Are today's youngsters really worse?

[fgalkin]

How many young people in their 20s have brokerage accounts, though? I don't and most people I know don't, either. The ones that do are the exception, and generally know what they're doing. So, yes, they're going to be a lot better than the average 20-something, or other people, period, because they're NOT the average 20-something.

In other words, selection bias.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[PainRack]

I would like to say that Broomstick and Knife post probably sums it up.

Different social mores and standards means that we just keep finding different ways to be offended and the fact remains that people at different stages of their lives think and process stuff differently.

Its....... amazing to see how a kid at 16 years old respond to a diagnosis of cancer as opposed to that of a 20 year old. Just 4 years, but the SHEER perspective difference is huge.
Try this on for a thought experiment. How aggressive do you think a 60 year old patient will demand his cancer treatment be if he was a man waiting to see his daughter married and a grandson along the way, as opposed to a 60 year old widower with grown up kids and grandchildren in school?

The actions taken by the later to abandon treatment if he feels nausous would be utterly incomprehensible by the first.

I suspect something similar happens for adults re teenagers. How could teenagers act that way? Don't they think about how this will affect them or... Don't they want to be treated with dignity and not be hurt?

Whereas teenagers will be seeking for self-affirmation and etc, so, actions that define their identity or give them an esteem boost is seen as more desirable than "long term planning".

Totally different drives so as to speak.

[PainRack]

In this case it is online applications for self directed online brokerage accounts.

From the older crowd I'll get all kinds of threats (do this or else we will pull our account, if you are no who you say you are you going to jail) and name calling (Take this application and shove it up your ass, are you stupid?) which I've never encountered with younger people. Younger people I call and tell them what they need and they either give a neutral 'okay' or that they won't be opening the account, usually it's 'okay.'

Not to say all or majority of older people flips a shit, but a good amount does.

I would also point out that for older people, investment is seen as something that's neccessary for retirement even though many find it distasteful or has no interest in it whatsoever.

Other drives such as increased conservatism due to fears about losing money, finanicial burden on their families and etc may also direct their actions in ensuring things get done their way. I won't accredit this behaviour to be motivated by fear, but conservative investment behaviour from older people who have something to lose is different from youngsters. Different scope of pressure so as to speak.

Add in unfamiliarity with unwanted tasks and..... bingo.

[Broomstick]

I know over-40s who don't really have a "sense of entitlement" in general, but in their formative years the world was a very different place. The Internet hasn't just changed the way we communicate, it's changed the way we spend money, the way we file our taxes, the way we do things that impact practically every aspect of our lives. And almost all this change has happened in the past ten years.

^ This. Remember, us old farts didn't ask the world to change, the world is DEMANDING that we change.

I just got off the phone earlier with my accountant. I had some questions about how my tax forms were handled this year and sent his firm an e-mail last Friday detailing my concerns. I hadn't heard anything as of noon today. So I called. Well, it seems one of his employees was assigned my taxes - which is perfectly OK, delegation is fine, my taxes need someone with more expertise than me but necessarily at the level of the firm owner - and had been forwarded the e-mail. Fine. Except he spent three days sending text messages to my phone!

I guessed correctly - he was about 25 years old, relatively fresh out of school. Competent as an accountant, but clueless that
1) Not everyone has a smartphone
2) Not every phone number leads to a smartphone - my house phone, for instance, is a stupidphone attached to the wall
3) The older someone is, the less likely they are to have a smartphone and/or texting services.

This is actually getting to be a serious problem for me - people under 30 ASSUMING every phone number leads to a smart phone. Seriously, why should I pay extra because you're clueless? (Yes, texting is extra charges here in the US. I realize that's not the case everywhere) Respond to me as I communicated with you - if I call, then call me back. If I send an e-mail, send it to my e-mail. IF I text you, fine, text me back. And if you do text me and don't get a response try fucking calling me on that phone number! Mind you, I had clearly listed my contact information and preferences with the cover letter with my tax information, this shouldn't have been a puzzle. The line, just after my phone number, address, and business e-mail that said DO NOT SEND TEXT MESSAGES TO MY PHONE, I DO NOT HAVE TEXT SERVICES should have also been a clue, don't you think?

