The New Generation

[toobfreak]

Not wanting to hijack another thread I thought I would create this as a separate topic. We got to talking about kids on another thread and I just wanted to contrast (not disagree) with something Cosmic said:

I work with kids, and they are challenged more than my generation ever was. They have to know way higher math, and reading skills. They seem far more inquisitive and show a far greater understanding than my generation ever did.

I don't dispute that at all. I've worked with a lot of kids too, but I think you live down south, I live up north near a big city. Here, kids are not that way. Not for the most part.
I think they are more challenged in a lot of ways. I would not want to go to the schools they go to, where you must pass a metal detector going in, the doors are locked once there and police roam the halls. Where you can get suspended for a week for a doodle on your book-cover and charged with a crime and taken to court by the school and your parents are not allowed on the property.
I cannot imagine how they see the world.
I came home from school as a kid, running, yelling and playing, excited. They walk up the street quiet, looking tired, distant, solitary. It sure isn't the world I grew up in. A lot less friendly.
As to math, when I went back for my advanced degree, I was older than most of the other students. The instructors kept telling us they had cut back on the calculus, etc., because the kids weren't able to pass it, so they cut a lot out so that more of them would pass. I gave a neighbor's kid an old slide rule to play with. She could not comprehend it and thanked god for calculators.
Kids don't read books like I did, they spend most of their time on computers at school and on their phones with Snapchat the rest of the time, and they certainly cannot write. Not even taught to write anymore and their handwriting ain't for shit.
I throw all kinds of things at kids that I know about and grew up with. Not part of their world and there is no interest or curiosity there. Had a young orthopedic doctor trainee come in with the real doctor so I asked him if he knew what DeQuervain's Syndrome was. Never heard of it. One kid I asked if he knew who was on the radio, he had no idea--- it was Jimi Hendrix playing All Along The Watchtower. Never heard of him? Geesh.
I tried to tell one kid taking trig in med school an old rule for remembering trig formulas (Sohcahtoa the Indian chief). Not interested. Brought up lots of things trying to start conversations. Not interested to learn. Maybe I just picked a bad place to sample kids from?
Now, I'm not disputing anyone, but those are my general experiences here and I just wonder why they are so different for different parts of the country and would be interested to read other people's experiences!

 

[bassbug]

toobfreak
Hard to argue against all your points but one...

I would not want to go to the schools they go to, where you must pass a metal detector going in, the doors are locked once there and police roam the halls.

We caused that, not the kids.

 

[ashdigger]

Get off my lawn..... :mrgreen:

 

[puffy]

I will just comment on one part of this topic Writing. I was told that writing isn't taught because almost every thing is in print these days.Watch how fast these youngsters can text.Print is what these kids understand now.Writing has become almost obsolete.

 

[bassbug]

My ex wife is an elementary teacher (we get along quite well now that we're not married ) In her school board, like many others here in Ontario, cursive writing is simply not taught anymore...they consider it not a very useful skill in today's world.

 

[balkisobrains]

Colleges love it when they show up stupid, especially the schools with big, popular athletic programs. They figure that the dumb ones will be there for five or six years, paying for the ones running around to get the ball on scholarship. Who do you think is behind the whole "common core" thing?

 

[jndyer]

First, I work with kids everyday and have for the last ten years, and I do not envy what they are having to go through. This is one of those points in history where there is a fundamental change happening in how our world society functions. Anytime there is a major shift in technology (ie. the industrial revolution) it requires the up and coming generation learn a whole new set of skills in order to compete and be relative to their world. Kids today are coming into a world where knowledge is no longer guarded by a select few experts but fundamentally available to any who wish to access it. This means that learning has to now focus primarily on how to use knowledge instead of just acquiring it.
If you think about it We are seeing this shift in the pipe community. At one time you had a local tobacconist who was the expert and you relied on his, or in some cases her, expertise in order to discover what type of tobacco you might enjoy, how to pack a pipe, what to look for in a pipe, etc. Now, in the information age, you can go to the internet and watch videos from all over the world and/or be active a sites like this to learn about tobaccos, read about pipes. Each of us in essence are able to become as, if not more, educated than the old style tobacconist. In other words we each have the tools to become an expert.
Also, secondly, I am reminded daily that previous generations felt that they were the best generation and the kids of the day are somehow lost, ignorant, etc. Somehow we figured it out, much to the surprise of our parents and grandparents. We were fine and I have a feeling that this new generation with also build on our world and in the end make us all proud by achieving what we never thought possible.

