Kids these days are even dumber than kids were back when our parents were adults.? ? ?
Back when our parents were adults, I was a kid. But my parents are still adults. Well, actually, they’ve both passed, but they were adults right up to the very end. Hmmm.
Either the caffeine is still in the tummy and not yet in my bloodstream causing me to misunderstand, or this is a sneaky backhanded way of calling us all dumb. I’m too confused to know whether I should feel insulted.
You think our kids are dumber, just think how much dumber foreign kids are! Why do you think I’m going to give your tax dollars away so kid in other countries can be aborted? And why do you think I’m making it easier for terrorists to kill our children? If we kill enough of them, maybe we’ll get smarter kids!
I assume the slide is deliberate. I remember camping out for Star Wars tickets and keeping a journal of the random things said by the teenage boys behind me, or some of the cleverer ones in front.
My favorite one (that would make it past the swear filter) was, “Dude! It’s been like HOURS since we slept!”
As opposed to minutes? Is narcolepsy that much of an issue these days?
When one kid was debating going to the midnight showing, going home, and then going to school the next day versus just seeing it the next night, another kid encouraged him by saying, “Come on! Wouldn’t it be great to go to school and say you’d already seen it? It’s so much better than saying you [ahem, what he apparently normally does at that time of the night]”.
The kid responded with, “HEYYYYY… That’s Personal!”
Not even a sliver of a breath of denial – poor kid.
No question today’s kids are dumber. Some of the kids at my son’s kindergarten can’t even recite the periodic table, calculate the escape velocity of Jupiter or do quadratic equations.
OK, so the gist of the question is whether each generation is dumber than the previous. I once saw a High School Matriculation Exam from about 1920. Holy Crap! In terms of having a clue, I can say with no exaggeration that I am a notch or two above average, but that test was BRUTAL. If that kind of knowledge was required to get into college 90 years ago, we’ve no doubt gone way downhill.
Practical knowledge has deteriorated even more rapidly. How many of today’s teens know how to tune up a car, or weld, or even pound a nail without getting bloody? They can textmessage in the dark one thumb, but can’t fix a leaky faucet to save their life. There’s been a lot of talk about “Jobs Americans Won’t Do” but that might be just a euphemism for “Jobs Most Americans Can’t Figure Out.”
Reclaim the schools! Demand higher performance! Somehow instill the concept that having skills in a trade is a good thing – that shop class is not the hangout for losers!
If someone would have told me when I was a kid that I needed to wear a helmet to ride my bike I would have said no way am I going to look like a homosexual retard and then I would have punched them in the nads! Kids today don’t say and do stuff like that so they are very much dumber!
Which is why, if you are able, you must homeschool your children. The public school system is designed to dumb down the masses. Remember it’s the liberals that decide the curriculum, encourage the teachers unions and ensures the public outcry when there is talk of cuts in teh schools. It’s the biggest governmnet jobs program ever invented….and it will always be there and continue to grow because “it’s for our children and our future”. Sure, it guaruntees the future of the Democratic Party. THe more people in thier system, the more control they have!
ARGGGG!1!1!
OK, I’ll stop ranting now….this is the subject that get’s the steam coming outta my ears!
Oh, and proof of it was the “Yea Obama! Obama Obama!” written on my car window in white nail polish on Tuesday. I’m dead serious. I told DH I still refuse to take my “Republican Chick” sticker off the car.
WOW GUYS!! did you guys see that blagojevich press conference this afternoon? some of his staff were on camera before blago appeared and it looks like he has monica lewinsky and rachel maddow on his staff! I can imagine that his staff meetings are held in a closet with these two!–i wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall to watch those two give him their “input”—hehheh!
Back when our parents were adults? According to my parents They had to kill a whale to get oil for the lamps every morning, walk 5 miles uphill each way to get to school, that they got to go to 1 day a year, then come home and kill another whale so that they could see to do their evening chores, then spend hours worshiping president Jefferson, then they got to take turns sleeping standing up cause their parents were hogging the floor. So we had it so easy, man they thought we were dumb.
Kids today are dumb, over half of them voted democrat.