And this is how generational conflict happens....

My accountant also informs me (he's been a friend of ours for about 20 years now) that his biggest current struggle with the 40 and over crowd is that he is now required to e-file Federal tax returns, and there's a lot of push back from that crowd, who continually hear about all the scams and fraud on the internet and half of whom (at least) don't trust the government. Well, he's been e-filing ours for three years now, as I reminded him, and he heaved a big sigh of relief he didn't have to fight that battle with us.

Some people adapt better than others. My dad, for instance, is in his 80's and spends half the day web surfing, e-mailing, and on Facebook. Good for him. My mother, particularly after her stroke impaired her language abilities, never did get that comfortable with computers even if she did have a job working on computers for Sears in the early 1970's, decades before my dad ever got a chance to use a computer himself. Imagine how frustrating it was for her, with more and more things done on computer when, after her stroke, she lost her ability to read text, when her speech was impaired enough that she couldn't use voice recognition software, and she really did need to talk to a human being to get her business done. Or come to rely more and on her husband and daughters to help her out. I'm sure she came across to some people as a stubborn, uncooperative, mal-adaptive bitch.... but the reality is her brain didn't quite work right anymore. The older someone is, the more likely they are to have such a problem yet society makes few allowances for them.

[Simon_Jester]

Thank you, Broomstick.

And here I was just trying to generalize from my father while being charitable; if I'd been asked to go into details about the nature of his aversion to the Internet Age, I wouldn't be able to present such good examples. He's... well, quite paranoid about it.

So far as I know he's perfectly capable of using post-2000-vintage communications, but he very much prefers not to if he can help it. Especially not if it involves electronic transfer of important data- he'd rather take an hour or two every night looking up several dozen stock prices online, transcribing them onto paper, and then entering them into spreadsheets on a computer that's kept offline than risk his financial records being on a computer with Internet access.

[Mr Bean]

I just got off the phone earlier with my accountant. I had some questions about how my tax forms were handled this year and sent his firm an e-mail last Friday detailing my concerns. I hadn't heard anything as of noon today. So I called. Well, it seems one of his employees was assigned my taxes - which is perfectly OK, delegation is fine, my taxes need someone with more expertise than me but necessarily at the level of the firm owner - and had been forwarded the e-mail. Fine. Except he spent three days sending text messages to my phone!

This is actually getting to be a serious problem for me - people under 30 ASSUMING every phone number leads to a smart phone. Seriously, why should I pay extra because you're clueless? (Yes, texting is extra charges here in the US. I realize that's not the case everywhere) Respond to me as I communicated with you - if I call, then call me back. If I send an e-mail, send it to my e-mail. IF I text you, fine, text me back. And if you do text me and don't get a response try fucking calling me on that phone number! Mind you, I had clearly listed my contact information and preferences with the cover letter with my tax information, this shouldn't have been a puzzle. The line, just after my phone number, address, and business e-mail that said DO NOT SEND TEXT MESSAGES TO MY PHONE, I DO NOT HAVE TEXT SERVICES should have also been a clue, don't you think?

Preach it sister, I had a pager back when those were cool and used my brick cell phone to make calls back in the day. Had one of the first Blackberries and have a Droid X as my personal smart phone.

I say all this to establish the fact I also don't have a text plan despite having a smart phone, in fact I have them blocked because I'm not willing to pay Verizon and extra 5$ a month just to have the ability that my email client on my phone already covers. I know people who constantly text back and forth and I'm convinced it's entirely due to the fact they like talking with friends/loved ones at work without getting caught. Because if you wanted to really talk with me you could always use your phone to you know... call me? Or your computer to email me, but hey boss man or teacher lady or Professor dude can't monitor what's on my phone, this is so cool I can talk to my friends without him/her knowing. This is my own pet theory backed up only by anecdotal evidence and we all know what that's worth.

