4 ms·

I'm going to word this in a way which may take away from my score, but I hope my point is clear: We've raised a generation of people who watch reality TV and h

I'm going to word this in a way which may take away from my score, but I hope my point is clear: We've raised a generation of people who watch reality TV and have elective surgery to ape yheir idols. Conversation has diminished, vocabulary moreso. Faux news, voting for people who wouldn't throw you a lifering if they had a factory producing them, the litigious society, the blame of victims, the disrespect for our fellow man, the lack of curiosity about how things work. How can these "parents" be held accountable for actions they don't understand or in many cases even care about? I heard it said well years ago: Back in my day, when a policeman brought a child home, the father would open the door, slap the child, send it to its room and then apologise to the cop for whatever happened. The new generation open the door and hug their child, then go on to accuse the police officer of traumatising their delicate little angel by being overbearing and wrong about whatever the accusation was. We've lost respect for authority because of abuse of power. We've lost faith in politics because it's basically red or blue. We've got to try and get paper results for our kids which have nothing to do with aptitude or ability, merely memory. So much wrong with the way I wrote that, but I'm passionate about it and don't know how to change it.

dalke 5y ago
"Dr. Spock - the old people are complaining about the kids again." Yes, people have expressed similar views to yours for a long time. Quoting the Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Common_Sense_Book_of_Baby_and_Child_Care https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Common_Sense_Book_of_Baby_... : > By the late 1960s, Spock faced widespread criticism for condoning an overly permissive parenting style. Many commentators blamed Spock for helping to create the counterculture of the 1960s. Critics believed the current youth were rebellious and defiant in part because they had been brought up by Baby and Child Care. In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10404752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10404752 I went back even further, by looking for "expect everything to be handed to them on a silver platter" and found > (1960) 'I've known a lot of kids who were treated like little heroes. Afterward, they expected everything to be handed them on a silver platter— and it wasn't. They couldn't adjust.' "Beyond any doubt, the boys in Williamsport last week were treated as ... > (1949) We have reared a bunch of weaklings in our young marrieds of today. Too much has been handed to them on a silver platter without their having had to work for it, and they lack the intestinal fortitude to meet life as a challenge. > (1937) We want to teach them not just to sit back and expect things to be handed to them on a silver platter but with confidence, based on their training, to go out and get what they want. We need to stiffen a moral flabbiness that has been affecting our youth. So, when was your golden Mayberry era? Perhaps I should take the advice from 1995 from a letter from a father to his son, a new teacher - https://archive.org/details/sim_secondary-education-today_1995-1996_37_1/page/22/mode/2up?q=%22handed+to+them+on+a+silver+platter%22 https://archive.org/details/sim_secondary-education-today_19... > Stay out of the teachers’ lounge. It is a dark refuge for hard-core cynics who have nothing more constructive to do than whine. When they are not slandering students, other teachers, administrators, or parents, they are railing like Timon about the inequities of the profession. Three themes are common with these complainers: “Kids today are spoiled: they all want something handed to them on a silver platter but don’t want to work for it...” and “It’s the parents fault . . ” and “If I were running this school . . ” Blah, blah, blah. The lounge lizards know everything. Just ask them. Better yet, ignore them. When they pontificate, just smile and nod. Smiling and nodding.
- tsol 5y ago
  Just because people have complained about "the way things are nowadays" for a long time, doesn't mean there will never be a point where things change and it's legitimate to complain about things nowadays. Things are changing much faster today, than they were in 1950
  - dalke 5y ago
    Of course not. But my question was, when was this halcyon day of yore? > Things are changing much faster today, than they were in 1950 Why are you so sure about that? The post-war era saw an incredible amount of change. By the end of the 1950s, transatlantic jet travel was cheap enough that ocean liner traffic dropped enormously. The new atomic age included both the threat of H-bomb annihilation and promise of new power sources and new medical treatments. New materials were being discovered at an incredible pace. The effective polio vaccine ended decades of outbreaks that left children in iron lungs - church bells rang out in joy when the vaccine was announced. Computers went from a super-secret war-time project to a commercial industry, with programming languages like Fortran and Lisp being created. The Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, starting the Space Age, and reminding everyone that no place was safe from nuclear weapons. People felt overwhelmed by the deluge of information, which lead to Toffler's famous "Future Shock" in 1970, which introduced the term "information overload" to the popular culture. But the deluge started already in WWII when new technical reports with cross-cutting topics overwhelmed the existing library management systems. Scientists felt like they couldn't keep up with the publications in their field. Post-war suburbia started, partially due to low-cost loans from the G.I. Bill, and the new road system (including the Interstate System, which started in 1956). The racist structures at the time encouraged white families to move to the suburbs in a process termed 'white flight'. This flight was connected with the Second Great Migration, which saw black families moving to northern cities. The 1950s brought rulings like Brown v. Board of Education which started to break down segregation, and the rise of the black civil rights movement. And you say things are happening much faster in this decade?

