aplenty. Seek them out.

Amid the hand-wringing and horror this week there was one story that barely gained attention. A 14-year-old boy, Lochlan Brodie, fell off his grandad’s boat and survived in the water for two hours without a lifejacket before being picked up by a passing charter vessel.

How did he survive? By dog-paddling like buggery, throwing his arms in the air and screaming his nut off. Decades on from Dunkirk, there’s still evidence of a fighting spirit.