Some people adapt better than others. My dad, for instance, is in his 80's and spends half the day web surfing, e-mailing, and on Facebook. Good for him. My mother, particularly after her stroke impaired her language abilities, never did get that comfortable with computers even if she did have a job working on computers for Sears in the early 1970's, decades before my dad ever got a chance to use a computer himself.

Having had to teach(Unprofessionally) classes for people learning how to use computers for the first time (Weird situation where I started teaching my grandmother how to use her shinny new Pentium 1 Dell computer and ended up with me teaching half her circle of friends and various sons and daughters of her friends who needed to know more about computers at the local VFW where we had some computers and a free room on Sundays I can tell you that from what I've seen people who learn how to use computers are not special in any way, only willing to get past the initial fear of the unknown.

To compare and contrast by Grandmother who was two years married to my pilot Father when Pearl Harbor was attacked and he was out with the exercising carriers and is getting closer every year to the big triple digits in age is not only proficient in how to use a computer but she knows what a printer jam is, how to clear one as well as I recently learned is learning proficiency in Photoshop so she can touch up photos of her many vacations herself. She sends me emails most every day (Even if they are of the chain mail style with various religious admonitions or scam variety, yes she is one of those keeping various fake virus warning style emails along to me) Yet despite all that she has dealt with several viruses on her own computer and knows how to back things up. I'd call her advanced in computer usage, not only able to use the computer but knows enough to for example looking around for free trial versions of various photo editing suites and try several before finding one she liked. She learned all of this in under two years and is self teaching herself from here on in (Even if it did take me until 2002 to convince her to upgrade to cable internet from dial up )

My dear mother on the other hand despite being youngest of 12 and in her 50's and having a degree in communications and having worked with early ISDN lines in the 80's despite being able to run around command line just fine in those early computers she has constant... call it self confidence issues with computers and often calls me up when her computer has issues then read me out errors verbatim off the screen for me to simply repeat them back to her ask her what she thinks it means and she fixes the problem herself. I've had calls on everything from "firefox has not shut down properly and will restore your old session" to "Windows needs to restart to apply an update to "Virus scan running popup"(She has AVG) She did not know how to email people until 2005 and only after heavy coaching and several community college style courses plus coaching by me. I would refer my mother to ask my grandmother about any future computer issues but my grandmother got wise the second time I tried this and simply feigns ignorance until my mother calls me.

Computers knowledge is a funny thing

[Enigma]

It is all about perception. Just like how kids about to graduate high school seem to perceive that the freshmen are getting smaller and smaller as the years go by. As we get older, we get more life experience and though we may not realize it, we begin to see things differently and adjust our attitudes accordingly.

Nothing new and it'll stay that way for the foreseeable future.

[Omeganian]

The complaints are ancient indeed.

http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/texts/ipuwer.htm

[General Mung Beans]

There is a "Generations" theory by Strauss and Howe who argued that there are roughly four generational types and that the current generation is of the same mold as that of the "Greatest Generation". So we might not actually be that bad at all.

[Rye]

I'm not sure. Chav kids have been total scumbags since I was a kid, I'm not sure if they really existed before the 80s, 70s maybe. There have always been scumbag kids, but I'm not sure if they've been beating quite as many people to death for telling them to move along or being goths as relatively recently.

[Duckie]

I'm not sure. Chav kids have been total scumbags since I was a kid, I'm not sure if they really existed before the 80s, 70s maybe. There have always been scumbag kids, but I'm not sure if they've been beating quite as many people to death for telling them to move along or being goths as relatively recently.

Sure there were. Many years ago such people would beat people to death for being irish or otherwise catholic, and a thousand years before for being from the wrong tribe. If human beings got worse generationally, civilisation wouldn't have survived a long time ago.