 

[pagan]

cursive writing is simply not taught anymore. writing is simply not taught anymore.

This is true in Texas, my girlfriends son is 17 and I've had to teach him how to sign his name because he never learned cursive, sad

 

[bigpond]

Hold on to the nights

Hold on to the memories

I wish that I could give you something more

That I could be yours

How do we explain something that took us by surprise

Promises in vain, love that is real but in disguise

What happens now

Do we break another rule

Let our lovers play the fool

I don't know how

To stop feeling this way

Hold on to the nights

Hold on to the memories

I wish that I could give you something more

That I could be yours

 

[markus]

I am a voracious reader, I have a Kindle that I enjoy reading from time to time, but I really enjoy holding and reading an actual book. I love the feel of books, the smell, the repetitious nostalgia and physical satisfaction of actually turning a page.

I try from time to time to impress upon my own nieces, nephews and other children that I'm around, about how awesome reading is and how you can literally lose yourself in a whole other world, whether it be fictional or not.

No matter how hard I try to describe to them the magic of reading, they never seem to get it.

I have bought them books that I loved as a child, but they just lay them to the side and go play video games, or watch the boobtoob, or play on their phones.

One day I thought that taking them to a book store and letting them pick out their own books would help (I have actually tried this several times), but to no avail.

I will ask them weeks later how they liked their books, but they never even read them, or even attempted too as far as I can tell.

My little nephew came to me one day and told me he had read a book, I was so happy for him that I asked him to bring me the book, so we could discuss it and I wanted him to tell me all about it.

As it turns out, it was a book on how to navigate a PC video game.

Obviously literature great or otherwise is lost on the youth of today, unless of course it's about a video game!

 

[tbradsim1]

Here's my 2 cents and it's really not worth 2 cents. I don't have much interaction with today's youth, just my 3 Grandkids. When I ocassionly go to the the Grocery store and the bill is dollars and some cents, you give the cashier odd change not to break a bill, you get the deer in the headlight look, young cashiers do this the older ones not. My 20 yr old Grandson who stayed the summer with us taking an extra college cours knows nothing about his Country, yet he's touted as a good Student. I see on the local news school info about Glee , Drama courses in High school, everything from basket weaving to Sports. Nothing about reading , riteing,rithmetic. We Cajuns are strict on our children, our parish in the northern part of where I live was voted the highest achieving High School in the state. Here children say yes sir and yes mam. Am I old fashioned Damn Right I am, I cry at what we are giving our Children.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Having worked retail back in high school, I can say that back then even, the registers were set up to only work a certain way. And, if someone gives you odd change, you have to stop your normal line of thought, which was entering numbers you read off a label, and then do math. There is a shifting of gears. The customer has had time to do the math before you, and the registers wouldn't just let you open the drawer and count out change like other jobs before that. It's not that these people (myself included) can't do the math, it's that the Point of Sale machine and switching gears in your head have the change. And, sometimes the stress of having someone, who has had time to do the math while waiting in line, the laughs, the looks of judgement, none of that helps either. So, when I hear that folks can't do simple math now-a-days, I think back on that job I had at McDonalds in 1980. And, think that most people who criticize folks for that, have no idea what it's like to be that deer caught in headlights. It would just be so much simpler if everyone either used their cards or gave whole bills to pay for things... or be patient while that cashier switches gears in their heads and eases into the math.
Cursive writing, who the hell uses proper cursive writing any more, I never even made the proper S, Q, W's, etc... I just combined writing with cursive to make something that only I could read. That said, I just checked and 39 states never stopped teaching cursive, and five states as of last year returned to teaching cursive. One of my daughters teaches elementary, so I have to hear about it. But, all in all, don't we all pretty much make up our own form of cursive? I only ever used it for note taking anyways.
When I graduated high school, I only had to make it up to algebra 2.

