cman: Why is it that this generation's parents think that they know better than the generations that came before them when it comes to parenting? For hundreds of thousands of years parents raised their children one way, and within 20 years it all went to shiat.


yes because people were so perfect once they hit adulthood. No overcompensating. No tyrannical dictators. No greed and self centered immature children. It's only in the past 20 years has suddenly it all gone to shiat.

Ya, that's pretty sad, but i have one better. Was applying to a police department who were looking for about 6 new officers. This was in a large city. Anyway, i was seated in the auditorium reading the handouts they gave, and got to the part about test scores, psychological testing, and physical fitness. They had it broken down to race / sex. I can't remember the exact numbers, but it went something like this. (just doing test scores, male / female would obviously be different.

white Must score at least 95 percent on written test, math, reading comprehension, etc..

Black or any other minority Must score at least 75 percent on same tests.

Now, I'm all about equality, and no matter if you are black, white, or spotted orange and yellow, you should have a fair shake. But how is this fair? I walked up to one of the instructors and asked him why the disparity in passing test scores. His reply was "we need to hire more minorities, and by lowering passing test scores, we can make this happen." I looked at him speechless for a moment..and turned to a black guy standing next to me and asked him, "Hey man, look at this shiat, you don't have to score as high as me to get a job, doesn't this insult you? They are pretty much saying that I'm smarter than you because I'm white, and you are a ignorant minority who needs the test handed to him. Aren't you insulted? The guy said "yo man, if it gets me a job what the hell do i care?" I replied "Man..you don't get it ....they are saying you're STUPID because you're BLACK!!. He just kept on with the process. This is just another acceptance of "dumb is acceptable" because we don't expect kids these days to really accomplish anything beyond leaving the house and making more slack jawed knuckle draggers.

ChuDogg: Tinton: I guess I'm one of these, so I'm getting a kick, etc. On my internship my boss said I deserved a B. The grade he actually gave me was a C, and somehow my advisor interpreted that as a failing grade so she gave me a 69. Was going to fail me, make me spend another $2000 in tuition and a couple months working for free, all because of 2 points and her "discretion".

I appealed the grade, and the appeal process just happened to go through her and another dept head. After some arguing....the other dept. chair gave it to me. He said that if it was up to my advisor I would've been SOL and it was good I stood up like I did.

I was a good student though and that's the only time that happened. Before then, whatever grade I got I just accepted and moved on. Some bad grades (chem with some Indian dude who couldn't talk, I bombed everything in that, and failed stats the first time because of a similar bad professor) actually cost me a semester or 2 and prolonged graduation. It pissed me off because I'd already busted my ass working for free (actually no....I PAID $2000 for the privelege to work for free) and the place wasn't giving me shiat afterwards, and I knew I wasn't doing another internship.

It really made me realize that colleges are in the business of MAKING MONEY and that gives them some incentive to hold you back. Masters degree be damned, I'm never going back.

I argued the grade of the first paper/exam of every single class, regardless of what the grade was i knew i would be seeing the prof in his office hours. It's great social engineering, even if he doesn't change he'll now be expecting that on all the papers and exams for the rest of class. Plus it's a great way to make an impression that you can challenge his/her ideas and make an arguement citing the material.

It's social engineering, and you can use that in life regardless of what you do. People like the author lashing out at "snowflakes" sound like they had a stunted development and haven't grown fu ...

Oh yes, you're extremely clever, you are. Why, when I was a class instructor, I loved nothing better than meeting new people who thought they were the first person ever to try some stupid Jedi mind trick on me. I loved it as a boss, too: It make it much easier to decide who to assign the crap jobs to.

But you do know what the real psych-out is, right? Right?

orbister: I agree with you: If you are going to own crotchfruit, you need to beat that ass at one point or another. Because when your little snowflake gets to be a teen and rolls it's eyes at you in rebellion and walks away cussing you, well, you will be wishing that you had been bustin that ass all those years to keep the snowflake in proper alignment. I whole heartly believe in punishment, if a 6yr old comes up to me and slaps me in the head, guess what? I'm gunna knock him right back in the head the same way, only a little harder, to get his attention. NOT have a heart to heart on what Ghandi or jebus would do, fark that. So yeah, keep your little johnnie in a germ free box, where nothing or no one can get to him/her, and by all means homeschool the little shyt, add fuel to the fire, and see what kind of farked up adult you produce.

Come back and tell us how that theory works out if you ever meet a child, will you?


I just knocked the crap out of my friends kid the other day for doing the very thing I mentioned, hitting me up sid MY head. So slapped the farker back, right in front of his parents, then his dad got on to him for hitting me. Wasen't a good day for the little turd.