[Steel]

I'm not sure. Chav kids have been total scumbags since I was a kid, I'm not sure if they really existed before the 80s, 70s maybe. There have always been scumbag kids, but I'm not sure if they've been beating quite as many people to death for telling them to move along or being goths as relatively recently.

Sure there were. Many years ago such people would beat people to death for being irish or otherwise catholic, and a thousand years before for being from the wrong tribe. If human beings got worse generationally, civilisation wouldn't have survived a long time ago.

Given that in both relative and absolute terms violent crime has dropped massively in the past couple of generations it seems unlikely that chavs are actually more violent than the previous generations. You could make the argument that chavs are individually more violent, but there are less of them than were in previous generations, but come on, they're everywhere.

[Rye]

I'm not sure. Chav kids have been total scumbags since I was a kid, I'm not sure if they really existed before the 80s, 70s maybe. There have always been scumbag kids, but I'm not sure if they've been beating quite as many people to death for telling them to move along or being goths as relatively recently.

Sure there were. Many years ago such people would beat people to death for being irish or otherwise catholic, and a thousand years before for being from the wrong tribe. If human beings got worse generationally, civilisation wouldn't have survived a long time ago.

I don't think they get worse generationally, and I will agree that things were worse in the past, I actually suspect that the bulk of kids are the same as they ever were, perhaps even better, due to the reduction in violent parenting methods. I think that chavs, however, are an exception to the rule, and I wonder if it's a consequence of the mixture of feminism, 80s selfishness and the consequential rise in divorce. They often don't get proper upbringing (unstable homes, violent parenting, etc) and boundaries (lazy and stupid parents) and become violent scum as a result. Sure, such people have always existed, many of them are products of homes that are conservative and patriarchal. People on the whole have become less violent, which gives chavs a power vacuum to step into if they just don't care in the moment.

[aieeegrunt]

The whole obese child thing is a new trend though. I don't remember so many butterballs when I was a kid and now it's like one in five or something.

[Tomzilla]

I'm an educational assistant in an after school care program. I work closely with teachers, administrators, and counselors. I've been working with kids for almost 2 years now. On average, I work with over 60 kids a day. Their grade levels are K-5 (elementary). On some days, I work with middle school kids (grades 6-8). It's been a privilege working with these kids. I feel like I've made a big difference in their lives as they have in mine. I also feel like I've been a good role model.

I'm 24-years-old. When I think back about high school, it feels like it happened in a different lifetime. It's been 6 years since I graduated and I know I'm out of the loop. So trying to remember the days of my childhood are almost impossible. All I have are memories and testimonies of my friends and family. My memories are flawed, subject to change as I get older. So are the testimonies of my friends and family members. What works better is actually working with the children of today. Helps me remember so much about my own childhood.

There's not a big difference. There are many kids I work with who have personalities and habits very similar to my own. They behaved very much like how I used to behave on a regular basis (and still do to an extent). Most kids talk like how we (as in me and my friends when we were kids) used to talk. Their attitudes, games, behaviors, all of it -- it's like how we used to do things in 'my day'.

But I'm not an expert. Even if it feels like my childhood occurred, like, hundreds of years ago, it didn't. It happened within the last decade. So I can't sit here and tell anyone what kids were like in the '50s or '60s. Only those who lived in those days can give an accurate account. And that's not always a guarantee.

I do, however, have an opinion I'd like to share.

No, I don't think today's youngsters are worse. Today's youth are the same as yesterday's just with a big, overlooked difference. And that's how the adults of today treat kids. There is a big difference in how my Mom and Grandpa were treated when they were children compared to how I was when I was a kid. That doesn't mean they didn't say and do the same things that kids say and do today. They did--when adults weren't paying them any attention (which happens a lot today, too). As my Mom once told me, "Children were meant to be seen, not heard."

