Posted on 10/05/2010 2:50:28 AM PDT by Daisyjane69
Are we raising a generation of nincompoops? And do we have only ourselves to blame? Or are some of these things simply the result of kids growing up with push-button technology in an era when mechanical devices are gradually being replaced by electronics?
Susan Maushart, a mother of three, says her teenage daughter "literally does not know how to use a can opener. Most cans come with pull-tops these days. I see her reaching for a can that requires a can opener, and her shoulders slump and she goes for something else."
Teenagers are so accustomed to either throwing their clothes on the floor or hanging them on hooks that Maushart says her "kids actually struggle with the mechanics of a clothes hanger."
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
My first thoughts were in agreement, then I realized every older generation says that about the younger generation. Think about it.
You’re right. In fact, practically the earliest surviving writing (other than government accounting records) records someone railing about how useless the younger generation is.
It’s natural to think time should be frozen at our prime years, whatever they were. For example, the author goes on about tying shoes, but what’s so iconic about that skill, except that it was important in the author’s childhood? A few generations earlier, someone was surely editorializing that today’s children are useless because they can’t use a buttonhook. “Laces? LACES are for pathetic losers!”
“she characterized our grandparents as “The Greatest Generation” and this generation as “The Dumbest Generation”.”
Understand how much of our current dilemna can be laid at the feet of the self-anointed “Greatest Generation”; what do we have today that has not been handed down by them?
Don’t laugh.
We rented an Excursion for a weekend as both of ours were over 20 yrs old each. Neither of ours have remote door unlocking mechanisms, nor half the other gadgets on the newest cars. We even rented one that was sever years old so we could figure out how to turn the damned thing off.
The battery went out on the keyring and we we bumbling around trying to figure out how to get into the car. We were trying to call the rentacar agency or AAA for assistance for 30 minutes when my wife remembered the doors still had a keyhole in them.
I had an employee who I had to speak to concerning excessive time spent on the phone. A few days later they came into my office and assured me that the matter had been addressed; they’d obtained a cell phone...(they couldn’t understand why I wasn’t praising their innovation).
Some people are really %#&@ing stupid.
“They are also the generation of instant food. They lack the patience to cook from scratch.”
I’d think they’d be the second generation of that; this is on their parents, who had already given up on cooking from scratch (actually, their parents were probably the first wave where both parents had to work).
A guy at work asked me if I had a can opener. I tossed him a P-51. (P-38’s bigger brother) He looked at it, said, “Cool. Where’d you get the big ones? Opened his can & handed it back.
Gotta love an old Boy Scout. LOL
I disagree with your inference that our problems today originated with that generation. In my opinion, it is the prior generation to theirs that laid the foundations of much that is wrong, the generation of the first twenty to thirty years of the 20th century.
And it isn’t “self-anointed”, I find that characterization offensive. You do know that Tom Brokaw (who is NOT of that generation) coined the phrase “The Greatest Generation”, right?
The most damaging things we have were handed down to them, in my opinion, and can be encompassed by one word:Liberalism.
Comparatively, my father knew how to hitch a team of horses to a plow. I know how to adjust the mechanical injection pump on a tractor to get an extra 100HP out of it. My son knows how to program the new tractors with a laptop. We all got the fields plowed.
Times and technology change. We focus our energies on learning things we need to survive.
What worries me more about the current generation than what technology they know is their sense of entitlement. Newsflash - your parents don’t owe you anything and life isn’t “fair.”
Somebody make a note now to NOT water the crops with Brawndo.
It IS true that general stupidity isn’t limited to any single generation, and no phase of any generation is free of it. Stupidity is a human condition, and we have all been guilty of it at various points in our lives, and no matter how old we are, can fully expect to be guilty of it again many times before we die.
But there is something insidiously institutionalized about this stupidity they are referring to in this article, and I think it is a variety of factors, nothing that could not be overcome.
As long as I have my 80” television, a 60 ounce cup of Brawndo, and the “Ow, My Balls” Channel, how could there be any dissatisfaction with life?
They folded like cheap suits when the “liberals” wanted to overturn the “establishment”; the beginning of the slippery slope. They watched their children co-habitate, breed without marriage, and overturn basically ervery norm (even making “norm” a bad word); I see no “greatness” there.
Wasn’t Brokaw referring to his father?
Now the “not-so-great” generations are fighting for the right to euthanize the “greatest generation”, as to avoid their retirement costs and end-of-life medical care. I guess someone didn’t pass down a good set of values.
If someone told me (I’m almost 40) that my generation was the “greatest generation”, I’d assume they were kidding. Some great people, certainly not a whole generation. Thankfully, our current economy has my generation taking a right turn beyond my wildest expectations; hopefully this will probably be the group that finally deals with the “illegal alien” question, affirmative action, and other gifts we’ve inherited.
The government schools had a lot to do with it. But hey, most FReepers will agree that free babysitting is the best, even if it produces an illiterate, socialist, unthinking moron who can’t fathom a can opener.
If you have the kids, it is YOUR responsibility to make sure they can function without professional government handlers.
Parents should be teaching children most of these things; if they don’t take the time to do it they deserve nincompoop children. I’m surprised when I have one of those moments with any of my children, but I’ll make them learn it then & there!
By the way, I didn’t mean that I found your characterization of their generation “offensive”...what I meant to say was that it would be offensive to them.
Many of that generation (in particular the military men) would be offended by the charge of self-aggrandizement...I have found it true that a good deal of them didn’t want to even bring attention to their role in the shaping of this country due to their wartime experiences.
I wasn’t offended by it, I simply thought it was inaccurate, I don’t think many of them look at themselves that way.
This story all sync’s in with the Florida morons that call 911 for cold hamburgers....
But its got electrolytes! They’re what plants crave!
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