It's hard to describe it in a shortened state, I don't want to spawn the old wall of text. But seriously, many influences overlap with each other.

At some point, we had tracking in schools, starting in middle-school (junior high). Plenty of people could do really well for themselves picking up a trade, and there was even a trade school option such that after 2 years of high school, people who knew they weren't headed for college could immediately start gaining experience for being an electrician, a plumber, a pastry chef. Legit jobs, no need to go into student loan debt, graduate high school and start making money immediately.

Of course this also was a time period where people often (but of course not always) stayed in the same company or organization for many years, and sometimes had pensions or union retirement plans or anything like that. If you learned a skilled trade you made a decent living or might become fairly wealthy if you could own your own business.

But the whole system has changed. Not just the schools, not just the grading or the "self-esteem" but the entire way that people now approach the workplace system. The days of thinking that a company would stand by its workers have been shattered, and now people see their current job as temporary, the idea of staying in the same company for 30+ years is the exception. Precious snowflakes may be A problem, but it's quite hard to keep morale and employee motivation when seemingly everyone's job is so fleeting, or when the company goes under and the people at the top escape with huge severance packages for managing the downward spiral. No one aspect is fault, but we certainly need a re-calibration of how people view their futures in the working world.

ordinarysteve: "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
-Socrates
/Apparently things haven't changed that much. We always biatch about the next generation. I do find the whole attachment/helicopter parenting to be weird but I'm not a parent so I don't really have any perspective on it.

Socrates didn't say that... I think he shared the general attitude, but that quote, specifically, is not from Socrates.

Link

QI has determined that the author of the quote is not someone famous or ancient.

It was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times. The words he used were later slightly altered to yield the modern version. In fact, more than one section of his thesis has been excerpted and then attributed classical luminaries

cman: Why is it that this generation's parents think that they know better than the generations that came before them when it comes to parenting? For hundreds of thousands of years parents raised their children one way, and within 20 years it all went to shiat.

That's not true at all. Even a few hundred years ago the idea that dozens of children should sit together in a room for the first two decades of their life and be forced to memorize a list of facts would be laughed it -- it's an absolutely ridiculous way to educate people. Certainly there are facts to be learned, and I guess if you make people sit in a lecture long enough and give them enough short-answer tests you can probably get many students to memorize those facts, but it's hardly a time-honed, efficient way to educate a populace.

In contrast, traditional education (for hundreds of thousands of years) involved more or less individual attention to the student, who was expected not merely to memorize a fact or technique, but to apply it rapidly in a practical situation. No one sat around looking at picture of sticks and twigs while they were told about starting a fire -- they watched someone demonstrate the technique and were then immediately expected to undertake it, under the guidance of someone knowledgeable. Even after the rise of formal education, learning has traditionally consisted of small-group, interactive discussions with infrequent examinations that required synthesis and not merely recall. Such discussions, while guided toward a specific goal by the instructor, would necessarily have been driven by the interests and skills of the participants.

DrippinBalls: Too many so-called 'parents' of today should have been sterilized.

Oh, no lie there. And why is it the very people who shouldn't have kids, wind up having them by the litter.

The original article was discussing grade inflation and poorly prepared students.

Posters are blaming 'the wrong people having babies' and poor parenting, plus 'humanities degrees are worthless anyway'

I would suggest that the problem is simply that the snowflakes are not getting realistic performance measures as they grow up.

My hope is that in the near future, online academies will start augmenting and then replacing traditional classrooms, with all their problems and weaknesses.

And when that happens, de facto standards will develop for each level of each subject

darch: Next time read the thread before you post. Birth rates in first-world countries, especially among whites, have been dropping like a rock for decades.

Come visit my little burg- you'll see first hand that those #'s are utter horses**t.

Or just keep basing your opinions on polls and published papers.

Wait... what? "Your opinions are based on published, verifiable facts gathered from a wide-ranging set of sample areas & populations - my opinions are based on anecdotal observation in a limited area with a comparatively small sample population, therefore your opinions are obviously wrong!"

Holy crap. I mean, seriously, holy crap - I feel dumber for having read that post. Unfortunately, I do understand, all too well, the anecdotal bias, as I get to run into it on a daily basis at work, but, still, that's just... dumb.

aerojockey: Oh how cute. Humanities professors and students think grades in the humanities matter.

Aww, how cute. The engineer thinks designing a new fastener is so much more important than knowing how analyze new information and ideas you weren't specifically trained for.