Many of the kids I work with have great parents. They have good manners but lack discipline. Big difference. They know the rules, but they don't always choose to follow them possibly because they haven't experienced the consequences yet (there are thousands of other possibilities). I can relate. If we somehow traveled back in time, I'm sure we'd see the kids of yesteryear acting the same. But I haven't touched upon why yet.

Kids are very, very new to this cool little thing called life. We sometimes forget this because that is what people do. They forget things. But they're also hardwired to learn new things. That's what being a kid is really all about. And no child, however advanced, remembers everything at once. It takes time (years). They're experiencing what we have already experienced. That makes us unfairly biased.

Here's how I think the old generation has viewed the young generation since the very beginning: "Been there, done that. Why is it taking you so long to be like us?!" Not all of the kids are going to 'get it'. That's the whole premise of the coming of age story, folks. Everything is new to them. Hell, it's still new to me.

Why do kids act like dicks? Well, it's in their genes for one. It's also in their upbringing (mostly this). Even if you declared martial law and shackled/medicated them, odds are they'd still be the same troubled youth. I'd also look into their past. Are their parents divorced? In prison? Dead? Do they have any mental/physical illnesses? If it's the latter, let's cut to the chase, throw our hands up, and accept the truth: they can't control themselves the same way we dos. But maybe someday they'll find a way. Oh, and there are other reasons why kids act like dicks. Maybe it's because they've been lumped into the 'wrong' crowd. If you treat them like a misfit long enough, that's exactly how they're going to behave. There's also that whole 'rebellious' stage they all tend to go through.

Let's not forget peer pressure. I won't get into this because I think we're all on the same page.


All you can really do is play your part, try to be a good mentor for children, pray their parents are good parents, and hope they ultimately make the right decisions in life. That's what I'm going to continue to do.

[Freefall]

I get what everyone has been saying so far, but what about incidents in highschools and elementary schools of assault and even murder? Hasn't that gone up in the last couple of decades? How many highschools in the 50's had metal detectors to prevent kids from bringing knives and guns onto campus? Hell, I went to a junior high that didn't have any of that, and was generally pretty good, without even normal fist fights breaking out very often, but even there we had one instance of a student being stabbed, and there was another time one of my classmates showed me his gun during break (pretty sure he was just trying to be "cool" though; never used it, thankfully).

Of course, these are probably a minority and blown out of proportion somewhat by the media, and maybe it did happen back then and nobody remembers because TV tells us the 50's were like Leave it to Beaver everywhere.

Edit: Okay, I guess this sort of was brought up by Rye (I wasn't really familiar with the term "Chavs"), but I'm not sure that a simple "violent crime overall is down, so they can't be as big a deal" really covers it. I mean, just mathematically, it could mean that while the absolute number of murders overall are lower, a higher proportion of the ones that do happen could be due to "Chavs" (again, just an example). Maybe people just started killing when they were older back in the day. Or didn't get caught as much (worse forensics). Or just waited to go to war so they could do it legally.

[Steel]

I get what everyone has been saying so far, but what about incidents in highschools and elementary schools of assault and even murder? Hasn't that gone up in the last couple of decades? How many highschools in the 50's had metal detectors to prevent kids from bringing knives and guns onto campus? Hell, I went to a junior high that didn't have any of that, and was generally pretty good, without even normal fist fights breaking out very often, but even there we had one instance of a student being stabbed, and there was another time one of my classmates showed me his gun during break (pretty sure he was just trying to be "cool" though; never used it, thankfully).

Of course, these are probably a minority and blown out of proportion somewhat by the media, and maybe it did happen back then and nobody remembers because TV tells us the 50's were like Leave it to Beaver everywhere.

Edit: Okay, I guess this sort of was brought up by Rye (I wasn't really familiar with the term "Chavs"), but I'm not sure that a simple "violent crime overall is down, so they can't be as big a deal" really covers it. I mean, just mathematically, it could mean that while the absolute number of murders overall are lower, a higher proportion of the ones that do happen could be due to "Chavs" (again, just an example). Maybe people just started killing when they were older back in the day. Or didn't get caught as much (worse forensics). Or just waited to go to war so they could do it legally.

