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Printer-Friendly ModeCollege generation unfairly underestimated, prejudged
April 4, 2005 —
It is evident in today's society that often when something goes seriously wrong, others want to place blame on somebody else's shoulders. This is best seen and displayed in the unfair stereotype of laziness and complacency among young people created by some members of the older generation.
This has been a reason that some have even lobbied as the downward direction of our economy or for the reason of other countries passing us in the education category.
Some people who have called younger people lazy or nonproductive really haven't done their research or checked out what is going on at college campuses across the United States. According to Jennifer Phillips, director of National Programs at Harvard's Institute of Politics, 65 percent of college students have reported volunteering to help people. Now for those out there who think that all college students are wasting their time playing video games, partying or listening to music all day long, this statistic should dispel all thoughts of that.
To build off that, I believe that the United States has become a service nation which means that you may need an education for the majority of jobs, but perhaps more importantly, you need the right social skills to perform the job to the best of your ability. Volunteering is the perfect example that college students across the nation can use to develop these skills. Some of these students volunteer so much that their grades may drop from time to time, but isn't what they are doing for those in need more important?
Our society is being run by the notion of needing gas and oil, so we will take our clubs over to Iraq and other nations of the Middle East and bully them to submission. Those who are in power have gotten their priorities all wrong. It may have been necessary to crusade over to the Middle East if Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but recently it has been proven that this was not the case and the United States knows incredibly little about these countries. So what suffered as a result of spending all of this money on the military to go to their glory days and show "The American Way?" Programs at home like education.
People turned their heads from the No Child Left Behind Act. Although this may have had good intentions when passed, it can suck the blood out of the most important part of education at a young age - public schools. If we privatize things for students who can't get along in public schools by pulling the money out of the public schools then the majority starts to pay because of decisions made by a few individuals' parents.
I think that blaming children and college age students for failures in education is a direct insult and a statement made with a lot of audacity. Are we the ones who get to decide what goes into our education in the first place? No, it is those lobbying their way to Washington and trying to convince the world of their Sainthood.
The next time you see someone talking about how bad and negative today's generation is please point them to an example of the good things that some young people are doing in society.
If this does not somehow persuade them to think differently and more positive then ask them if these children were the ones responsible for raising themselves to their current age.