I'm exaggerating, of course, but you (and most other hard science types) make the mistake of assuming a humanities degree has no applicability beyond the field taught. Easy mistake, since that's often the case with scientific and technical degrees. You learn a specific environment and how to design things in it. That's great, and necessary. Even though I passed the course in a stint as an areo major, I'll leave fluid dynamics to the experts. But a humanities degree teaches much more broadly applicable skills; research and analysis (of a non technical kind- taking data and running regressions this is not, this is combining multiple sources that may be contradictory and figuring out how to make a cohesive whole), communication, argument. The writing I've seen from engineers has made me want to weep. The simplistic thinking that shows up when engineers try to discuss public policy usually wants to make me kill myself, even when they're on the same side I am; the sophistication of arguments and logic are about where I was as a high school freshman, possibly even worse.

Those are all transferable skills. An english degree qualifies you for a lot more than teaching english, though god knows we need better english teachers in middle and high schools. Unfortunately, moronic licensing requirements that require teaching degrees, excluding people who actually specialized in that particular field, make that difficult. That and much more attractive salaries elsewhere.

Whenever I see one of these stories, I think back to my experiences as a HS science teacher. Yes, there are plenty of kids who are entitled and don't want to put in any work. But there are also tons of kids who have been ridiculed and ignored for so long that their self-esteem (if there even is such a thing) is nonexistent. Hell, I've worked with kids who at 15 years old had already given up on achieving anything, not because they're lazy, but because they hold such a low opinion of their own abilities.

Also, this story comes from PJ Media, and reeks of an old man with an agenda. Hint: Progressive education = liberal education.

/back in my day, uphill 5 miles in 15 feet of snow, get off my lawn, rabble rabble rabble.
//amidoingitrite?

Snarcoleptic_Hoosier: Being in the age group that this hits, I do enjoy seeing "Baby's First Sh**storm"

/As a spectator sport, it's fantastic

I had to chuckle at that. It's not just kids, either. There's nothing quite like watching a newly-minted college graduate join the workforce, only to discover that they get paid to work. They don't get paid to just show up, or to offer their unactionable opinion, and they certainly don't get paid to play games or date during work hours.

You'd be surprised how many newly-minted developers believe that their hourly wage is reward for their attendance, and that they expect to be "rewarded" further for actually doing their jobs. Where I used to work, we used to give substantial (five figures) performance incentives, but to get in that upper tier, you had to do something that had a direct impact on the industry, not just sit at your desk and "meet expectations." Those that "met expectations" were merely paid their hourly wage - that's the "reward" for meeting expectations, after all. We expect you to work, and in return, we pay you. That's how it works. You want more? Give more, do more, be more.

To their credit, the worthwhile ones figure this out quickly (sometimes, even before their first performance review) and step up. We get a few, though, that not only don't figure it out, but get bitter & resentful over not being recognized as the precious snowflakes they so obviously are, to our eternal amusement come negotiation time.

cman: Why is it that this generation's parents think that they know better than the generations that came before them when it comes to parenting? For hundreds of thousands of years parents raised their children one way, and within 20 years it all went to shiat.

Actually, no. The current education system which divides kids by age, makes them all sit up straight in rows of chairs, gives them all the same curriculum no matter what their aptitude and preference, and regulates everything by a bell has only been used for little over 150 years to the broad populace.

For the vast "hundreds of thousands of years" that you mentioned, kids simply followed their parents or elders around, were taught one-on-one, mostly learned survival skills, and if they showed an aptitude for something might be allowed to enter apprenticeship in that craft/skill.

Sometimes I look at my kid (7 years old next month) and am frustrated by his behavior and lack of decorum and loudness. I discipline, cajole, bargain, and otherwise coerce him to change his behavior. This lasts for a while, but soon he's back to being the rambunctious 6 year old he always is, and my frustration returns.

Then I meet some other families who live nearby, and I realize my son is respectful, well-behaved, and kind. It really helps to see how bad other kids are when judging your own kid.

Thankfully, helicopter parents have made it easy to identify the worst cases through their use of unique, designer names.

So while, John, Mary, David, Susan, and Peter should be OK, we'll be able to tell that little Braeden, Brayden, Braiden, Braaden, Braden, Bradin, Braydin, Braydun, Kynydy, and Madison will be walking nightmares.

from watching the 0WS clowns, this was 100% predictable.

Lagaidh: Meh- I don't know where I wanted to go with this other than to anecdotally mention that a dude that still has his wits and has been around a looooong time says "No... this time... it truly seems different."

It is different, because of the media revolution. It's a new world. The snowflakes are the Boobies-Internet generation, and it shows.

