True enough, I guess, but this seems like a bunch of complaining. It doesn't really provide any measures to improve the situation.
Also, I don't understand the part about said kids having had "adult responsibilities" - wouldn't that create the opposite kind of person, one who can take failure? Perhaps it was ironic.
Generation X came of age in the early 90s. They're the kurt cobain generation. I was born in '86, I've always considered myself a millenial and never saw a problem with it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X
"Generation X, commonly abbreviated to Gen X, is the generation born after the baby boom ended[1][2], with earliest birth dates used by researchers ranging from 1961 to the latest 1981"
See if these things formed part of your childhood:
- Atari / Donkey Kong / Pacman etc (the originals)
- Commodore 64
- Indiana Jones + Star Wars (at the cinemas, the original movies)
I was born in 80, and consider myself on the cusp. I identify w/ X in some ways and Millenials in others. It was actually highly amusing in college, there was a noticable shift between the oldest of my peers and the youngest of my peers, which when I described it to some of the older ones said they didn't notice between a similar variance of their peers. Obviously such things are fuzzy, but that is the general feeling we noticed. Overall 'start time' is usuall referenced between 80 and 85 somewhere. Generational stuff used in this sense is wierder still because those born in 1960 have a completely different gen X experience than those born in 1980. I mean they were adults when I was born...
I think for those born in the 1980-1982 range, which generation they fall into depends very much on their personal experiences.
I was born in 1980, but I had 2 older brothers and I was heavily involved in their social circles. MacGyver and the A-Team were the stuff of my generation. I always felt like my younger sisters were weird; Power Rangers was a show of their generation. I would consider myself at the tail end of Gen X.
My wife was born in 1982, watched Power Rangers, and doesn't remember the fall of the Soviet Union... but also grew up using UNIX, remembers Vinyl, owned a Walkman as a teen, and feels most socially comfortable with people in the 35-50 age bracket (who often assume she's in her late 30s.) I'd say she's more Gen X than Millennial.
Another close friend of mine was born in 1981, and I'd consider him 100% Millennial.
I think a related problem is that college professors are usually soft. I have been in a number of classes where a group of students take control and demand a curve, or an extension of a project, and in their defense, why not? Many if not most professors will cave.
The best classes were usually taught by strict professors with the confidence to stick up for their original lesson plan.
You're ignoring the fact that almost all Americans ARE "PR majors" -- lots of other names for shitty degrees, of course -- but the hard sciences are dominated by indians and asians.
Communications, sports medicine, all these majors attract a disproportionate amount of slackers BECAUSE they are easy. The only reason the hard sciences are not AS BAD is because the subject matter makes it much harder to dumb down.
> You're ignoring the fact that almost all Americans ARE "PR majors" -- lots of other names for shitty degrees, of course -- but the hard sciences are dominated by indians and asians.
I wonder how much of this is regional? I was born in the late 80s and didn't experience any of the coddling people associate with my generation. Is it because I grew up in MN? Did any other HNers grow up in the same time/place? (Yes, I know, I'm young and still growing up).
Somewhat tangentially, I had very few writing teachers/profs that forced me to write better. The ones that did were not the hard-asses willing to bruise my ego and fill the page with red ink; they were the ones who could destroy my thesis and render my examples impotent with 3 comments at the end of the paper.
Invariably, if I got a teacher/prof who bled all over my creations, I'd start with B-s at the beginning and end up with As by the end. I didn't improve my writing. I just figured out the teachers pet peeves and learned to work around them. My teachers were invariably smarter and more experienced than me when dealing with the subject at hand, but that doesn't prevent them from being flesh-and-blood people with idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies.
I'd love to believe I'm just a millenial who could stand to learn at lot from an ego-crushing set of experiences, but just because a person hurts your feelings doesn't make them a better teacher.
I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you. The ego needs to be bruised in order to deflate the head of the youngster so learning can begin.
I too had my ego bruised and spirits crushed by hard-marking, discipline demanding examiners. In each case, they're the only the ones I remember. All the wishy-washy as-long-as-you-tried ones are as forgotten as they were useless to my learning.
