Thread: Another sad sign of the times.......

Originally Posted by azjoe

How can we explain basic observations my wife makes... for example:

• 40% of the kids she sees entering the 6th grade level don't even know their multiplication tables
• 60% can't find their own state on a map if it is unlabeled
• 70% read at or below the 4th grade level
• the vast majority can't write a literate sentence by anyones measure and none of them can spell worth a damn.
• the overwhelming majority don't have the time/inclination to do their homework (however, almost everyone of them can tell you in detail what happened in every popular TV show the night before.).

How can we explain that while most colleges require fewer credits for a given college degree than they did 50 years ago, it now takes the average student 5-years instead of 4-years to graduate. (And, I don't buy into it's because they party harder than we did when I was in college )

How do we explain that, starting somewhere in the late 70's, kids I was interviewing for computer engineering jobs increasingly exhibited a lack of ability to work independently, to do research, to motivate themselves to solve problems and finish a job, and take responsibility for their results?

The red statements is to what I was responding. Blame aside, that is my explanation and to the status of the current generation which is coming into the workplace, and a product of the rearing (or lack there of) by the boomers.

As to your new post, how do we change it into the future and try and correct this, I feel that society is already trying to do this. In my generation, more and more women (my wife included) are staying home and rearing their children. We are purchasing less and less house, and making due with less materialistic things than the boomers, thus allowing us to be parents to our children rather than slaves to consumerism. I work in a very stressful position, and yet I REFUSE TO WORK WEEKENDS (despite the negative inferences that has cast upon me in my workplace) because that is my time with my children. I REFUSE TO WORK PAST 5:30p.m. because we sit down at the dinner table together, as a family, every night, bow our heads and give thanks to the almighty for the blessings in our family. More and more families in my generation are being parents to the children of tomorrow, and teaching them right from wrong at early ages. We are involved with our children, teaching them, guiding them, and instructing them.

IMHO this is the solution, and there is no other. It is going to take a paradigm shift from society to correct this situation. Society is going to have to view our children as the future, and invest our time, money and energy into the proper rearing of our children. This is a sharp shift from what is currently the situation in that children are treated as a financial obligation and burden which are to be tolerated (so long as there is a day care), or worse, leverage in a divorce battle to obtain a greater financial settlement.

Parents are the key to the future, and their actions (or inactions) with their children, and what we see today is the result of the actions (or inactions) of the boomers. I hope and pray that me and my friends are representative of how future children are being reared.

Matt

Edit: Also, as to the statement that the boomers were "victims" of the changes to which I spoke, I respond with a resounding NO! You show me a family from 1946 through 1964 where it was not the traditional family. By in large the father worked, the mother reared the children. It was the boomers, and their "social consciousness" that wrought these changes. The boomers were the hippies, and they were the "turn on, tune in, and drop out" generation. They then moved into the work place beginning in the 1960's, and started getting married. correct me if I am wrong, but that almost perfectly correlates to the ever increasing boom in the divorce rate. Both parents worked, because they would be damned to be dependent upon someone else, and the children suffered. They created the "sexual revolution" of the 60's and 70's and then created the insatiable consumerism of the 80's. As a generation, I have nothing but disdain for the boomers. They have spent more than they have created, and are driving this nation to bankruptcy. They are a generation of Paris Hiltons. Given everything by their parents (The Greatest Generation), and squandered it like the prodigal son. However, my generation is going to pay the piper for their excess.