At least most of my generation had enough sense to come to work dressed professionally for their positions. It’s incredible what I see these days. The hippie office people come in with long, unkempt hair, t-shirts, pajama-like shorts and flip-flops. The kids on production come in dressed like they just left high-school; baggy pants below their butts, t-shirts or tank tops 3 sizes too large and containing obscene slogans / pictures or gang slogans, and hats worn anyway except the way they were designed to be worn. It seems that those of us in the skilled trades (mechanics, machinists & fabricators) are the only ones that dress for the job, but 90% of us (where I work) are ex-military, which explains it. It seems like all the non ex-military tradesmen coming in have no drive, knowledge and skills to begin with. Innominatus…I believe you are correct on your practical knowledge theory. School shops must not teach squat anymore…you have to learn these trades through the armed forces.
Ussjimmycarter still IS a kid! Wear your damn helmet or some nanny stater like Nancy Peelousy is gonna kick your a$$!
And, hell. I raised my kids by myself for many years with one hand tied behind my back and I wasn’t even grown up yet! Sheeit. (Sugarlumps, where’d ya put my rectal / stroke meds?)
The other thing that I did when I was a youngin’ was when some dill-weed teacher told me to do something I usually didn’t do it! Like when I was getting an A in Creative Writing when I was a Senior in High School. My idiot teacher told me that I hadn’t turned in my “extra credit assignment”. I told her that I didn’t need to since I had an A. She told me it was “required”. I told her that it was “extra credit” and therefore I would not need to do it, but thanks for caring! I spent some time with the Principle, almost didn’t graduate, wrote the damn paper and got a B in the class!
Retards today don’t challenge authority! They just do whatever the hell they are told. Sad! Especially because all the teachers are left wing ding-bats!
Helmet’s on-tight Jimmy! Did you really have a stroke? Hope you are doing ok? I shall reserve some of the obvious snarky comments until I know that you are…
I think the official number is that we loose the equivalent to a letter grade every ten years, so a HS senior is as educated as a HS sophomore 20 years ago. A very well respected educator I have met a few times says that if you keep your kids in public education (or if you are in public education), don’t consider it education, consider it enriched daycare. Take responsiblity for learning at a higher level for yourself.
READ from intelligent sources. Ideally, include a number of older books (50-3000 years old) in your regular schedule. I once read two books on the Medici that were written 80 years apart. It told me as much about the cultures at the times they were written as it did the subject matter. Read the classics, the great conversation. Read engineering works. Remember what is repulsively boring at one age may be fun and interesting at another, so never write off an area of study permanently. I highly recommend studying logic as well, since so few of our leaders and even famous educators and scientists seem to know what Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc means. Any number of democratic assertions can be ripped to shreds this way because frankly a democrat using English is like Bevis doing calculus – you might see a lot of symbols and letters on the board, but you can be pretty certain they are the wrong ones, in the wrong order, and coming to the wrong conclusion.
you are describing a Classical education….one many homeschool families use in one form or another. We learn from living books rather than text books. (Well, math comes from a text) It’s the way pretty much everyone learned until the past century.
I don’t know. I think my children are so much smarter than me, of course they have their dads genes too so that helps a lot.
When I was young I thought I was so smart, then I grew up and as I did my parents got smarter and smarter. Now people my age talk about how stupid kids today are. I think the difference here is perspective.
I wish I could come up with something even slightly amusing but ever since the coronation I’ve been a trifle depressed. Not enough to maul any x-ministers but then again if Al Gore should happen by I might change my mind. Somebody ought to maul him, just on general principle.
#16 I agree with most of your comments.. I am a machinist who learned by working. But you don’t have to be ex-military to have discipline and focus. I know, because I am the product of a career (Army)Air Force Officer, who was one grandfather, and an “uneducated” (by todays standards at least) Grandfather who knows more than most Phd’s and is a Farmer. They both have discipline. They both have purpose: Family. I am neither ex-military(I tried, but my military grandfathers daughter wouldn’t allow it), nor am I as intelligent or experienced as my Father’s Father.The problem is that the young people today have no Fathers, no Grandfathers. To them, it’s their right to have a job and express themselves by dressing like the homeless. If I owned a business, you can be damn sure I would educate them that they don’t have the RIGHT to be employed by me, and if they don’t like it, they can go work for my competitor… please. Unless you have a union job, you are being paid to do the work you were hired to do. It’s not Fascism, its ‘I give you the money, so I tell you what to do…. if you don’t like it get a new job’. Most employers won’t do that anymore, because it’s either racist, sexist, or too expensive to defend against lawsuits or false workers comp/unemployment claims.
I know I am not entitled to anything except life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness… and I know that I must defend these rights if I am to keep them. Kids no longer have people to teach them this. Single mothers who choose to be victims are the model our youth is following. No father to tell the boys not to victimise women, and more girls who see being victimised is the easy way to be a government subsidised ‘hero’. rinse and repeat.