Half the battle in teaching young people is making them realise the scope of the things they don't know, so they can appreciate how far they have to travel. Call me old-school, but I don't see how you can do this without brusing a few egos and crushing a few spirits. It's precisely the ego that says 'this is good enough, I'll submit that'.
I suppose I should have been more clear. There's a difference between drowning a paper in red ink and words like "trainwreck" and actually showing error. More bluntly, yelling at a student for being stupid and showing a student where they made their errors are entirely different, and I would argue that the second is much more effective.
To my point above, the vindictive teachers were not necessarily the most insightful, and they were not the ones who deflated my ego. The comments that hurt were the terse ones that showed both that they clearly understood what I was trying to say, and that I was wrong. Pointing out a logical inconsistency in my argument in a polite way is a much less abrasive and much more effective way of teaching.
Perhaps I should say that a students ego often gets in the way of producing increasingly better work, but being a dick to them isn't always the answer.
>Perhaps I should say that a students ego often gets in the way of producing increasingly better work, but being a dick to them isn't always the answer.
And I would agree with you there. As long as the point is driven home that the work is below par, and the reasons why, without any fancy wrapping or ego-massaging. Being direct without being a dick, though there are plenty of people who don't know how to do one without being the other.
I'm still appreciative to a Grade 8 maths teacher who humiliated me in front of the class for slacking off during the semester and letting grades slip. Because I sure worked hard to prove him wrong next time. I don't know if there would have been any other way to get through to me at that time.
Telling people to "toughen up" is missing the point. The University of Chicago is built around creating Nobel prize winners (which they do a damn good job of it). But they also drive students so hard that they often fail out or just commit suicide. No joke. But they don't mind sacrificing these people because the select group that survives will shit nobel prizes. Survivor bias will tell you they are a model school, but I don't think so.
Our culture is obsessed with degrees-- not learning. Because of this the education system doesn't let teachers actually do their job. In elementary and high school it's truly unconscionable how students pass from grade to grade. By the time they get to college it's way too late. Tenured hard-ass professors are the only people who can get away with it-- but if you think you can flunk half your students and still make tenure you're delusional. Incentives are completely misaligned. Make no mistake, Education Inc. exists to further the institution, not the student.
My parents also taught me some jerk with a blog would put ads that have enormous popups on mouseover all over his page while ranting about how I'm too sensitive.
This guy is lying to his students by riding the wave of this lingering assumption that contemporary conventional schooling works to garner the results that remedy what he is complaining about.It doesn't,and it never will.
Conventional education is a crock of shit and so is this guy... and the "millennials".
Bypass it all be creating alternatives like this:
khanacademy.org
This kind-of-thing is the future regardless.
Problem solved.
He's one of the few that "survived" all that bullshit and is doing it how it should be done.
Now this is funny in at least two ways. First is this cute but silly idea that the study of PR is so difficult and rigorous that it makes people cry.
The second way this is funny, is just imagining young PR flacks crying because their papers were graded badly. That just warms up my heart. I mean the thought that a human being would be so depraved (or is forced by the economy into such a depraved condition) as to dream about being a PR person when they grow up is rather depressing. But thinking of them suffering along the way is a bit of a bright spot.
Unfortunately, the whole thing was written by a PR professor so I just don't believe it. He is probably just exaggerating in order to establish some cred for himself as a tough no-nonsense professor and also to create the idea that PR is a rigorous field of study.
These editorials always make me wonder if my friends, cousins, and I are some sort of statistical outlier in my generation, or whether, maybe, it's just that the good workers my age don't get comment.
Then again, I've been told I'm too critical quite a bit.
26 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 75.8 ms ] threadAlso, I don't understand the part about said kids having had "adult responsibilities" - wouldn't that create the opposite kind of person, one who can take failure? Perhaps it was ironic.
Or the "Beat you till you cry" parents of the generation before.
Or the "Off to the factory, brat" parents, etc.
That's shifted a good five or ten years back from what I thought. I was born in '82; my parents are Boomers. I thought that made me Generation X.
I. . . I don't want to be a Millenial.
We had AIM in high school, Facebook in (some of) college, and MTV had already mostly stopped playing music videos when we became aware of it.
