The third book will be "Back in my time, we listened to old white guys." 2/
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But seriously. I'm old enough to remember books with the same basic premise being published back when I was in college in the 1980s. Back then, one bugaboo was grade inflation, which is still a bugaboo now, but the problem was blamed on the left wing slant on campus. 3/
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I remember because (1) I was politically conservative back then and (2) I was in college and wondering if my education really was less rigorous and challenging than that of my predecessors. 4/
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I then remember books criticizing college kids, their ways, and their education would come out every several years. Waves of these books seemed to correspond with each generation hitting middle age and starting to complain about "those kids." 5/
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This book looks no different if its premise is the same as the Atlantic article with the same title published a couple of years ago that appears to have been the impetus for it. 6/
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The bottom line is that every generation, upon hitting middle age, starts viewing its youth through rose-colored lenses. Its members compare their memory of their youth to today's actual youth and always find today's youth wanting compared to them. 7/
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Compared to them in their youth, today's youth is always narcissistic, and lazier, less respectful, more promiscuous, less intellectually curious, not as tough, and, yes, more "coddled." It's human nature going back at least to ancient Greece. 8/
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There is a quote attributed to Socrates that Socrates never actually said that sums it up. (The quote was misattributed to Socrates from a summary of Greek attitudes toward children in his doctoral thesis.). 9/
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The quote reads: "The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise." 10/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-children-in-ancient-times/ …
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But you don't just need that quote. There are many others throughout history in which elders complain about today's generation. For instance, this one. 11/http://mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complaints-about-young-people-ruining-everything …
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My take is that it's simply a matter of role reversal. When we're young, we chafe at what our elders demand of us. When we're the elders, we grow outraged when youth doesn't pay us the deference that we feel we deserve 12/
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The end result is that every generation, as it enters middle age and old age views its current generation of youth coming up as inferior (and likely to be responsible for the impending destruction of society). 13/
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Personally, especially after the
#ParklandShooting, I'm much more optimistic. The#ParklandStudents have impressed the hell out of me with their outspokenness, toughness, intelligence, and refusal to back down in the face of@NRA attacks. 14/Show this thread -
I don't know if today's youth are any better than my generation in its youth. They might be. I do, however, know that they certainly aren't worse. Oh, and get off my lawn. 15/
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Also, the kids are alright, no matter what the old farts say. 16/16
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