Information used to be hard to come by, expensive, and largely kept secret. Now, that's been reversed. The economic consequences are obvious to everyone, but the psychological and cultural effects are hard to overstate, especially as to young people. Young people were (for the most part) once on the lowest rung when it came to being granted access to valuable information, or exposure to a world beyond your immediate family and school. Now they're the first.

McLuhan said it as well as anyone: "All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unadulterated."

Plus, the snowflakes are, for the most part, second generation Red Diaper babies, and thus the recipients of a highly-politicized sense of history. Their idea of WWII history is derived from Schindler's List, modern history began in "the 50s," and the cultural upheaval of 1913-14 is almost entirely unknown to them.

Once that Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter movie comes out, that will probably become be the predominant representation of America's Civil War era.

In short, we're farked.

Dow Jones and the Temple of Doom: bunner: Dow Jones and the Temple of Doom: People actually believe this? Wow

You actually don't?

No, I don't. Though I guess if I were unqualified for positions that I applied for, or interviewed poorly, or had limited references, or was an otherwise unattractive candidate, believing that it's all "who you know" would certainly seem comforting.

Yes, that must be it in every case. Certainly nepotism, gladhanding, frat boy nod and wink and friends of friends have never been responsible for a single payroll check.

For me personally, and for the vast majority of people I've ever worked with, its mostly what you know.

Oh, anecdote, is there anything you can't clear up with the dismissive wave of the hand? : ) You know what I think? I think if nobody on God's green earth ever got hired, rich or in a position of power through anything other than astounding, clearly superior, refined skills and comportment, we'd all be going to work in our flying cars as we gaze upon a vita of happy people waddling about the pristine infrastructure. But then again, I guess there will always be people who need a snide and self-proclaimed sense of superiority to get through the day. Sort of sad, that.

ordinarysteve: But yeah, we are all in this together when it comes down to it.

Wait till people figure out that that statement covers everybody on earth, from 3 months to 130, and that the handful of dickheads who scribbled lines all over it and stuffed everything valuable they could dig out of it into their pockets are the problem. Man, I don't wanna be around for THAT necktie party.

Flogster: apiarist: Flogster: Yawn.

This game isn't new, only the players are new. This tired argument comes out about every generation, it's the result of changing values and expectations and I expect to see the same article in 20 years.

Things change and you're in the midst of it, get over it.

And if you don't know the difference between "your" and "you're", don't worry; you'll fit right in.

Well, excuuuuuuuuuuuse my autocorrect.

No. It's not up to a machine to represent you to the rest of the world. It's up to you alone. If the machine makes a mistake, it's up to you fix it. If you don't know that it's made a mistake, then you're ignorant. If you don't care, then you're apathetic. If it's too much trouble, then you're lazy. No excuses. Own your mistakes, and learn and grow from them. That's how it really works.

/"A bad musician blames his instrument."

I know that I'm late to comment, but I'm jumping in anyway.

This article applies to more than just college level classes. I'm a high school teacher, and this year, the parents have descended upon me in a feeding frenzy. I "gave" kids their first B's in an honors class, and for awhile, I was attending at least one parent meeting a week to discuss how their kids didn't deserve this score. It got so bad that my principal told me just to go back and change the grades. I've got another parent meeting tomorrow (the last week of school), and I'm failing to see how it will be anything but a witch hunt to vilify me, and there's nothing that can be done about it at this point.

But then I have kids like the one who wrote her final essay in my class and said this:
"I want you to know one thing as I end the last paragraph of my high school career. If you ever feel down in the slumps, or if you're sad about something, or if you're wondering why you're standing at the front of a classroom, staring at a bunch of loud and misbehaving kids, just remember that you changed someone's life. You changed her as a student, as a child, as a girl, and as a person...I promise you that I will never forget you as my favorite English teacher...the one that I wanted to impress the most. Please remember me as you are teaching and fulfilling your dreams, and know that I'm fulfilling mine as well."

I love the kids. It's the parents I can't stand.

ordinarysteve: bunner: Oh, one more thing.

ordinarysteve: Now you just have to make it through life without choking on a pretzel or contracting a fatal disease.

I would personally like to thank the twenty somethings of today for inventing a time machine and going back in time several decades in order to bring all of those wonderful changes about, despite being surrounded by clueless, "boomer" old people. : )

ordinarysteve: How about the boomers work to leave behind a better world than the one they found, as opposed to paying as little taxes as possible that they feel should only be spent on social programs for themselves.

How about everybody just take a broom to their own doorstep instead of whining about how [given scapegoat] "is f*cking everything up, man!"? Do you seriously believe that everybody over 45 is a selfish, overpaid, unskilled tax cheat scarfing down sandwiches on the job and trying to inflate their SS payouts when they retire early?

