Kids These Days

Recently a series of things have caused me to think of the perennial problem known as "kids these days." To wit, 1) First Read's comments about flip flops, 2) Inga's comments at Snarky Girls about a new high school and 3) Senator Clinton's Chamber of Commerce Speech in which she attacked the nation's youth, saying most memorably that "young people today think work is a 4 letter word." To this I reply that their attitude may be better than kids those days (i.e. my generation) who think that work is a 24 hour word.

Complaints about what kids wear these days, the language they use, their general attitude towards life, their grooming habits, and their interests (or lack thereof) are age old. And as Larry Levine (see below) was fond of instructing (to paraphrase), 'students today may not know Latin, but they know how to navigate issues concerning race and gender, and how to deal with addiction, sexuality and domestic abuse in ways that kids those days did not. Given everything they are expected to know (technology, culture, health . . .) it's amazing that they are still able to fit things into their minds by the time they reach college.'

I think what struck me hardest recently, was a June 18 New York Times article about how kids these days cheat. University students have been caught, for example, emailing answers to themselves and checking their blackberry during the exam, and recording themselves speaking the answers and then listening on a wireless headset and Ipod. In fact, 2/3rds of college students admitted that they cheat. To this I say, "What did we expect?" The university cheats kids just as badly, if not moreso. Students these days are more likely to face the prospect that their university will toss them into classes of 750 students in massive amphitheatres thus creating ideal conditions that make it impossible to fully monitor students during exams. Students these days are more likely to experience their universities substituting largely untrained teaching assistants for real professors in the classroom. And those teaching assistants are often scared to death by the consequences of confronting cheating students for fear that their department or university will not back them up. Students these days should feel as if they will be remembered as a number before they are remembered as an individual. And if they are made to feel inhuman, why should they care about the institution that makes them feel so?

I admit it - I'm surprised 100% of students don't cheat. Why? Because kids these days are being cheated.