Cox Communications runs ads for High Speed Cable internet
that are all about how you need their High Speed Low Drag Hyper Mega SuperDeeDuper faster internet service so your kids can be so much smarter, do their homework faster and be in College at age 12.
Do you get those ads in your local area?
Then you pay $1200 a year for cable, High speed internet and peripherals,
so your kid wastes time sending misspelled, textspeak emails to
their idiot myspacebook friends,
the ones they just saw a couple hours ago at school during
selfesteem-teambuilding-socialization classes,
the ones they replaced the teaching of anythiing useful with.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
They could be spending time wisely, writing snarky remarks about current events
to friends they haven’t met yet at http://www.IMAO.us or plugging their own blog like their Dad.=>Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School
18. ussjimmycarter says:
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Retards today don’t challenge authority!
Kids have no authority to challenge. Parents who want to be friends with their children; teachers empathizing with teenage angst; societal self-indulgence irrespective of debt burden; it all demolishes the boundaries and the necessity of self-discipline. There is no authority; only indulgence. Yes, this type of thing has been going on forever, but with every generation it gets ratcheted up another level.
That’s the broad brush. Then I look at my children, and at their friends and neighborhood compatriots. They are teenagers, they are studying, they are in after-school activities, most of them are working part time somewhere, they are respectful, when they dine with us their table manners are, er, adequate, they go to church (except one who goes to mosque). They screw up regularly, but they’re kids. They’re good kids.
It must be all those other kids that we’re talking about.
Not to sound racist, but last week Bill Cosby on Meet the Depressed said that we spend about $8000 a year educating a black child, the dropout rate is 50% in some cities, and 60% of the dropouts end up in prison where we spend $41000 a year on them, so we should think about spending more on them to keep them out of jail.
Sure, Bill. And the best way to win at blackjack [pardon the pun] is to quit while you’re ahead.
Why not address the problem that they think doing well in school is like trying to be white? Intelligence is unpopular. Indulgence is cool. Can’t afford indulgence? Put a cap in someone’s ass.
While in line for a lottery ticket, I overhead a teacher [a black man] from an inner city school. He said one school was better than another because the students would at least sit down and behave. They wouldn’t do the work, but at the other school the kids just run wild.
Government gets an F at educating. They can’t even babysit right.
Pammyv ,You said it HOMESCHOOL!!!!!! All the way. Don’t let your kids get into the nanney state.
Teach them responsibility and give them an education. Then eventually when the rest of the dumacrats are too stupid to know what is going on we can step in and take over .
# 32: Then eventually when the rest of the dumacrats are too stupid to know what is going on we can step in and take over .
That’s the plan (shh don’t tell anyone or the NEA will continue to try to ban homeschooling!) THe homeschool kids (and a handfull who are teflon to the indoctrination) will be the only ones who can think for themselves and will be ruling the world next generation!
Hello IMAO family! Wanted to share our news and wasn’t sure where to post (this seemed like a good place since it’s about KIDS!)
We have a new daughter! From China! Got her pic/iinfo on Thursday after a LONG (over 4 year) wait!!! She is lovely (just ask 4 of 7 and NunyaB!) She is 14 months old so please keep her in your prayers (her name is Sarra – pronounced Sarah). We will go get her at the end of March!
Thanks! I’m going crazy but it’s the good kind! Wish I could go get her NOW! My husband is making up t-shirts w/her pic on for all of us as we speak – haha.
While I know I’m in the minority here I really have to bring this up.
Children today have been brought up by people who have little to no respect for anything. Children don’t respect teachers because their parents don’t. They don’t respect their parents because their grandparents, teachers and the government don’t. How do they know this? The Simpsons, Family Guy, Malcolm in the Middle et al, not to mention a steady diet of garbage from Hollywood that has undermined the family for the last 70+ years. That what we say and how we treat each other. I may not like the things that someone does and I may make pithy remarks here on this blog but I would not say or do anything that would hurt or harm someone or their reputation on purpose.
I have seen people abuse clerks, police, nurses, journalists, military members, gays, straights, black, white, it doesn’t matter. Liberals, Conservatives, Independents, Libertarians and Socialist , atheists, Christians, Jews, Buddists as well are guilty of lowering our civility quotient. We should be able to disagree without resorting to hyperbole, falsehood and out and out lies, but we don’t seem to be able to do that. Now we have generations of people who can’t disagree without it being a personal affront.