dalke 5y ago

"Dr. Spock - the old people are complaining about the kids again." Yes, people have expressed similar views to yours for a long time. Quoting the Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Common_Sense_Book_of_Baby_and_Child_Care https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Common_Sense_Book_of_Baby_... : > By the late 1960s, Spock faced widespread criticism for condoning an overly permissive parenting style. Many commentators blamed Spock for helping to create the counterculture of the 1960s. Critics believed the current youth were rebellious and defiant in part because they had been brought up by Baby and Child Care. In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10404752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10404752 I went back even further, by looking for "expect everything to be handed to them on a silver platter" and found > (1960) 'I've known a lot of kids who were treated like little heroes. Afterward, they expected everything to be handed them on a silver platter— and it wasn't. They couldn't adjust.' "Beyond any doubt, the boys in Williamsport last week were treated as ... > (1949) We have reared a bunch of weaklings in our young marrieds of today. Too much has been handed to them on a silver platter without their having had to work for it, and they lack the intestinal fortitude to meet life as a challenge. > (1937) We want to teach them not just to sit back and expect things to be handed to them on a silver platter but with confidence, based on their training, to go out and get what they want. We need to stiffen a moral flabbiness that has been affecting our youth. So, when was your golden Mayberry era? Perhaps I should take the advice from 1995 from a letter from a father to his son, a new teacher - https://archive.org/details/sim_secondary-education-today_1995-1996_37_1/page/22/mode/2up?q=%22handed+to+them+on+a+silver+platter%22 https://archive.org/details/sim_secondary-education-today_19... > Stay out of the teachers’ lounge. It is a dark refuge for hard-core cynics who have nothing more constructive to do than whine. When they are not slandering students, other teachers, administrators, or parents, they are railing like Timon about the inequities of the profession. Three themes are common with these complainers: “Kids today are spoiled: they all want something handed to them on a silver platter but don’t want to work for it...” and “It’s the parents fault . . ” and “If I were running this school . . ” Blah, blah, blah. The lounge lizards know everything. Just ask them. Better yet, ignore them. When they pontificate, just smile and nod. Smiling and nodding.

tsol 5y ago
Just because people have complained about "the way things are nowadays" for a long time, doesn't mean there will never be a point where things change and it's legitimate to complain about things nowadays. Things are changing much faster today, than they were in 1950
- dalke 5y ago
  Of course not. But my question was, when was this halcyon day of yore? > Things are changing much faster today, than they were in 1950 Why are you so sure about that? The post-war era saw an incredible amount of change. By the end of the 1950s, transatlantic jet travel was cheap enough that ocean liner traffic dropped enormously. The new atomic age included both the threat of H-bomb annihilation and promise of new power sources and new medical treatments. New materials were being discovered at an incredible pace. The effective polio vaccine ended decades of outbreaks that left children in iron lungs - church bells rang out in joy when the vaccine was announced. Computers went from a super-secret war-time project to a commercial industry, with programming languages like Fortran and Lisp being created. The Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, starting the Space Age, and reminding everyone that no place was safe from nuclear weapons. People felt overwhelmed by the deluge of information, which lead to Toffler's famous "Future Shock" in 1970, which introduced the term "information overload" to the popular culture. But the deluge started already in WWII when new technical reports with cross-cutting topics overwhelmed the existing library management systems. Scientists felt like they couldn't keep up with the publications in their field. Post-war suburbia started, partially due to low-cost loans from the G.I. Bill, and the new road system (including the Interstate System, which started in 1956). The racist structures at the time encouraged white families to move to the suburbs in a process termed 'white flight'. This flight was connected with the Second Great Migration, which saw black families moving to northern cities. The 1950s brought rulings like Brown v. Board of Education which started to break down segregation, and the rise of the black civil rights movement. And you say things are happening much faster in this decade?