George Will (h/t Paul Roales) has a brief history of the “coarsening” of kids’ culture in the 20th century. He attempts to pin that particular tail on “progressives,” but that part of his undertaking is clumsy and doesn’t much work.
What it does show is that efforts to censor popular culture because it’s corrupting the children comes off looking pretty stupid in retrospect: comic books and Elvis, oh my!
I’ve mentioned this before — I’ve been doing this for six years, there is going to be some repetition — but generation after generation seems to think that the next generation is lazier, dumber, and has worse taste in popular culture than they did. Unless you subscribe to the notion that humanity has been in steady decline since it was kicked out of Eden, this is at least a little ridiculous. We’ve come a long way since we were competing with Neanderthals for supremacy. Somewhere in there, a generation or two must have had better music than its predecessor.
Whenever I see an article or column in the “kids these days” genre, it gets me to rolling my eyes.
Me too. Since the dawn of time, kids haven’t been lazier or stupider, they’ve been different than us. They’ve made different choices, based on advances in technology, or changes in the economy, or any number of factors that didn’t exist when we were growing up. “Well back in MY day…” isn’t really the point, pal.
I find it especially amusing when an older generation suggests a younger one will fail in the workforce, for being lazy, or using technology they didn’t have access to back in the day. Omg, how will anyone get work done when all they do is instant message all day? (Hello, welcome to IM in the workforce! It’s now a “business solution” and makes millions for the companies who develop and sell it.) Only a matter of time before this generation’s technology changes how we do business. It’s not going to bring down the country, it’s going to change it – for the better.
I don’t really roll my eyes, instead I tend to chuckle at how clueless they sound.
Um, if You Kids Today would put down your Rubik’s Cubes and turn down your Walkmans, maybe you wouldn’t miss Will’s point.
Sure, the Culture has been Coarsened!–after all, it’s both an article of faith and of haberdashery with Will–but what he’s blaming on Progressives is the (retrospectively) ludicrous moral panic over comic books and rock n’ roll, and, by extension, contemporary panic over video game content. Because, y’know, some self-appointed comic book critic back in the day defended Ethel Rosenberg. Q.E.D.
Readers with taste for probability might want to consult your last post, Doug, and the ongoing efforts by the Corporate Mouthpiece wing of the Republican party to insist that the sui-generis Teabag Revolution which returned it to power has no interest in moral legislation, or note that the libertarian defense of video-game content occurs only after the goddam things start making more money than FOX. The pre-Presidential pledge of a certain Indiana governor to table the Culture Wars may also be of interest. The reader with a more historical bent might wish to ponder how those two spent their entire lives milking the Republican cash cow which feeds on the grass of moral opprobrium, and only just realized they shouldn’t track bullshit all over the carpets.
I agree, this is a very old trope:
“I wish that there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest. For there is nothing in-between but fighting, stealing, wronging the ancientry, getting wenches with child.”
–William Shakespeare, “A Winter’s Tale” (Act III, Scene 1)
And even older:
“What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?”
–Plato, 4th century B.C.
I have often wished I could somehow transfer all I have learned through Lifetime Experience to my children. Think of what they could be spared if they could just have — right now — the wisdom that took me decades to accumulate. However, they will have none of it — for some unfathomable reason, they prefer to make their own mistakes!
Insight comes at different levels.I remember so well the student telling me how he really loved the French because they had McDonalds and everything tasted the same as here.
But maybe that’s one step up on the 60-yr old who has never been to France but ‘hates’ the French because theyre ‘socialist’.
I have taught at the college level since 1987. I don’t think there’s been any doubt there has been a decline in the quality of students we get at the college level and their work ethic since that time. Long-time college faculty talk about it all the time. In no way are kids smarter today (at least not book-wise) than they were even one generation ago.
Mr. Ogden: I don’t doubt your experience. However, is it possible that your experience is somewhat due to the fact that a higher percentage of high-school graduates are now attending college? In other words, if there is a positive correlation between aptitude/effort and a high school student’s likeliness of attending college, aren’t we putting our “lesser” students in college classrooms when we increase the percentage of high school graduates attending college?
It is hard for me to doubt that Coldplay > Motley Crue (one of the more revered bands of my youth). However, I also believe Motley Crue > Backstreet Boys/N’ Sync.
Doug: right or wrong, we are constantly increasing the size of our safety net. Additionally, more and more young adults are living at home, and “living off” of mom and dad. Isn’t it possible that at least some of our younger adults look around and believe they can have a decent life without having to work hard, which reduces the value of hard work to them?
It’s possible. But adults have been bitching about “kids these days” for millenia, even as the human race has continued to make progress in any number of ways. So, to me, this particular type of complaint has a definite “Boy Who Cried Wolf” quality to it, and I suppose I regard the standard of proof as higher.
I really don’t think that “youth” is any worse that “youth” ever was. I think it simply depends upon one’s perspective.
I will allow that technology has made it easier for everyone, including “youth” to be lazier than ever before. and, it certainly allows more people, including the “youth” to show their education, or lack thereof.
Or, what if it’s all true…due to advances in our shared technology, we continue to increase in population, mostly unchecked by Darwinian pressures, and have (as an organic species) been devolving ever since the bronze age. We are in fact lazier, stupider and if we listen to better music it’s only because our robot overlords remixed those crappy old tracks. Just sayin’…
I am a child of today, and I think most kids waste the technology we have gained over time. Most of my friends watch youtube or porn. They don’t go to encyclopedia pages or research. I think kids are impared in “old-fashioned” common sense.
When I was a soph. in High School, a girl in my class had never heard of Shakespeare, Poe, and Twain. What on earth are her parents doing to her? I think it depends on alot of parents. I have meet a lot of great kids and generally their parents are the same.