I wish it were not so. Even though my children are reasonably respectful, I didn’t make them say “ma’am or sir.” I wish I had. I wish I had been more careful of what I said, who I said it to, what I allowed them to be exposed to and I wish my parents had be more diligent as well. The fact is children are an unmarked slate onto which we (their parents, teachers and those they look up to) write the story of their lives.
Sulamie; Congrats on your new addition! You have been hsing longer than me (only our 3rd year)…..I am under your wings.
Seanmahair: No you are not in the minority. I agree with you. Children are disrespectful to authority and it’s from the entertainment industry and the parents (who were raised on teh entertainment industry) It’s really sad.
I had an incident last week. I had the boys watch the ceremonies on Tuesday. My eldest was giving my attitude because he didn’t want to watch Obama (guess I’ve been pretty vocal this past year). Anyway, I had to explain that even though we don’t agree, we are fortunate to live in a country where there is a peaceful exchange of power, blah, blah blah…..
It was bad enough when there were only 3 TV networks.
They called TV ‘a wasteland’ back in the early 60s, by now it’s more like the dark side of the moon, or the 4th level of hell.
Save TV for special events or a family treat, and your kids might still have a chance.
As Jim Carey said in ‘The Cable Guy’, “Some one has to kill the baby sitter!” (TV)
I am actually a teacher in the public schools, but I agree with you all (it helps that I’m from a “Red” state). State and national government wants to improve education, but we can’t discipline the students or make them learn. It is so frustrating! I plan to homeschool my children (when/if I have them). If it weren’t for the imminent collapse of most of the newspaper industry, I would go back to work there.
While there are many positive things about my job, the fact that most students reach high school resentful of their teachers, simply putting in their time until graduation, eats away at me. I wish we could go to the European or Japanese models and track students on an academic or vocational curriculum instead. Education standards could be higher again – even though it’s a wonderful idea, we need to revise the “Equal and appropriate education” plan. All students should be expected by everyone, including themselves, to do their best in school and learn something useful. Teaching to the lowest common denominator and giving in to parent demands to lessen homework and curriculum loads have helped no one.
As it was noted earlier, I DO feel like we who teach are providing a daycare service. This needs to be stopped! Question: What is the purpose of school? Hopefully we as a nation can properly answer this question someday.
I agree, with one exception. Our children need to have homework that tests what they have already learned or that has some real purpose other than some Mickey Mouse exercise just to say there is home work.
My middle schooler comes home with stuff neither his father or I can help him with, and we are college graduates.
My senior (who graduated semester because if she went for the rest of the year she’d either have a stroke or seriously hurt someone -teachers,students or especially administrators) had to do a 10 page research paper in such detail that by the time they were half way through most students we’re more than willing to take the D just to be done. Having just finished (with a cumulative 3.85 grade point average ) my degree, in History, I believe we did and do more papers on more varied subjects than, say, English majors, I have never written any paper with the guide lines imposed by the English department at the school.
Not everyone needs to go to college, not everyone is going to be an engineer. But every uses the bathroom, a car, a bus, electricity, furniture, live in a structure, or uses roads ……. Why are we not training the young people who don’t do well academically in vocations anymore? Because we don’t value the accomplishments of those who are not “smart” enough?
I know very smart people who couldn’t pour water out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel. Children are different, people are different, and above all teachers should know that. Not everyone is an academic, thank goodness.
Next time you’re toilet is blocked up call a PhD. Let me know how that works out for you.
Child idiotness seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of tax payer money put in to public education.
Kids these days are even dumber than kids were back when our parents were adults. ? ? ?
Back when our parents were adults, I was a kid. But my parents are still adults. Well, actually, they’ve both passed, but they were adults right up to the very end. Hmmm.
Either the caffeine is still in the tummy and not yet in my bloodstream causing me to misunderstand, or this is a sneaky backhanded way of calling us all dumb. I’m too confused to know whether I should feel insulted.
In an Obama world, you should always feel insulted.
Is that another of your coded racist slurs against Barack “Who’s Sane?” Obama’s girls?
By the way, what do you call an argument between a drunk whitey, black man, Mezkin, and Korean?
a racial slur.
You think our kids are dumber, just think how much dumber foreign kids are! Why do you think I’m going to give your tax dollars away so kid in other countries can be aborted? And why do you think I’m making it easier for terrorists to kill our children? If we kill enough of them, maybe we’ll get smarter kids!
Speaking of dumb youth, have you seen the “refresh everything” website.
