Friday I attended the first in a series of new faculty orientation session. The new faculty was required to attend an all day conference the week before school started, at which point it was announced that there would be three more half-day meetings scheduled throughout the semester. I am sure that whomever planned these talks had the best of intentions, but frankly, after a month on the job, if you haven’t figured out where everything is, you should have at least identified who the best go to person is when the eventual question or two comes up. Anyway, it made for a long Friday afternoon.
One of the more interesting moments of the forum came early on when members of the school library services were invited to speak about the various resources offered. The first individual got up to speak and shared a series of statistics about library usage circulation of materials and growth of the collection. His talk was peppered liberally with disparaging remarks about the students. “I would have the best job in the world, if it weren’t for the students,” was the gist of his message. Clearly he thought that the students were incapable of taking care of themselves, or appreciating how well they had it.
A similar topic came up again on Sunday in our church group discussion. We were talking about Love and Logic, and someone started discussing Millennials, or Generation Y, children born between 1982 and 1994. The observation was made that “kids today can’t do things on their own” they’ve been “coddled” and “not made to take personal responsibility.” One speaker cited an example where parents were accompanying their millennial children to job interviews, adding that this generation of children is completely unprepared to deal with the realities of real life.
“Studies have been done.”
“Statistics show.”
My head begins to hurt.
At some point every generation takes a collective sigh and decides not to make the mistakes of their parents. Decisions are made, rules changed, new mistakes made, and in the end, the weary parent eyes its young and says, “what has happened to the youth of today?” Me, I don’t think there is anything wrong with the system. Parents are bound to misunderstand their children, and children their parents, dreams and ideals become the building blocks of new civilizations. We pass on the best of ourselves to our children and hope for the best. The future isn’t supposed to look like the past, and it isn’t supposed to always look better. Decay is part of growth. Obama called this shift from one generation to the next the Moses Generation and the Joshua Generation, a generation of idealists and dreamers, and a generation of doers and builders.
“Like them or not they will be in charge of this country one day.” Says one nervous parent. I think it is interesting to hear comments like this from a group of people talking about Love and Logic. A system designed share control and help give kids choices they can use to navigate though difficult situations. Is there anyone who hasn’t had a fear losing control at some point? One mother in the group talks about life with her four boys. “Give them an inch and they are all over you.” Another says the secret is to model healthy choices and present natural consequences.
My problem, if you want to call it that, is that I don’t really believe the things I am hearing about Generation Y. Sure some of my students can be a pain in the butt, but who hasn’t been in that relationship. Actually a relationship is as good an analogy as any. When one person has most of the control in a relationship it is at best unhealthy, at worst abusive. Tricky when you are a teacher in charge of a classroom full of students. But even here things work themselves out. The person who is the most skilled, knowledgeable or able to manage certain tasks should be the one to manage those tasks. The arrangement is agreed upon up front, the teacher leads, the students takes notes, the class works.
I don’t really know where I want to go with this, I think I just wanted it out where I could look at it and stop wondering why I felt so weird listening to these conversations. I cringed over and over again listening to the librarian talk about the students. I think I wanted to shake him. "Knowing more doesn’t make you right." I wanted to shout, "Knowing less doesn’t make them stupid."
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3 comments:
Funny that this came up today in conversation with the unreliable narrator, parallels between the mothers who just want to get together and complain about their husbands and children and TAs who get together to complain about the students. And I loved how she pointed out that it's the students job not to know everything. And I think that generalizing about a group as large as a generation is fairly treacherous.
On the other hand, I feel like Love and Logic did a lot to help me trust my parenting of my children, and to trust the process by which they learn. Hopefully this group of parents that cares enough to show up at a parenting class will end up with their attitudes shifted a little from seeing their children as opportunistic manipulators to people who behave according to what they learn.
Ms. Mara done already said it: Knowing less doesn’t make them stupid, it makes them students.
Bien sûr, Gen Y students do have different strengths and weaknesses from Gen X and boomer students, and sure, it's wise to take those variations into account (they prefer groups/teams, they're largely visual learners, they like lots of rope with which to hang themselves, they need to know the purpose of learning something, they do often have "helicopter parents")--but any time college staff/faculty start referring to students as "kids"? There's trouble ahead.
Quite evily, reading these comments reminded me of my favorite quote from South Park: "And remember, there are no stupid questions, just stupid people."
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