Sorry dude, you're very much a Millenial.
No? You're not generation X, sorry.
I was born in 1980, but I had 2 older brothers and I was heavily involved in their social circles. MacGyver and the A-Team were the stuff of my generation. I always felt like my younger sisters were weird; Power Rangers was a show of their generation. I would consider myself at the tail end of Gen X.
My wife was born in 1982, watched Power Rangers, and doesn't remember the fall of the Soviet Union... but also grew up using UNIX, remembers Vinyl, owned a Walkman as a teen, and feels most socially comfortable with people in the 35-50 age bracket (who often assume she's in her late 30s.) I'd say she's more Gen X than Millennial.
Another close friend of mine was born in 1981, and I'd consider him 100% Millennial.
The best classes were usually taught by strict professors with the confidence to stick up for their original lesson plan.
Communications, sports medicine, all these majors attract a disproportionate amount of slackers BECAUSE they are easy. The only reason the hard sciences are not AS BAD is because the subject matter makes it much harder to dumb down.
sod off, racist
Invariably, if I got a teacher/prof who bled all over my creations, I'd start with B-s at the beginning and end up with As by the end. I didn't improve my writing. I just figured out the teachers pet peeves and learned to work around them. My teachers were invariably smarter and more experienced than me when dealing with the subject at hand, but that doesn't prevent them from being flesh-and-blood people with idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies.
I'd love to believe I'm just a millenial who could stand to learn at lot from an ego-crushing set of experiences, but just because a person hurts your feelings doesn't make them a better teacher.
I too had my ego bruised and spirits crushed by hard-marking, discipline demanding examiners. In each case, they're the only the ones I remember. All the wishy-washy as-long-as-you-tried ones are as forgotten as they were useless to my learning.
Half the battle in teaching young people is making them realise the scope of the things they don't know, so they can appreciate how far they have to travel. Call me old-school, but I don't see how you can do this without brusing a few egos and crushing a few spirits. It's precisely the ego that says 'this is good enough, I'll submit that'.
To my point above, the vindictive teachers were not necessarily the most insightful, and they were not the ones who deflated my ego. The comments that hurt were the terse ones that showed both that they clearly understood what I was trying to say, and that I was wrong. Pointing out a logical inconsistency in my argument in a polite way is a much less abrasive and much more effective way of teaching.
Perhaps I should say that a students ego often gets in the way of producing increasingly better work, but being a dick to them isn't always the answer.
And I would agree with you there. As long as the point is driven home that the work is below par, and the reasons why, without any fancy wrapping or ego-massaging. Being direct without being a dick, though there are plenty of people who don't know how to do one without being the other.
I'm still appreciative to a Grade 8 maths teacher who humiliated me in front of the class for slacking off during the semester and letting grades slip. Because I sure worked hard to prove him wrong next time. I don't know if there would have been any other way to get through to me at that time.
Our culture is obsessed with degrees-- not learning. Because of this the education system doesn't let teachers actually do their job. In elementary and high school it's truly unconscionable how students pass from grade to grade. By the time they get to college it's way too late. Tenured hard-ass professors are the only people who can get away with it-- but if you think you can flunk half your students and still make tenure you're delusional. Incentives are completely misaligned. Make no mistake, Education Inc. exists to further the institution, not the student.
Bypass it all be creating alternatives like this:
khanacademy.org
This kind-of-thing is the future regardless.
Problem solved.
He's one of the few that "survived" all that bullshit and is doing it how it should be done.
The second way this is funny, is just imagining young PR flacks crying because their papers were graded badly. That just warms up my heart. I mean the thought that a human being would be so depraved (or is forced by the economy into such a depraved condition) as to dream about being a PR person when they grow up is rather depressing. But thinking of them suffering along the way is a bit of a bright spot.
Unfortunately, the whole thing was written by a PR professor so I just don't believe it. He is probably just exaggerating in order to establish some cred for himself as a tough no-nonsense professor and also to create the idea that PR is a rigorous field of study.
Then again, I've been told I'm too critical quite a bit.