I assume the slide is deliberate. I remember camping out for Star Wars tickets and keeping a journal of the random things said by the teenage boys behind me, or some of the cleverer ones in front.
My favorite one (that would make it past the swear filter) was, “Dude! It’s been like HOURS since we slept!”
As opposed to minutes? Is narcolepsy that much of an issue these days?
When one kid was debating going to the midnight showing, going home, and then going to school the next day versus just seeing it the next night, another kid encouraged him by saying, “Come on! Wouldn’t it be great to go to school and say you’d already seen it? It’s so much better than saying you [ahem, what he apparently normally does at that time of the night]”.
The kid responded with, “HEYYYYY… That’s Personal!”
Not even a sliver of a breath of denial – poor kid.
No question today’s kids are dumber. Some of the kids at my son’s kindergarten can’t even recite the periodic table, calculate the escape velocity of Jupiter or do quadratic equations.
OK, so the gist of the question is whether each generation is dumber than the previous. I once saw a High School Matriculation Exam from about 1920. Holy Crap! In terms of having a clue, I can say with no exaggeration that I am a notch or two above average, but that test was BRUTAL. If that kind of knowledge was required to get into college 90 years ago, we’ve no doubt gone way downhill.
Practical knowledge has deteriorated even more rapidly. How many of today’s teens know how to tune up a car, or weld, or even pound a nail without getting bloody? They can textmessage in the dark one thumb, but can’t fix a leaky faucet to save their life. There’s been a lot of talk about “Jobs Americans Won’t Do” but that might be just a euphemism for “Jobs Most Americans Can’t Figure Out.”
Reclaim the schools! Demand higher performance! Somehow instill the concept that having skills in a trade is a good thing – that shop class is not the hangout for losers!
Kent,
Brushing ones teeth is personal, but not shameful. . .
If someone would have told me when I was a kid that I needed to wear a helmet to ride my bike I would have said no way am I going to look like a homosexual retard and then I would have punched them in the nads! Kids today don’t say and do stuff like that so they are very much dumber!
Somehow instill the concept that having skills in a trade is a good thing
FYI – It’s currently in the formative stages, but Mike Rowe, host of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs, has taken up that mantle with his new website.
Which is why, if you are able, you must homeschool your children. The public school system is designed to dumb down the masses. Remember it’s the liberals that decide the curriculum, encourage the teachers unions and ensures the public outcry when there is talk of cuts in teh schools. It’s the biggest governmnet jobs program ever invented….and it will always be there and continue to grow because “it’s for our children and our future”. Sure, it guaruntees the future of the Democratic Party. THe more people in thier system, the more control they have!
ARGGGG!1!1!
OK, I’ll stop ranting now….this is the subject that get’s the steam coming outta my ears!
Oh, and proof of it was the “Yea Obama! Obama Obama!” written on my car window in white nail polish on Tuesday. I’m dead serious. I told DH I still refuse to take my “Republican Chick” sticker off the car.
WOW GUYS!! did you guys see that blagojevich press conference this afternoon? some of his staff were on camera before blago appeared and it looks like he has monica lewinsky and rachel maddow on his staff! I can imagine that his staff meetings are held in a closet with these two!–i wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall to watch those two give him their “input”—hehheh!
Back when our parents were adults? According to my parents They had to kill a whale to get oil for the lamps every morning, walk 5 miles uphill each way to get to school, that they got to go to 1 day a year, then come home and kill another whale so that they could see to do their evening chores, then spend hours worshiping president Jefferson, then they got to take turns sleeping standing up cause their parents were hogging the floor. So we had it so easy, man they thought we were dumb.
Kids today are dumb, over half of them voted democrat.
At least most of my generation had enough sense to come to work dressed professionally for their positions. It’s incredible what I see these days. The hippie office people come in with long, unkempt hair, t-shirts, pajama-like shorts and flip-flops. The kids on production come in dressed like they just left high-school; baggy pants below their butts, t-shirts or tank tops 3 sizes too large and containing obscene slogans / pictures or gang slogans, and hats worn anyway except the way they were designed to be worn. It seems that those of us in the skilled trades (mechanics, machinists & fabricators) are the only ones that dress for the job, but 90% of us (where I work) are ex-military, which explains it. It seems like all the non ex-military tradesmen coming in have no drive, knowledge and skills to begin with. Innominatus…I believe you are correct on your practical knowledge theory. School shops must not teach squat anymore…you have to learn these trades through the armed forces.