Hah! My old school moved to its current location in 1897 because extremely violent fights between pupils were commonplace and one student actually killed another. They moved to a site out of the city in order to build large playing fields so that the pupils could have a nonviolent-ish means to release stress.

[Lusankya]

Of course, these are probably a minority and blown out of proportion somewhat by the media, and maybe it did happen back then and nobody remembers because TV tells us the 50's were like Leave it to Beaver everywhere.

The thing is, even without media sensationalism, people will hear more about things than they used to, because media has become much more global. Back before the internet, something like a student being stabbed was unlikely to make the headlines of any national news providers, however these days, pretty much any online news paper can be a de facto international news source, so these stories reach a much larger audience.

The result of this is that people hear about more incidents of school violence than they used to, and assume that school violence is on the rise, when in reality it's probably mostly that they're hearing the news from a vastly greater number of schools.

[Broomstick]

I get what everyone has been saying so far, but what about incidents in highschools and elementary schools of assault and even murder? Hasn't that gone up in the last couple of decades? How many highschools in the 50's had metal detectors to prevent kids from bringing knives and guns onto campus?

This may shock you, but even into the 1980's it was actually legal for kids to bring knives to school - I routinely carried pocket knives, utility knives, and exacto blades to school with me. They were considered tools, not weapons. Yes, there were knives that were considered weapons, and they would be confiscated if found. I used to sit outside in good weather and whittle during lunch hour, no one thought anything of it (there were several of us who used to do that - I made a lot of good luck charms and miniature totem poles for people).

Through the 1950's in rural areas it wasn't at all unusual for young men in high school (because that's what they were considered, young men) to bring long guns to school so they could indulge in a little hunting on the way home in season (rabbit and squirrel, mostly). Of course, they were left in coat rooms and lockers, not carried about the hallways during class time.

Then again, school campuses weren't routinely surrounded by 12 foot high fences topped with razor wire like I see in the cities these days. If we treat kids like violent criminals why are we surprised when they act like them? Yes, I know, some of that was instituted because of actual violent acts but I can't help but think there's a bit of a vicious cycle going on in society. I also realize there is a difference between inner cities with their gangs and rural areas with traditions of seasonal hunting.

I do know that I am very irritated that it is now considered suspicious for even an adult to carry a pocket knife, much less a teenager. Dammit, I use those tools!

[Eternal_Freedom]

To be honest Broomstick, at my school, two years back, even though knives of any kind were banned most everybody had them anyway. I never went to sixth form with my swiss army knife, it's just too damn useful. Several times I used to to fix something for senior staff and they didnt even blink.

[MacShimi]

I've been working as a secondary teacher for nearly a decade. Before then I did a lot of tutoring over another decade at what Anglophiles call university (and what I believe Americans call college). I am a historian (a philosopher and theologian as well), and a significant portion of my studies were and are related to the development of modern western society.

It is fair to say that people around the (western) world have, throughout history, complained about the lack of respect they receive from the younger generation. Mark Twain once wrote that "The altar-cloth of one generation is the doormat of the next." One might look at the passionate struggles many women undertook to receive fair treatment, and to escape the idea of being a sex object or brood mare in the 20th Century, who today are bewildered and ashamed at the teenaged women of today who have embraced raunch culture, and believe that engaging in promiscuous behaviour is liberating and empowering.

The question is difficult to answer, because of the ever-evolving nature of culture. One generation sets the boundaries of acceptable behaviour at a certain point. But this can and does change between generations. Unless every person who believes in old values is replaced by an equal proportion of those who believe those same values in the present generation, society's values will change. Change is really the only constant we have. For though there are periods where culture remains static, a situation usually imposed by such forces as slow communications, limited education, and restricted access to new information, this is not so in the west today.

