>Everytime I see one, I wonder how he finds people who are so eager for "15 minutes of fame" on TV that they would ignore the "normal" emotion of intense shame for their incredible ignorance. <
Shame once provided serious motivation towards a lot of positive activity and avoidance of much unwise behavior.
Shame has largely vanished--people aren't ashamed of ignorance, in fact, being ignorant is cool, and knowing something, anything, is bad, since it makes the ignorant appear...ignorant. People aren't ashamed of absurd gambling debts, since they can now think of themselves as victims of compulsion. We're all victims, right?
The shame of failing a grade in school used to be the dark dread lurking in the hearts of kids, but now, it doesn't much seem to matter. In the early 1990s, I knew a 10 year old who refused to read signs...mostly he couldn't be bothered. Over the summers, he'd forget how. He was enrolled in what was supposed to be a good school & his parents got him tutors, but the kid didn't care. I attended an ancient elementary school in a blue collar city neighborhood, and don't recall ever hearing of even the dullest kid not being able to read signs. I asked a buddy of mine if she could recall anything like that--she's my age, but she attended a segregated school in Kentucky & you know money was not being thrown at that school. She didn't know of anyone at her elementary school who couldn't read.
So, we're not ashamed anymore by ignorance, by sloth, by imprudent behaviors, or by having 5 children with 5 fathers. I think it's time for a good dose of shame.
Also operating here is the misconception that camera time = celebrity, even glamor. That's why there are women who correspond with and eventually marry convicted serial killers--they think they are becoming associated with a celebrity, who focuses a good deal of time and attention upon them. [If these guys are ever released, these marriages fall apart, because the motivation was the association, not the reality of a marriage.]
bump!
And just who do you think taught Gen-X about not feeling shame in life or in school?
I was lucky in a sense that there were still some older teachers in my public grade school in the 70's but by the time I was in 6th grade, the infiltration of newly minted education majors that were all about free love and disco had started to take hold. I was lucky my WWII parents saved enough so I could attend a Catholic high school.
Other kids, and kids after me were not so lucky. Baby Boomers took over education and educational instruction by the 80's. When you wonder why kids can't add or read and don't feel bad about it, it's because they were never held up to high standards. And most of the Baby Boomer parents (and Gen X) didn't mind because junior was coming home with good grades.
Now that my children just finished 3rd and 1st grade, my wife and I (along with all the Asian Indian immigrant parents who know the value of an education) are not letting the older, Boomer teachers away with such nonsense. We are demanding change, even if that change is being resisted by everything the Baby Boomer educational bureaucracy has got!
You should also make note of all the Baby Boomer feminists whining about how educated women today are staying home with their children instead of working 50 hour weeks. The women they're referring to are Gen-Xers. Gen X knows that being a latch-key kid is no way to grow up and are making a choice that supports families even if aging feminist don't like it.
I completely agree that shame has been underused as a tool for a civil society in the past 30+ years. With the dramatic reductions in abortion, I'm hoping that shame is in fact, making a comeback.