You don't suppose moving everything but coffee shop monkey, lawyer and car wash attendant jobs to mainland China had anything to do with that, do you? Oh, no wait.. ALL corporations are run by greedy boomers. Until you hit 45 you have a work ethic and a conscience and are all about HELPING!

I never knew that all millionaire drug lords we're listening to Beatles records and hugging their Partridge Family lunchboxes. It's not old people, lad. It's people. And the ratio of douchebag to decent wanders freely through every age demographic imaginable. If everybody stopped looking for a "marketing sector group" to either celebrate or impale, we might all get something done.

You do make some good points and you seem like one of "the good ones"(haha jk) with this line "And the ratio of douchebag to decent wanders freely through every age demographic imaginable" I like that line. You have to understand my point that never in history has there been such a high proportion of old v.s. young. Older people have always been noted for their ...

Yeah, about that. you have been lied to. Us hippies, protestors, and flower children? We were about 15% of the population. the rest of the Wad did what they always did - followed orders. They stood by and grimly glowered while we dance and screwed and got high and changed the world. Well, that 85% are still around, and it's payback time. What do you think this last miserable 30 years of Reagan/Bush dogshiat has been about?
Good news? We're going to die. Not all of us, right away - but the early boomers were the most numerous, and once we have died off, the age demographic will trend younger, and the political spectrum will swing back toward the center.
And while this may sound selfishly motivated, I would strongly suggest that you not throw out the baby with the bathwater where the boomers are concerned - those of us who don't have our heads up our asses tend to make powerful, effective, resource rich allies, we're just the minority.

I'm sure that giving schools all kinds of mandates to show "success" and "progress" wouldn't have anything at all to do with why students graduate without knowing how to think. Thinking doesn't produce high test scores; teaching how to test produces high test scores.

ordinarysteve: so you're not interested in this full box-set of Kenny G classics such as "Why hasn't anyone punched me in the larynx yet?" and "God I can't believe I'm a grown man and still crimp my hair" ? anyways it was nice yarning with you, you old fart. I will try to stop categorizing people according to age if you agree that Matlock is over-rated :)

Matlock was pretty much off the shelf TeeVee crap. Kenny G can play his ass off. You can do what you like as far as trying to pigeonhole people. The wages of those decisions will land in your account, not mine. As far as "old fart", I'm tracking a blues/ R&B /hip hop record. And it's good. And I wrote it. What are you doing besides yelling at clouds, "kid"? : )

Loren: The Green Manalishi: Also, this story comes from PJ Media, and reeks of an old man with an agenda. Hint: Progressive education = liberal education.

You nailed it.

Young men with an agenda, on the other hand, are sharp cookies ans should have their asses and every idea that falls out of them, kissed to kingdom come. Stop hating people because they've already sat through your movie. The world is gonna keep getting smaller long after your pet scapegoats have shuffled off this mortal coil and if all it takes to invalidate one's observations is an AARP card, I hope you have a hearty appetite when it's time to eat what you cooked.

Oh, one more thing.

ordinarysteve: Now you just have to make it through life without choking on a pretzel or contracting a fatal disease.

I would personally like to thank the twenty somethings of today for inventing a time machine and going back in time several decades in order to bring all of those wonderful changes about, despite being surrounded by clueless, "boomer" old people. : )

ordinarysteve: How about the boomers work to leave behind a better world than the one they found, as opposed to paying as little taxes as possible that they feel should only be spent on social programs for themselves.

How about everybody just take a broom to their own doorstep instead of whining about how [given scapegoat] "is f*cking everything up, man!"? Do you seriously believe that everybody over 45 is a selfish, overpaid, unskilled tax cheat scarfing down sandwiches on the job and trying to inflate their SS payouts when they retire early?

You don't suppose moving everything but coffee shop monkey, lawyer and car wash attendant jobs to mainland China had anything to do with that, do you? Oh, no wait.. ALL corporations are run by greedy boomers. Until you hit 45 you have a work ethic and a conscience and are all about HELPING!

I never knew that all millionaire drug lords we're listening to Beatles records and hugging their Partridge Family lunchboxes. It's not old people, lad. It's people. And the ratio of douchebag to decent wanders freely through every age demographic imaginable. If everybody stopped looking for a "marketing sector group" to either celebrate or impale, we might all get something done.

bunner: ordinarysteve: You sound like a boomer.

That took about 17 seconds longer than I thought. You sound like you can't climb a hill until they put a road in. We all have our crosses to bear. Don't worry, with any luck, you'll make it 50 too and then we can have lunch and discuss the obvious merits of ageism.