A person of malicious character, average intelligence, and average education in pre-war 20th Century would have had the point rammed home to them that they were expected to conform to society's values, that were they caught breaking laws they could expect prompt trial (perhaps a lynching or other mob justice) and that they would be judged to be personally responsible for their actions. Children in the 1960's were educated in much the same way, but it was increasingly apparent that these 'rules' or 'mores' of their parent's generation weren't working. They rebelled as a generation, and developed individualistic approaches. There were positive changes, particularly for race relations, sexual equality and homosexual freedom. But there was also a great belief that society had created most of the problems that faced the world today (the 60’s) because of its inflexible values. A child of the 60's would therefore come to believe that they were owed 'decent' treatment from society no matter what. The previous generation's idea of personal responsibility went by the wayside. Increasingly as the 20th century ended and the 21st began, teachers have been encouraged to 'get the students on side' to not engage in 'punitive treatment for misbehaviour' and to remove objective standards (all words must be correctly spelt, grammar must be correct, citations must be consistent and accurate...) and instead mark according to the class average with the best students in the class, irrespective of actual performance given an 'A', and lower performing students rarely, if ever failed. Even a student who is functionally illiterate, and has been shown to be such is still moved up grades for fear of 'harming self-esteem' or 'singling them out.'

It's not that the percentage of pleasant or unpleasant people is noticeably different; it's that the previous corrective treatment, which worked in the majority of cases, has been deemed 'cruel' because it forces people to accept responsibility for their own behaviour. If people of bad character learn that they will never face consequences for their own misbehaviour, why then will they stop? If good students are punished for their hard work, how many will abandon it, seeking instead to fit in with the norm? Naturally, there are great teachers out there, and wonderful schools who do make an enormous difference in the lives of their pupils. Increasingly though such schools and teachers are being driven out, closed down or reformed.

An example I like to list comes from the three years I worked in the UK. Early on in the Blair years, a piece of legislation was passed called "Every Child Matters." Intended to prevent child abuse, it instead perpetrated it in increasing numbers in a different form. I'll explain: according to this legislation, any accusation of abuse against a teacher required that the teacher be stood down (for several weeks), and an investigation undertaken. Sounds reasonable, but it went further than that. The statement "any accusation of abuse," is quite literal. If a student is known to have made eleven false allegations against the same teacher, each proven false. The teacher still has to be stood aside, the accusation listed on their permanent record, and then once they've been proven innocent they are allowed to re-enter the school and try to work in their classes until the next accusation is made. One in three teachers in the UK has had a false allegation made against them. But 'Every Child Matters' gets even worse. If you accurately state "Craig is not working in his lessons and will need to make serious effort if he is to obtain a passing grade at the end of the year." You can be sacked for failing to use language that reinforces the self-esteem of your students. If, as a teacher, you, at any stage, defend a pupil or colleague against a physical assault you can expect charges to be laid against you because you may not, at any time, for any reason, touch a child. Officially, you are allowed to interpose yourself between trouble-makers. In practice however you will be investigated for either physical assault or for sexual assault if you do so. Every Child Matters revised the weighting of evidence. It is now a legal requirement that a child's accusation of abuse be given more weight than a teacher's. So if there are no witnesses and a teacher is accused of abuse, a judge must find in favour of the child, teachers are guilty until proven innocent. Every Child Matters, intended to protect the majority of students is in fact damaging vast numbers of decent, kind and friendly students, because in an environment where there is no discipline, there can be no education. Is it any wonder then that increasing numbers of people are leaving the profession across the UK?

The policies in Australia where I teach now, are not nearly as misguided, but the weighting of policy both official and unofficial is distinctly and almost uniformly in favour of protecting the naughty child, and against giving fair opportunities to succeed to those who strive (whether gifted or not).

