Muzings From The Edge: The Wussie Generations
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Here I go again folks, speaking my mind about something that people will say that I know nothing about. But I think it is high time someone said something before we screw things up even more than we have already. For the last decade or so we have been worried about the future of our kids because of the education system; the kids are not learning enough, the kids are being harassed and bullied at school, we are afraid to send our kids to school because of the violence at school, and the teachers are more interested in their unions than they are in teaching their kids. Well, it may be too late now but we need to rewind back about four decades to get to the bottom of things. At the core of all these problems is something called entitlement. Yep, people these days grew up with a sense that, simply by the fact that someone popped them out of birth canal, they are automatically entitled to certain things which includes passing through life with no problems, no one bothering them, a high school and college degree, being completely safe, and getting their way.
See I told you people would say I didn’t know what I was talking about. That is because they are among that bunch. I know it is hard for them to acknowledge that they are part of the generations that will one day be know as the wussie generations. I grew up in a somewhat earlier generation when you went to school and you worked and studied, at least some of the time, or you…you..dare I say the word, … you FAILED. There it is out. Kids who didn’t cut it failed. I know that is hard to understand in this day and time but yes there actually was a time when kids got “F’s” if they did not do well in school. Not an “unsatisfactory”, not a “needs improvement” a big, fat, get the paddle out, butt slapping, fail. OK, everyone catch your breath now, I know that is hard to believe, but it is true. And if a kid failed in those days it didn’t take long for every other kid in the school to know it. Therein lay the motivation not to fail. You were much less worried about not being able to find a job and to some degree not quite as worried about what your parents would do. After all, after your dad got through stomping, yelling, screaming, waving his belt around, and your mother stopped crying in shame, they would forgive after a while. The kids at school were an entirely different story. In the elementary grades you pretty well figured you were going to have a fight or two before the whole thing blew over. It would be years, maybe even a lifetime before they would forget that you had failed a grade. As I said, it was a helluva motivation not to fail. The harassment, teasing, and bullying were just a cost of doing business.
The same principle applied to other things in life as well. In sports you had a winner and a loser. If you won you got some type of a trophy saying you were the winner, if you lost you got zip, nada, nothing, zero. Those were the rules, not so today. If kids play a sport and really suck at it they still get a trophy for participating. That my friend is teaching entitlement. I noticed this beginning in the mid and late 1970’s when I was coaching one of son’s baseball teams. We had a good team that year but it just was not quite good enough. They probably needed a better coach. In any event we finished third in the league and after the last game all of the team mothers wanted to have an ice cream party for the boys. I thought that was a good idea. Sort of a last get together as a team without worrying about the competitiveness of the season but then the moms started talking about getting all the boys trophies. “A trophy for what?” I asked. “”We did not win anything.” Well you would have thought I just cursed God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and all of the Apostles in one breath. They wanted to make the boys feel good about themselves, so they could feel like they got something out of their hard work of the season. “They did”, I argued. “They got got the joy of playing baseball and learning the game. They learned something about life. You work hard and sometimes you come out on top and sometimes you fall short of your goals.” It was like trying to tell my house to move two feet to left all on its own. Therein lies our problems today folks.
Today most people are used to having everything made easy for them and not having to actually work for it. Thanks to the philosophy of entitlement there is a sense of “if I put my hand out what I want will appear there.” A good example is technology today. In yesteryear we had to use our imaginations to solve problems. Today people type a few words into Google and things pop up on a computer screen. I remember as far back as the fourth grade I loved to read books about sports and adventures of Jim Corbett the great hunter of tigers in India. I know now that he contributed to dire situation of the tigers today but it expanded my mind far beyond my humble abode in the projects of Chickasaw, Alabama. Even though I ended up being one of those who was a failure in high school I still had enough interest and smarts to end up with a PhD from the University of Alabama. I got a kick out of telling my university students they were being taught by a high school drop out. Today as I teach online in retirement I am amazed at the laziness of students. Whereas I worked as a police officer, went to class 12 to 15 hours a week, and had to go to the library to do research, my students need only sit at home with a computer, for a one hour seminar per week, do all their research and they still do not make it to their classes or get their work turned in on time. Curiously, when time for grades comes around they are astounded if they receive anything less than an “A”.
Back to my original points folks we need to stop being “hovering parents,” that is parents parents who are constantly hovering around the kids to make sure absolutely nothing happens to them or makes them unhappy. Believe it or not violence has always gone on in schools or around schools in one form or another. Perhaps it is a bit more pervasive now but it is far from an epidemic if you consider that your child has a better chance of being injured or killed in an automobile accident on the way to or from school than from school violence. According to the Wall Street Journal four or five high school kids each year will die from heat stroke while playing or practicing football and 700,000 will go to the emergency room from school sports programs. What I am saying here folks is that things do happen. Give your kids a good solid foundation of common sense and a sense of worth and they will do fine. Kids have been bullied since there were kids on this earth, it is part of growing up. It is part of learning how to deal with a world that is a pretty tough place with no teachers, principals, or mommies and daddies for protection. Teaching kids some self reliance, self worth, common sense, and the ethics of working for what you get will go a long way toward making kids better people. But then, I just realized, many of you who are reading this are part of that wussie generation and you don’t know any different. Never mind, stop making fun of your grandparents and listen to them.
