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In the future, when the (hopefully) cyclical nature of
educational standards swings back toward well-
instructed public school children, what will people of the
world think about the United States, circa 1967-2010?
They will likely remember only a few shining lights that cast a shadow over the rest of the bulging masses of lazy, "entitled" slackers who cared more about comfort and entertainment than knowledge acquisition, work ethic or basic human purpose. We will be remembered as not only the "me first" generations, but also as the "me too" generations as well. Original thought, for the most part, seems to be on hiatus, and it won't be generated by staring at YouTube for hours on end. For many years, we have been socially engineered in our culture to celebrate everyone, regardless of achievement; then we pause and wonder why so few people strive to actually achieve anything of worth. It does seem a bit pointless to press forward when everyone around you tells you that the smart way to get things done is to just mellow out and take it easy. Or better yet, why bother to try harder at anything, when "everyone's a winner!" We can all just sit back, get poor grades, have pre-adolescent sex at recess, practice lazy work ethics, let our bodies soften to jelly, partake of whatever recreational drug we think will paint a brighter face on our lives, play video games or watch television all day instead of doing something constructive, go to the casino and dump another paycheck into the hands of those who know you better than you know yourself. I'm sure we could all come up with more examples to add to this embarrassing list. If all else fails, move back home. Hey, you can always depend on your parents' work ethic to save the day, right? They're used to working for a living. All that "get up and go to work" stuff every day is just way too boring, right? I don't know about you, but I'm fed up with watching the generations after me think they can make their mark on the world by some future, magical cosmic wish fulfillment. They will learn the hard way, as generations before them have, that there isn't always time to do later what needs to be taken care of now. All too often, time runs out. We've now experienced decades of what appears to be a social experiment: no real consequences for under-par scholastic achievements, no serious standards for our school children to aspire to or to be held accountable for, physically and emotionally mollycoddling our youth out of fear of "trauma," taking authority away first from teachers and then parents, and allowing our popular culture to dumb down first our minds, then the minds of our kids. Because of the sorts of jobs I've held for the last ten years, I've seen countless families in public settings. All I can say without going on too long, is basically that the vital art of parenting has been lost to all but a few. We have allowed the Enlightened Class of Psycho-babbling Intellectuals, The State, and the unscrupulously omnipotent Media Machine, turn us and many of our children into selfish, lazy, whiny, angrily disenfranchised, unproductive consumers. What's the answer to this dilemma? We can't put the ills of the world back into Pandora's Box, so hoping for one thing to turn it all around is naïve. There is no single answer that everyone would find acceptable. We have, in the last three generations, set the stage for the final act. However, I still believe that the show does not ultimately have to be a tragedy. I think there is still a way, however it may be accomplished, to insure that more inspiring possibilities can be wrought from this present disappointment. Perhaps the new "playwright" will rise from the current consumer-zombie trash heap and find a way to get us looking at the world through each others' eyes again. Because definitely, when I look around me and try to find a common denominator in all this mess, I keep coming back to our collective lack of common courtesy. Trivial as it seems, it may be a meter of how ill our society is becoming, since general civility consistently decreases year after year in the United States. But isn't that something you can turn back up with your latest gadget? No... and it never will be. |