To sum up: It's not that people prone to deeply anti-social or malicious behaviour is more common now than it was 5, 10 or 50 years ago. But without the deeply embedded measures against anti-social and malicious behaviours practised in schools, students are not acquiring the values, beliefs and practices which would enable them to change for the better, to integrate with their society students who 10, 20 or 50 years ago would have become hard-working valued members of society are instead becoming layabouts, who believe the great lie: that the world owes them a living. The more they're confronted with the evidence they aren't going to be a multi-millionaire football player, get on 'Big Brother' or 'become a porn star,' the more they resent the person telling them what they desperately need to hear, but actively resist.

If you really want to know what it's like read "It's your time you're wasting" by Frank Chalk

Are things getting worse: yes.

[offiox]

I just read the wiki on the Strauss-Howe generational theory.

They describe the current generation as being a 'hero' generation, epitomised by community spirit, social cohesion, civic pride, and so on. And it seems to me that this is incredibly apt for the facebook and twitter generation.

[Simon_Jester]

I just read the wiki on the Strauss-Howe generational theory.

They describe the current generation as being a 'hero' generation, epitomised by community spirit, social cohesion, civic pride, and so on. And it seems to me that this is incredibly apt for the facebook and twitter generation.

To quote what I said myself here:

The theory is predicated on the idea that national "Crises" occur like clockwork every eighty to ninety years, which is kind of ridiculous. Or at the very least, there's no logical reason for it to be true, so it can't be considered the "cause" of a pattern in generational psychology.

On top of that, different "Crises" demand very very different responses. If this theory cites a correspondence between people born in 1980 and people born in 1900 because both will be "Hero Generations" who have to deal with a "Great Crisis" in their middle age, then by the same logic we should expect people born in the 1940s (who went through a time of cultural awakening during young adulthood) to be like people born in the 1860s (who... didn't).

Basically, the problem is that the pattern they're asserting only exists in recognizable form for one cycle of the pattern. That's not enough to count. Any damn fool can look at "1 2 3 4" and say "oh, the next four numbers will be "1 2 3 4" because it's cyclic." That doesn't mean they're right; the numbers could equally well be "4 3 2 1" or "5 6 7 8" or "6 -9 12 -15" or whatever.

So I'd argue that the Strauss-Howe model is indistinguishable from rubbish, that it is far too soon to tell what the social ramifications of social media will be, and that heroes are where you find them, not where they're predestined to emerge by generational imperatives.

[ArmorPierce]

The theory is predicated on the idea that national "Crises" occur like clockwork every eighty to ninety years, which is kind of ridiculous. Or at the very least, there's no logical reason for it to be true, so it can't be considered the "cause" of a pattern in generational psychology.

I wouldn't call it ridiculous if you believe that economic cycles tend to repeat is self over the course of generations over the long term. There is some evidence for it. Panic of 1837, The Great Depression, Great recession of 2008ish to nowish .

Economic cycles on the shorter term (months-years) are observable phenomenon

My pet theory is that lessons learned from previous major depressions are forgotten or ignored as the next generations who did not live through the great financial crisis take control and become more risky and greedy with their financial decisions.

[Simon_Jester]

ArmorPierce, that ignores all the recessions that happened in off-years. There were panics over and over throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, some of them roughly as large as the panics you cite. Plus, plenty of other crises happen in between recessions- World War One comes to mind.

The point isn't that you can't find economic crises recurring every 80 to 90 years if you cherrypick through the numerous panics which have occured at roughly 10-20 year intervals ever since the modern stock/banking economy was founded. It's that the response to those crises isn't predictable or the same every time. It doesn't have the same effects on generational psychology- the way people reacted to the Great Depression is very different from the way they're reacting to the current crisis, and both are very different from the reaction to a 19th century depression.

The forces involved are at best quasi-cyclic; there's so much room for chaos theory to kick in that you can't generate a predictable four-cycle engine of generations off of it. So calling the people who were born around 1980 a "Hero Generation" because of analogy to people who lived 80 or 160 years earlier, while abstracting out all the confounding variables, strikes me as a very bad model.