For context, I'm 20 years old, part of Generation Z.
This thought process stemmed from a conversation I had with a professor today:
Yes, it’s true that Generation Z has a horrible work ethic, I’ll be the first to admit it, but the problem is not ours. There’s a long chain of finger pointing that goes back nearly a century and arguably nobody knows where it begins. In effect, my generation has little work ethic because we didn’t learn it. Information is getting lost over the generational divides, and while some of it isn’t needed due to societal and technological advances, much of the information being lost is still important, but it’s not the fault of the cohort that’s coming of age. You can find examples of the Greatest Generation (the ones who came of age during the depression and fought in the second World War) complaining about the Baby Boomers, now the Baby Boomers complain about Generation Z… the people most capable of teaching the Boomers was the G.I generation, and yet they didn’t, yet they complain, and the same holds true. There is a single-generation divide between the parents and the offspring, Silent Generation parented Generation Y (Millennials) and so on.
The generation coming of age had little to do with what they were taught, we were the teachees, not the teachers. When you complain about “these kids don’t know how to calculate home finances or repair drywall…” well who took away the Home Ec and Shop classes? Cus it sure wasn’t us, we were the ones waiting at the door, listening to what the teachers said.
So everyone needs to make a greater effort to educate their children and grandchildren, so that way they’ll be the ones who know everything. The concept of the handyman is falling away, 99.6% of the time when you find someone who can run a new electrical circuit, fix your bathtub and build new cabinets, they’re gonna be approaching retirement age, because these skills aren’t being passed along. Once the handymen are in nursing homes and cemeteries, my generation and beyond are going to be struggling and scrambling to fix the crumbling world around us, yet we won’t know how. That’s why, despite being a college kid, I look up to the trade school crowds, they’re making up for lost time and learning the skills they need to keep the world turning.
So much of this is because we’ve shifted from learning in classes to simply regurgitating facts. We can answer the multiple choice questions, but we can’t explain how we know anything, because we don’t. We’re not learners, we’re parrots, and it’s not our fault.
So when you’re in a nursing home wondering why the “young whipper snappers” running the place don’t know how to clean a CPAP machine, look in the mirror. Maybe then you’ll wish you’d taught little Billy something all those decades ago.
This thought process stemmed from a conversation I had with a professor today:
Yes, it’s true that Generation Z has a horrible work ethic, I’ll be the first to admit it, but the problem is not ours. There’s a long chain of finger pointing that goes back nearly a century and arguably nobody knows where it begins. In effect, my generation has little work ethic because we didn’t learn it. Information is getting lost over the generational divides, and while some of it isn’t needed due to societal and technological advances, much of the information being lost is still important, but it’s not the fault of the cohort that’s coming of age. You can find examples of the Greatest Generation (the ones who came of age during the depression and fought in the second World War) complaining about the Baby Boomers, now the Baby Boomers complain about Generation Z… the people most capable of teaching the Boomers was the G.I generation, and yet they didn’t, yet they complain, and the same holds true. There is a single-generation divide between the parents and the offspring, Silent Generation parented Generation Y (Millennials) and so on.
The generation coming of age had little to do with what they were taught, we were the teachees, not the teachers. When you complain about “these kids don’t know how to calculate home finances or repair drywall…” well who took away the Home Ec and Shop classes? Cus it sure wasn’t us, we were the ones waiting at the door, listening to what the teachers said.
So everyone needs to make a greater effort to educate their children and grandchildren, so that way they’ll be the ones who know everything. The concept of the handyman is falling away, 99.6% of the time when you find someone who can run a new electrical circuit, fix your bathtub and build new cabinets, they’re gonna be approaching retirement age, because these skills aren’t being passed along. Once the handymen are in nursing homes and cemeteries, my generation and beyond are going to be struggling and scrambling to fix the crumbling world around us, yet we won’t know how. That’s why, despite being a college kid, I look up to the trade school crowds, they’re making up for lost time and learning the skills they need to keep the world turning.
So much of this is because we’ve shifted from learning in classes to simply regurgitating facts. We can answer the multiple choice questions, but we can’t explain how we know anything, because we don’t. We’re not learners, we’re parrots, and it’s not our fault.
So when you’re in a nursing home wondering why the “young whipper snappers” running the place don’t know how to clean a CPAP machine, look in the mirror. Maybe then you’ll wish you’d taught little Billy something all those decades ago.