Well, I don't have any crosses to bear because I don't always view myself as being persecuted but I do however, live in a democracy when boomers make up a huge portion of the voting population and they consistently vote against anything that doesn't directly benefit them. They also force their morals on younger people who do not feel the same way. All in all, many of the people who I have admired or looked up to have been "old" They just weren't self-absorbed arseholes who don't give a shiat about the thousands of generations that will follow them. How about the boomers work to leave behind a better world than the one they found, as opposed to paying as little taxes as possible that they feel should only be spent on social programs for themselves.

ordinarysteve: You sound like a boomer.

That took about 17 seconds longer than I thought. You sound like you can't climb a hill until they put a road in. We all have our crosses to bear. Don't worry, with any luck, you'll make it 50 too and then we can have lunch and discuss the obvious merits of ageism.

GilRuiz1: You think that's worse than crushing poverty in 1930s Mexico?

My dad used to look at all that, shake his head and say, "I wish I'd had those opportunities when I was a kid. If these people squander all this and then things go badly, I don't feel sorry. It's their own fault. Que se chinguen."


So you're just wasting my time with singular minded personal experience not even in the country we are talking about. Get lost.

bunner: parkthebus: Grumpy, selfish, uncollaborative boomers please retire.

If your society has to euthanize, discard or remand it's elders to poverty and idleness to furnish new opportunities, your society HAS no new opportunities and has failed.

You sound like a boomer. And euthanize?!?! Where the hell did you pull that one from? Face it, 100 years ago it took the right mix of genetics, lifestyle and luck to live to be 80 or 90. Now you just have to make it through life without choking on a pretzel or contracting a fatal disease. This is why there is not much of a role for "elders" anymore, not to mention that Boomers are responsible for many of the problems right now and they absolutely refuse to help fix them, if it isn't in their direct self-interest.

parkthebus: Grumpy, selfish, uncollaborative boomers please retire.

If your society has to euthanize, discard or remand it's elders to poverty and idleness to furnish new opportunities, your society HAS no new opportunities and has failed.

intelligent comment below: This has nothing to do with snowflakes and everything to do with children from working families living in areas that are more poor than they were with parents who make less than they did.


The "oh noes, we're poor" excuse doesn't fly with me.

My dad was born dirt poor in the rural backwoods of Mexico in the 1930s, orphaned at a very young age, didn't own shoes, didn't have electricity, didn't even ride in a car until he was in his teens. What he did have was an older half-sister who raised all her younger siblings and drilled in their heads every single day that education and going to school and studying hard was the way out of poverty.

My dad listened, busted his ass in school, eventually became a civil engineer, and rose to become a very successful entrepreneur who owned several businesses.

My uncle, on the other hand, grew up bitter and angry that he was poor. He didn't study or work hard, he became a communist and marched in protests and demanded that the government give him all the things that he did not have. Not surprisingly, he died nearly penniless.

So don't talk to me about property taxes and working families. What matters is the drive to achieve, the desire to study hard, and the ambition to make your schooling count as much as possible.

ghare: cman: Why is it that this generation's parents think that they know better than the generations that came before them when it comes to parenting? For hundreds of thousands of years parents raised their children one way, and within 20 years it all went to shiat.

Yeah, for real, this is the first time in history old people have complained that the youth of the country are immoral and so forth.

Why, next thing you'll be telling me that young people speak poorly and listen to terrible music!

It's entertaining watch the GenXers going down that path now, when growing up that's all we used to hear about them. It's like no matter how much we know as we age we still go down the exact same path as those before us. Of course, this time "it's different" just like all the other times before.

clyph: jabelar: with other teachers if the student doesn't regurgitate what the teacher themselves thinks/teaches then they get bad marks

You had my political science professor, didn't you?

farker gave me an F on my term paper (50% of the grade) because I disagreed with him on every single Constitutional issue he brought up in class (and cited the Federalist Papers extensively to support my position). I ended up appealing the grade to his department head and got it changed to an A.

Why, yes, he WAS a Republican.

There is a farker somewhere who had a staunch republican as a professor who constantly railed against jimmy carter. The farker in question wrote a paper that went into intricate detail about why the professors criticisms against Carter were wrong. The professor read the paper to the entire class said he was absolutely infuriated by it, but could not find anything to disagree with. So he gave the paper an A.

goorange: Tinton: goorange: These are the children who will create a new democrat future.

They are incapacitated beyond reason, they need there parents and now the govt to take care,of them.