Ussjimmycarter still IS a kid! Wear your damn helmet or some nanny stater like Nancy Peelousy is gonna kick your a$$!
And, hell. I raised my kids by myself for many years with one hand tied behind my back and I wasn’t even grown up yet! Sheeit. (Sugarlumps, where’d ya put my rectal / stroke meds?)
The other thing that I did when I was a youngin’ was when some dill-weed teacher told me to do something I usually didn’t do it! Like when I was getting an A in Creative Writing when I was a Senior in High School. My idiot teacher told me that I hadn’t turned in my “extra credit assignment”. I told her that I didn’t need to since I had an A. She told me it was “required”. I told her that it was “extra credit” and therefore I would not need to do it, but thanks for caring! I spent some time with the Principle, almost didn’t graduate, wrote the damn paper and got a B in the class!
Retards today don’t challenge authority! They just do whatever the hell they are told. Sad! Especially because all the teachers are left wing ding-bats!
Helmet’s on-tight Jimmy! Did you really have a stroke? Hope you are doing ok? I shall reserve some of the obvious snarky comments until I know that you are…
Yeah, when I was a kid, ussjc. So, kid goves not required. ‘Cause when you go down hill when you’re young, they come off!
No, actually, Obamymamma has made me crazy. Plus, I’ve been real busy. Damn the economic torpedoes, full speed ahead to filthy riches!!
No, actually, ooooh, The One smiled at me…. Tingles….
** O/T for a sec **
You guys seriously crack me up with all the silly nicknames for our new overlords. So far, just today, I’ve seen
Barack “Who’s Sane?” Obama
Nancy Peelousy
McLame
Grahamnesty
And I haven’t forgotten Plugs or Her Thighness either
** end O/T **
Carry on.
The future sure as hell isn’t what it used to be!
I think the official number is that we loose the equivalent to a letter grade every ten years, so a HS senior is as educated as a HS sophomore 20 years ago. A very well respected educator I have met a few times says that if you keep your kids in public education (or if you are in public education), don’t consider it education, consider it enriched daycare. Take responsiblity for learning at a higher level for yourself.
READ from intelligent sources. Ideally, include a number of older books (50-3000 years old) in your regular schedule. I once read two books on the Medici that were written 80 years apart. It told me as much about the cultures at the times they were written as it did the subject matter. Read the classics, the great conversation. Read engineering works. Remember what is repulsively boring at one age may be fun and interesting at another, so never write off an area of study permanently. I highly recommend studying logic as well, since so few of our leaders and even famous educators and scientists seem to know what Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc means. Any number of democratic assertions can be ripped to shreds this way because frankly a democrat using English is like Bevis doing calculus – you might see a lot of symbols and letters on the board, but you can be pretty certain they are the wrong ones, in the wrong order, and coming to the wrong conclusion.
Kent:
you are describing a Classical education….one many homeschool families use in one form or another. We learn from living books rather than text books. (Well, math comes from a text) It’s the way pretty much everyone learned until the past century.
I don’t know. I think my children are so much smarter than me, of course they have their dads genes too so that helps a lot.
When I was young I thought I was so smart, then I grew up and as I did my parents got smarter and smarter. Now people my age talk about how stupid kids today are. I think the difference here is perspective.
I wish I could come up with something even slightly amusing but ever since the coronation I’ve been a trifle depressed. Not enough to maul any x-ministers but then again if Al Gore should happen by I might change my mind. Somebody ought to maul him, just on general principle.
#16 I agree with most of your comments.. I am a machinist who learned by working. But you don’t have to be ex-military to have discipline and focus. I know, because I am the product of a career (Army)Air Force Officer, who was one grandfather, and an “uneducated” (by todays standards at least) Grandfather who knows more than most Phd’s and is a Farmer. They both have discipline. They both have purpose: Family. I am neither ex-military(I tried, but my military grandfathers daughter wouldn’t allow it), nor am I as intelligent or experienced as my Father’s Father.The problem is that the young people today have no Fathers, no Grandfathers. To them, it’s their right to have a job and express themselves by dressing like the homeless. If I owned a business, you can be damn sure I would educate them that they don’t have the RIGHT to be employed by me, and if they don’t like it, they can go work for my competitor… please. Unless you have a union job, you are being paid to do the work you were hired to do. It’s not Fascism, its ‘I give you the money, so I tell you what to do…. if you don’t like it get a new job’. Most employers won’t do that anymore, because it’s either racist, sexist, or too expensive to defend against lawsuits or false workers comp/unemployment claims.
