According to 60 Minutes, you can't directly tell them they've made a mistake. You can't ask them to follow any consistent set of rules. Many expect to be rewarded for, um, breathing. They're America's brittlest generation, and they expect you to start paying them.
Besides the seminar where the woman was holding up silverware (apparently explaining it that it should be used), the part which sticks most in my memory is where they placed the blame. Did they blame the school systems, which had the most extensive influence? No, not even for a second. How about the parents? Not really. Even though they're depicted as calling HR departments on behalf of their (20+-year-old) "kids" -- who still live with them -- very little blame lands on them.
No, it's all Mr. Rogers' fault! Seems, for kids aged two to four, for a few seconds each day, he'd sing a song which included, for a brief few seconds, the lyric "you're you are special." Yeah, that did it.
Of course, Mr. Rogers was a Presbyterian Minister: the message that each person is unique and "you're the only one in this wonderful world" is a standard part of JudeoChristian belief (Psalm 139:14 - "I am fearfully and wonderfully made", for example, or Jesus's story about the importance of a single lost coin or sheep) but it doesn't seem to have had this result in other places and times. (And I myself, and the rest of my generation grew up watching Mr. Rogers' too, and they didn't do these kinds of reports about us.)
No, there's a big difference between: "You are unique, and loved by God" (taught by Mr. Rogers and in churches and at temple) and "You are wonderful and excellent, a deserve a reward, no matter what you do!" (the basis of the "self-estteem" fad embraced by "progressive" educators and parents). Mr. Rogers told children that they were unique, not that they were unconditionally praiseworthy.
So a guy on a children's show sings a song for a few seconds, parents raise them for a few years, and the schools mold them for over two decades -- and 60 Minutes places most the blame on the song. (And a few younger-aged sporting events.) No sacred cows touched, I guess.
So, what do you think: Is it all hype? A grain of truth? Or the tip of an iceberg? Do a significant number (certainly not all) of the next generation have serious problems coping with even the slightest resistance or setbacks?
Heh! Good one, Ryan!
I think the two are related. Nobody likes criticism, of course. But in certain members of my generation and the one before, the act of being criticized has itself become immoral. One is being "judgmental" -- as if we should never use our critical facilities.
(And I suspect such people are disproportionately drawn to careers which allow them to reshape the world as they wish to see it: politics, journalism, counseling, social work, and education.)
People tend to want the best for children, so they have given their own (and other people's) children and students the world they would have liked: a place where "never is heard a discouraging word", to slightly misquote an old Western folk song.
Somehow I don't think Mr. Rogers can take the blame for this one. I spent my working life trying to help these kids to be self sufficient and productive. I find that we as a society are so scared that our kids might not like us that we don't expect anything from them. We don't let them experience the consequence of their choices and we protect them from everything "bad" in this world. The failure is on all of us at this point. The school system goes out of it's way to make school easier (to the point of teaching short cuts instead of math) so that kids won't fail. Parents buy their kids what ever they want and keep them safely unaware of the outside world (credit cards, cell phones, video games, cars, etc). Even the court system is willing to make sure that our kids don't experience "bad" things like say the consequence for their actions.
My kid is out of luck because he won't be enjoying that sort of childhood. He'll be getting morals, consequences, and problem solving skills. I surely will not be calling his boss (which has happened to me with teenage staff before) to clean things up for him.
There are things out in the world that we don't like. Bad things happen to everyone at sometime or another. Mommy and daddy can't save you from them all. We want our kids to have everything we didn't and not have anything bad happen to them. Even I want that. But nobody realizes that we're taking away all the valuable lessons we learned as children from our own children. How can we expect them to get through life with only the smiles and fluff?
You can't directly tell them they've made a mistake. You can't ask them to follow any consistent set of rules. Many expected to be rewarded for, um, breathing. They're America's _______________
a. brittlest generation
b. news media
Posted by: Ryan W. on June 5, 2008 09:10 AM