They are the bitter and angry and lazy children who created the occupy movement. It's just like what the article said- they are stupid but they lash out the people who are successful

These bitter unemployable children will create the national welfare state we need. Only through their lazy incompetent lives will we get free health care and free schooling because it goes hand in hand with the selfish leanings of these children.

Incapacitated because of a lack of opportunity. Hard to take care of yourself when your best option is working at McDonalds, or getting a degree that may or may not land you a "good" job. Hard to be independent if you can't make the money to get out there and make your own life.

Bitter and angry, not necessarily lazy. Just appear lazy because of....lack of opportunity. Aka the bad economy. Success is good motivation. Hard to be motivated if you don't think you'll be successful even when you put all your effort into something. People who are successful are so because of luck, not because of hard work. They happened to meet the right people, land the right job, and that's their success. Not by busting their ass. Look around you, look at everyone working in the service industry, hard work doesn't get you jack shiat, and a lot of kids realize this. You get lucky and make it big, or you grind your way through life.

Welfare state is actually the future. Automation should (and can) eliminate most jobs and people should get away from the idea of having to be EMPLOYED to live. Its very possible that some people could work building things that machines can't, and some people would fix the machines, while everyone else could just do whatever, work in the arts/philosophy/etc or figure out how to travel to other solar systems. How many geniuses are being wastedworking in th ...

I guess I'm not really saying people shouldn't work. Those who can should work in jobs that require abstract thought or other things that machines just can't do. Arts, music, philosophy, etc, shouldn't be looked down upon. They're more useful to humanity and progress than just taking a job being a cog in the machine. And maybe there's ways of making it so the money doesn't matter as much so people can work doing whatever they want.

That article has to be the most level-headed thing I've read about education in a long time.

My wife's a teacher, and she's been saying this for 10 years.

Tinton: You wouldn't believe the thousands of people who are just hired on to show up and do the bare minimum to keep their jobs.

Not terribly surprising.. getting hired is 10% what you know, 90% who you know.

goorange: These are the children who will create a new democrat future.

They are incapacitated beyond reason, they need there parents and now the govt to take care,of them.

They are the bitter and angry and lazy children who created the occupy movement. It's just like what the article said- they are stupid but they lash out the people who are successful

These bitter unemployable children will create the national welfare state we need. Only through their lazy incompetent lives will we get free health care and free schooling because it goes hand in hand with the selfish leanings of these children.

Incapacitated because of a lack of opportunity. Hard to take care of yourself when your best option is working at McDonalds, or getting a degree that may or may not land you a "good" job. Hard to be independent if you can't make the money to get out there and make your own life.

Bitter and angry, not necessarily lazy. Just appear lazy because of....lack of opportunity. Aka the bad economy. Success is good motivation. Hard to be motivated if you don't think you'll be successful even when you put all your effort into something. People who are successful are so because of luck, not because of hard work. They happened to meet the right people, land the right job, and that's their success. Not by busting their ass. Look around you, look at everyone working in the service industry, hard work doesn't get you jack shiat, and a lot of kids realize this. You get lucky and make it big, or you grind your way through life.

Welfare state is actually the future. Automation should (and can) eliminate most jobs and people should get away from the idea of having to be EMPLOYED to live. Its very possible that some people could work building things that machines can't, and some people would fix the machines, while everyone else could just do whatever, work in the arts/philosophy/etc or figure out how to travel to other solar systems. How many geniuses are being wastedworking in the wrong field or in some service industry bullshiat because that's all they can get/do to survive? We should be better than animals but think about it, what does the avg American think about? Survival, you know, getting money to pay for that next meal and to have a roof over their head, and of course farking. Animals aren't far below that. Government should be able to provide housing and food for those who need it, and I'd go far as to say there should be an agency run by the Federal gov't that hooks jobs up with workers. Maybe keep track of candidates and jobs and place people as they graduate college, instead of dumping them in the deep end and letting them swim for themselves.

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
-Socrates
/Apparently things haven't changed that much. We always biatch about the next generation. I do find the whole attachment/helicopter parenting to be weird but I'm not a parent so I don't really have any perspective on it.

Snowflakes are such a problem that my local University has a special separation process design just to separate the parents from the students at the start of the school year. All of the students are brought into one building, of the parents are kept in another building.

This is done explicitly to get all the helicopter parents away from the kids. You would really be surprised how many kids have never been been separated like that....

These kids grow up physically having never matured emotionally and can have a lot of trouble dealing with the real world. These parents aren't doing their kids any favors, no matter how much they think they are.

Adolf Oliver Nipples: One day these people will be in charge. Enjoy your future, helicopter parents.

Yes they will, and that is what scares me.