I know I am not entitled to anything except life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness… and I know that I must defend these rights if I am to keep them. Kids no longer have people to teach them this. Single mothers who choose to be victims are the model our youth is following. No father to tell the boys not to victimise women, and more girls who see being victimised is the easy way to be a government subsidised ‘hero’. rinse and repeat.
The smarter kids are smarter. The dumber kids are dumber.
I was going to bring up the single motherhood factor but blackheli beat me to it.
OUR parents WERE adults.
Cox Communications runs ads for High Speed Cable internet
that are all about how you need their High Speed Low Drag Hyper Mega SuperDeeDuper faster internet service so your kids can be so much smarter, do their homework faster and be in College at age 12.
Do you get those ads in your local area?
Then you pay $1200 a year for cable, High speed internet and peripherals,
so your kid wastes time sending misspelled, textspeak emails to
their idiot myspacebook friends,
the ones they just saw a couple hours ago at school during
selfesteem-teambuilding-socialization classes,
the ones they replaced the teaching of anythiing useful with.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
They could be spending time wisely, writing snarky remarks about current events
to friends they haven’t met yet at http://www.IMAO.us or plugging their own blog like their Dad.=>Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School
Kids have no authority to challenge. Parents who want to be friends with their children; teachers empathizing with teenage angst; societal self-indulgence irrespective of debt burden; it all demolishes the boundaries and the necessity of self-discipline. There is no authority; only indulgence. Yes, this type of thing has been going on forever, but with every generation it gets ratcheted up another level.
That’s the broad brush. Then I look at my children, and at their friends and neighborhood compatriots. They are teenagers, they are studying, they are in after-school activities, most of them are working part time somewhere, they are respectful, when they dine with us their table manners are, er, adequate, they go to church (except one who goes to mosque). They screw up regularly, but they’re kids. They’re good kids.
It must be all those other kids that we’re talking about.
Not to sound racist, but last week Bill Cosby on Meet the Depressed said that we spend about $8000 a year educating a black child, the dropout rate is 50% in some cities, and 60% of the dropouts end up in prison where we spend $41000 a year on them, so we should think about spending more on them to keep them out of jail.
Sure, Bill. And the best way to win at blackjack [pardon the pun] is to quit while you’re ahead.
Why not address the problem that they think doing well in school is like trying to be white? Intelligence is unpopular. Indulgence is cool. Can’t afford indulgence? Put a cap in someone’s ass.
While in line for a lottery ticket, I overhead a teacher [a black man] from an inner city school. He said one school was better than another because the students would at least sit down and behave. They wouldn’t do the work, but at the other school the kids just run wild.
Government gets an F at educating. They can’t even babysit right.
Pammyv ,You said it HOMESCHOOL!!!!!! All the way. Don’t let your kids get into the nanney state.
Teach them responsibility and give them an education. Then eventually when the rest of the dumacrats are too stupid to know what is going on we can step in and take over .
# 32: Then eventually when the rest of the dumacrats are too stupid to know what is going on we can step in and take over .
That’s the plan (shh don’t tell anyone or the NEA will continue to try to ban homeschooling!) THe homeschool kids (and a handfull who are teflon to the indoctrination) will be the only ones who can think for themselves and will be ruling the world next generation!
Hello IMAO family! Wanted to share our news and wasn’t sure where to post (this seemed like a good place since it’s about KIDS!)
We have a new daughter! From China! Got her pic/iinfo on Thursday after a LONG (over 4 year) wait!!! She is lovely (just ask 4 of 7 and NunyaB!) She is 14 months old so please keep her in your prayers (her name is Sarra – pronounced Sarah). We will go get her at the end of March!
Thanks! I’m going crazy but it’s the good kind! Wish I could go get her NOW! My husband is making up t-shirts w/her pic on for all of us as we speak – haha.
PS – Pammy, she will eventually join our other 3 kiddos as homeschoolers!!!!! In my 7th year with my oldest – what a blessing!
Jobs Americans can’t do: another few years of the teacher’s unions, and picking lettuce will be included in that description.
Then mccain won’t be able to make his $50.00 an hour offer anymore. No American will be qualified to accept.
While I know I’m in the minority here I really have to bring this up.
Children today have been brought up by people who have little to no respect for anything. Children don’t respect teachers because their parents don’t. They don’t respect their parents because their grandparents, teachers and the government don’t. How do they know this? The Simpsons, Family Guy, Malcolm in the Middle et al, not to mention a steady diet of garbage from Hollywood that has undermined the family for the last 70+ years. That what we say and how we treat each other. I may not like the things that someone does and I may make pithy remarks here on this blog but I would not say or do anything that would hurt or harm someone or their reputation on purpose.