Trig, Geometry, and Calculus where offered but not required. I took these in college, but not high school. Now, to graduate high school all students have to pass Trig. And, the standards for passing have been brought up to higher level learning, so... students have an even greater understanding of the theories than we ever had back in the 70's-80's. I've never seen a slide rule in my life, nor an abacus, nor chicken bones being thrown into a fire to be read. I could probably pick one out of a line-up, since I have read about them in ancient writings... But really? complaining about kids noit using a sliderule is like complaining that kids now-a-days not knowing how to rewind a VHS tape.
Also, only 5% of the population went to college in the 80's. Now, it is closer to 35% with more and more jobs requiring degrees every day.
Kids are also constantly told that it is more dangerous outside, more pervs, more violence, abductions, etc... so when they stay in their rooms, study, read, play video games... my parents would have killed to have me and my siblings do this. ...instead of constantly losing my dad's tools in the woods, and using all of the firewood to build a clubhouse.
I could go one and on and on, I coach a high school debate team, and I am proud as hell as what our schools are producing. Maybe your area of the world sucks, but really, people since the time of cavemen have complained about the decline in kids from their generation, meanwhile, we have gone to the moon, we have the internet, nuclear warheads, technology that just 100 years ago was merely science fiction.

So forgive me, but when I hear men my own age scowling at the kids of today, I am reminded by those greasy haired fat gutted old men at the barber shop that would set around and complain that my generation liked music that you couldn't understand the lyrics, we didn't tuck in our shirts like real men, and we let our hair get longer like girls (even though my hair barely touched my collar). It was BS then, and it is BS now. There are great kids, and sucky kids, as we've always had. And, we place greater and greater demands on them every day. I for one am proud as hell for our kids making it to the bar we set as it gets higher and higher every year.
I could go on and on, and how classmates I knew used to steal beer, steal cars for joy rides, and break and enter houses all the time back in the day. So, there is always going to be a lowlife class of folks in the world, but that is not the norm. Just my $0.02

 

[cosmicfolklore]

BTW, you have to read this as if I am delivering it less like an angry rant, and more like a Sam Kinison rant that is angry but funny in a way. ::

 

[aldecaker]

My kids (16 and 18) love reading. Good, interesting reading. From real books, not devices. A lot of their friends do, too.
It has always struck me that the town doctor in the 1800s was an important man, usually quite wealthy, respected, with one of the biggest houses in town. And he knew less about medicine and science than the average eighth-grade health student of today. Hell, maybe even sixth-grade. By virtue of the fact that he could simply read and write, which our schoolchildren can do at a fairly early age, he was light years ahead of most of the population. "Competition" was a bit different then. Just some food for thought.
Being the crotchety old misanthrope that I am, I am convinced that the majority of people, across the board, are shitbags. I'm not convinced the ratio of "good kids" to shitbags has changed much over the years.

 

[ashdigger]

Being the crotchety old misanthrope that I am, I am convinced that the majority of people, across the board, are shitbags. I'm not convinced the ratio of "good kids" to shitbags has changed much over the years.

This is the exact way it really is.

 

[tbradsim1]

You had to blame the Cash Registet Mike, excuses,excuses,excuses, I rest my case. :rofl:

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I think that everyone was forced to serve one year working the register of a fast food restaurant. Everyone would look at the people doing the lowest jobs in our country a little differently. ::

 

[markus]

I try not to criticize the people behind the register making change, mostly because I suck at math.

I would probably take a few seconds to figure the change as well, I guess I'm just not a math minded person.

 

[davet]

Being the crotchety old misanthrope that I am, I am convinced that the majority of people, across the board, are shitbags. I'm not convinced the ratio of "good kids" to shitbags has changed much over the years.

My sentiments exactly :clap:

 

[robwoodall]

I think that as we move more and more toward a welfare economy, trophies for participation, teachers required to graduate a certain percentage of students, we have made it easier to fail at life.
I also believe that there are so many more opportunities today than at any time in the past we have made it much easier to succeed at life.
My eight-year-old reads fluently, on a tablet and on paper books. He's already started building a print library of books he loves (usually MineCraft and Pokemon, LOL). His eBooks are for "just stuff to read" that he doesn't necessarily want to keep forever.
He writes simple computer programs using Scratch, a kid's programming language. He knows which part of the brain controls which function, and he knows the secret identity of every current member of DC's Justice League.
When I was his age, I only knew one of the three!