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It’s a good post Bill. I have been very surprised to experience the reality described here. Stunning. I grew up differently. I was ‘prepped’ for college from grade school. And I was always under a general impression that every had the option, if they applies themselves, to further their education. I still kinda think that way. I’ve not experienced the levels of “bubba dumb” that MH reported…. gods, I would have snark comments in the moment. It’s gotten me in trouble before.
If a teacher ‘fails’ a student over here they’re accused of letting them down…Can’t win really
Absolutely right!!! Here in the inner city schools, where most of the kids get the only meals they will eat for that day, come unprepared to learn, are lucky to have one parent at home at all- when these kids predictably do poorly the school system is accused of “failing” the children. What a crock. Their parents, breeding without thought to the results and without care to the future…THEY are the ones failing the children.
My wife teaches college and the end of every school year, she has to go into hiding after she releases the grades, because the some kids who get a B demand a conference to find out why they didn’t get an A, some even bring their parents in. At the start of every semester she tells her class, “I don’t give grades, you earn them.” Doesn’t make a bit of difference.
Thank you all for your posts. The primary point of the post is that while we think it is our schools that are failing our kids I think it is the a lot of the parents and kids who are failing themselves. Parents hover over their children making sure their little world is perfect to the point that when any little thing goes wrong it becomes a major life altering event. The concept of instant gratification is everywhere and further encourage by the internet and feel good systems.
Today we are continuing to try to make education easier to consume instead of actually make people actually use the brains. We may actually be seeing an end to the era of deep, contemplative thought where great minds were actually important to our society. Folks like those writing on this blog who actually open their minds to new and different ideas are becoming fewer and fewer. Deep thinkers like Krell, the Mother Hen, SJ, The Lawyer, and yes, even Mad Mike on occasion are rapidly becoming things of the elder generation soon to pass into obscurity. We all tend to write in more than one sound bite at a time, thus we are anachronisms.
I think that trend towards less holistic, humanistic, universal type thinking is evidenced by the fact that the good ol’ liberal arts degree is out of favor. I love my liberal arts degree and could not imagine not having it, and I can readily tell those who don’t have one. It’s too bad.
Ah Lazer, you know I do no better at deep thoughts than when i am contemplating scrotums and sphincters.
@Lazer
I’m with Lawyer. I grew up in the South Bronx. It’s a miracle I didn’t grow up and go postal at some point.
But I think you’re talking about something that goes beyond any generation’s profile, as everyone thinks they had it harder than everyone else who comes after (I grew up working on computers since I was 12, a Radioshack tandyvision, on to a Commodore Amiga on to a IBM PS1 and various Apple computers at school and so on) I’m blown away by the technology kids take for granted today. But more to the point, there is something to be learned from losing. I positively sucked at sports, and was frequently on the losing side of teams and I watched carefully how people who won comported themselves. It taught me alot about how to spot an asshole, and also what was important. You’ll never hear people who win all the time say “it’s how you play the game.” and too bad for them, because it is, especially when you are talking about something as insignificant as sports. If you’re not enjoying it, what if any, is the point to playing a game?
I feel differently about academic pursuits however, and yet there are still a lot of schools where kids are made to feel okay for not studying and or failing.
When I failed, I had to repeat the class and I was made to feel every bit the idiot for it.
Protecting people from the consequences of their actions is a disservice to all.
-SJ
I’m just 40 years old, but belong to the last generation that grew up without computers, unless you call a Commodore 64 a computer. I bullied and was bullied from Kindergarten on up. It was my duty to get myself, via my own two legs or a bike, to school starting when I was 7. I enjoyed my senior year of high school because it was the only one when someone wasn’t hunting me down to kick my ass from here to kingdom come. In grade school I was often paddled by my teachers and principal for being a jack ass. And yes, my sophomore year in high school I racked up the D’s and F’s and had to do a couple of rounds of summer school to climb back out of that hole. Growing up in my generation was not a cake walk.
You would be surprised at how many kids of this generation just flat out don’t give a crap if they fail. I have heard parents reassure their kids that a bad grade doesn’t matter because school is “stupid”. Being intelligent is not a “popular” thing to be. Parents in my state homeschool a lot, but usually for religious reasons. Then the kid learns all kinds of biology, anatomy, and science, but to question the reality of DNA, trait heritability, and evolution.
The instantaneous nature of information and news gathering via the internet has reinforced the idea that things should be easy. I have been to retail stores that had clerks who couldn’t make change when the register was down. The first two years at junior colleges here are usually for taking remedial math and writing classes so the graduate can pass the required state minimums Algebra and Reading Comp 1.
Teachers do the best they can, with no money allotted for things they need, terrible salaries, and discipline problems taking up most of their time. Indeed, as a substitute teacher, I can see firsthand how much class time is taken up with “classroom management” and transitioning. When I homeschooled our daughter, we covered twice the material in about 1/3 of the time.
Kids on a losing team still get to keep their jersey and team photo- proof of participation as it were. As sorry as I feel for the good players who lost because of a chump coach, it teaches them nothing to get trophies for 3rd. If all that mattered wasn’t “winning or losing but how you play and teamwork” trophies for 1st shouldn’t be given either.