When I met up with my cousin last year, his wife asked me to have a word with their son who “wasn’t focussed enough and coming up to his exams, and he won’t have full choice for university if he doesn’t take it seriously”. He was 17. I did the good uncle thing and asked him how things were going. Response:
Well I kinda got over the photography obsession, set up an AI tech support company and we’re growing too fast so employing more people but have another idea so trying to persuade my older brother to take over the reins a bit so I can focus on new dev….. oh and I have some exams coming up but they’re so stupidly easy these days that am not too concerned.
I told her he’d surpassed our generation.
Don’t be too quick to judge. It’s a common generational trait. You may assume stupidity where a different approach makes you blind to their thinking. Certainly slapped me to waking up on that count
Thats a great story and I think individual stories are not without their own merit. But I am talking about the large majority of the next generation. And my claim isn’t even that their test scores are lower, or their behaviors are erratic and unacceptable (which they are). They lack basic intuition on almost anything. They have all had their dopamine receptors fried by age 4 and can’t muster any level of interest in understanding something that isn’t immediately apparent to them. We have overwhelmed our children with path of least resistance and now they don’t know anything outside of that.
Good parenting at home has been the only thing that is saving children from this really doomish future. But it’s surprisingly a lot smaller of a cohort than you would think.
These are definitely judgements, but its what I have been able to gather watching my wife teach in the public school system these last few years. Covid lockdowns did a number on our society.
It’s a fair statement for sure. Am not a parent so do t have the personal experience but I’d guess a lot results from a mentality of sub contracting some of the moral growth to centralised education systems.
Interestingly, regarding the anecdote above, this was my cousins that also once said to me the best thing that ever happened to him as a kid was being brought up in a country that still permitted corporal punishment. As he put it “I deserved every one of those canings and I really needed it”! 🙄🤣