Maybe lazy is good. Maybe it will slow down the train barreling toward the cliff

These are the children who will create a new democrat future.

They are incapacitated beyond reason, they need there parents and now the govt to take care,of them.

They are the bitter and angry and lazy children who created the occupy movement. It's just like what the article said- they are stupid but they lash out the people who are successful

These bitter unemployable children will create the national welfare state we need. Only through their lazy incompetent lives will we get free health care and free schooling because it goes hand in hand with the selfish leanings of these children.

TV's Vinnie: Probably yells at kids to eat their meat or they can't have any pudding.


But how can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

WhippingBoy: FormlessOne: Snarcoleptic_Hoosier: Being in the age group that this hits, I do enjoy seeing "Baby's First Sh**storm"

/As a spectator sport, it's fantastic

I had to chuckle at that. It's not just kids, either. There's nothing quite like watching a newly-minted college graduate join the workforce, only to discover that they get paid to work. They don't get paid to just show up, or to offer their unactionable opinion, and they certainly don't get paid to play games or date during work hours.

You'd be surprised how many newly-minted developers believe that their hourly wage is reward for their attendance, and that they expect to be "rewarded" further for actually doing their jobs. Where I used to work, we used to give substantial (five figures) performance incentives, but to get in that upper tier, you had to do something that had a direct impact on the industry, not just sit at your desk and "meet expectations." Those that "met expectations" were merely paid their hourly wage - that's the "reward" for meeting expectations, after all. We expect you to work, and in return, we pay you. That's how it works. You want more? Give more, do more, be more.

To their credit, the worthwhile ones figure this out quickly (sometimes, even before their first performance review) and step up. We get a few, though, that not only don't figure it out, but get bitter & resentful over not being recognized as the precious snowflakes they so obviously are, to our eternal amusement come negotiation time.

You wanna see entitlement? Try working in a government office staffed mostly by middle-aged women. It's literally a jaw-dropping experience.

Soooooo this! Plus 1 internets.

I'm not saying people shouldn't have any children, but godDAMN people are procreating like RABBITS. Using my yuppie-filled enclave (Hoboken, NJ) as an indicator, this planet will soon tilt on it's axis from the weight of all these newly-minted people and their wide-load strollers. It's seriously unbelievable how many children these people are pushing out. One child is almost literally no longer even a consideration. Little Hudson MUST have a playmate or 2.

THAT'S what I'm referring to.

cman: Why is it that this generation's parents think that they know better than the generations that came before them when it comes to parenting? For hundreds of thousands of years parents raised their children one way, and within 20 years it all went to shiat.

Ahahaha. After more than a thousand years of people complaining about how ruined the young generation is (Plato did!) you seriously think that finally, THIS TIME the upcoming generation is completely broken, and society will now collapse. Just like every generation before.

cman: Why is it that this generation's parents think that they know better than the generations that came before them when it comes to parenting? For hundreds of thousands of years parents raised their children one way, and within 20 years it all went to shiat.

Jesus, you're dumb.

"Kids/parents today" rants have been going on since before Ancient Greece. If you think this is new, then... wow.

intelligent comment below: cman: Why is it that this generation's parents think that they know better than the generations that came before them when it comes to parenting? For hundreds of thousands of years parents raised their children one way, and within 20 years it all went to shiat.


yes because people were so perfect once they hit adulthood. No overcompensating. No tyrannical dictators. No greed and self centered immature children. It's only in the past 20 years has suddenly it all gone to shiat.

Nope, but within the last 20 years or so we've kind of taken away the social constructs that kept a lot of that in check.

Add to that society's acceptance that the the only real crime is getting caught and you can kind of see how we got to this point.

Kids watching (and then emulating) the behavior shown by their parents, with no concerns regarding the consequences for their actions? Unpossible!!!

Note that this is about grades in humanities. I'm not sure someone taking such a class is likely to succeed in life whether they get good or bad grades. (Only somewhat kidding).

Math and science are pretty honest -- you know exactly what you got wrong or right. Certainly, there are grading styles that can screw up these subjects as well, but in the end the student knows what was done incorrectly.

In the humanities too you can end up with professors that have their own issues. For example, if the student isn't sufficiently "original" they might get a bad mark with some teachers, but with other teachers if the student doesn't regurgitate what the teacher themselves thinks/teaches then they get bad marks. Lastly, there is the ideas versus the presentation of the ideas -- if a student has an interesting perspective is that enough, or do they also have to use big words and proper "name dropping" of intellectual references?

Are these are the same people who are complaining that they racked up massive amounts of debt after getting a degree in comparative sociology?