I have seen people abuse clerks, police, nurses, journalists, military members, gays, straights, black, white, it doesn’t matter. Liberals, Conservatives, Independents, Libertarians and Socialist , atheists, Christians, Jews, Buddists as well are guilty of lowering our civility quotient. We should be able to disagree without resorting to hyperbole, falsehood and out and out lies, but we don’t seem to be able to do that. Now we have generations of people who can’t disagree without it being a personal affront.
I wish it were not so. Even though my children are reasonably respectful, I didn’t make them say “ma’am or sir.” I wish I had. I wish I had been more careful of what I said, who I said it to, what I allowed them to be exposed to and I wish my parents had be more diligent as well. The fact is children are an unmarked slate onto which we (their parents, teachers and those they look up to) write the story of their lives.
If that’s too much pressure, get a frisbee.
Sulamie; Congrats on your new addition! You have been hsing longer than me (only our 3rd year)…..I am under your wings.
Seanmahair: No you are not in the minority. I agree with you. Children are disrespectful to authority and it’s from the entertainment industry and the parents (who were raised on teh entertainment industry) It’s really sad.
I had an incident last week. I had the boys watch the ceremonies on Tuesday. My eldest was giving my attitude because he didn’t want to watch Obama (guess I’ve been pretty vocal this past year). Anyway, I had to explain that even though we don’t agree, we are fortunate to live in a country where there is a peaceful exchange of power, blah, blah blah…..
Gotta be careful! Kids take in everything we say!
Sarra is a cutie – confirmed.
Smarter kids = less television.
It was bad enough when there were only 3 TV networks.
They called TV ‘a wasteland’ back in the early 60s, by now it’s more like the dark side of the moon, or the 4th level of hell.
Save TV for special events or a family treat, and your kids might still have a chance.
As Jim Carey said in ‘The Cable Guy’, “Some one has to kill the baby sitter!” (TV)
#29 – Terry_Jim,
“They could be spending time wisely, writing snarky remarks about current events to friends they haven’t met yet”.
Sounds like a good plan to me!
I’d seen ‘Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School’ somewhere before, but it’s still true.
I am actually a teacher in the public schools, but I agree with you all (it helps that I’m from a “Red” state). State and national government wants to improve education, but we can’t discipline the students or make them learn. It is so frustrating! I plan to homeschool my children (when/if I have them). If it weren’t for the imminent collapse of most of the newspaper industry, I would go back to work there.
While there are many positive things about my job, the fact that most students reach high school resentful of their teachers, simply putting in their time until graduation, eats away at me. I wish we could go to the European or Japanese models and track students on an academic or vocational curriculum instead. Education standards could be higher again – even though it’s a wonderful idea, we need to revise the “Equal and appropriate education” plan. All students should be expected by everyone, including themselves, to do their best in school and learn something useful. Teaching to the lowest common denominator and giving in to parent demands to lessen homework and curriculum loads have helped no one.
As it was noted earlier, I DO feel like we who teach are providing a daycare service. This needs to be stopped! Question: What is the purpose of school? Hopefully we as a nation can properly answer this question someday.
I agree, with one exception. Our children need to have homework that tests what they have already learned or that has some real purpose other than some Mickey Mouse exercise just to say there is home work.
My middle schooler comes home with stuff neither his father or I can help him with, and we are college graduates.
My senior (who graduated semester because if she went for the rest of the year she’d either have a stroke or seriously hurt someone -teachers,students or especially administrators) had to do a 10 page research paper in such detail that by the time they were half way through most students we’re more than willing to take the D just to be done. Having just finished (with a cumulative 3.85 grade point average ) my degree, in History, I believe we did and do more papers on more varied subjects than, say, English majors, I have never written any paper with the guide lines imposed by the English department at the school.
Not everyone needs to go to college, not everyone is going to be an engineer. But every uses the bathroom, a car, a bus, electricity, furniture, live in a structure, or uses roads ……. Why are we not training the young people who don’t do well academically in vocations anymore? Because we don’t value the accomplishments of those who are not “smart” enough?
I know very smart people who couldn’t pour water out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel. Children are different, people are different, and above all teachers should know that. Not everyone is an academic, thank goodness.
Next time you’re toilet is blocked up call a PhD. Let me know how that works out for you.