What is wrong with today’s youth?
The more resources they have, the less information they retain. Are IPODs diminshing their brains?
As I teenager - I remember that I could always hold a decent or intellictual conversation with any person of any age. If nothing - I would learn something.
My peers were the same way. There was sense of civility, manners and decorum.
Are these the future leaders of world? Scary…
Re: Disappointed in today's youth
^ I taught middle school for two years, so I know what you're talking about. HOWEVER....I noticed that my students who were responsible and respectful.....had good role models for parents. Their parents were very involved in their lives in a positive way and supervised them regularly and supported them.
On the flip side...the students who were disrespectful, had no regard for rules or propriety....had parents who weren't that involved in their lives. I'm not kidding at all. Often times, teachers can't even get a hold of such parents on the phone or even for a conference. And when you do manage to talk to them on the phone and tell the parent about their child's poor grades and disrespectful behavior..........the parents can be unbelievably apathetic. There is a statistic that 80% of what children learn comes from home. There are true stories about parents not being involved in their children's lives because they're so busy spending time with their girlfriend/boyfriend, or doing drugs, or getting drunk. If you look at educational research, parental support has a HUGE impact on how kids turn out.
You also have to understand that kids will be kids. As kids, most of us *have done stupid things behind our parents backs. But those of us whose parents are more involved were less likely to stray too far. It's like my English professor once said, *"Teenagers will be teenagers in no matter what part of the world they live in, or what culture they belong to, or what generation they come from. They are naturally inclined to be more curious, more rebellious, more likely to arrogantly believe that they understand the world better than experienced adults, and more likely to be superficial in their conversations and viewpoints" ** It's a natural part of being a kid/teenager. Sometimes I would wonder in amazement at the the shallow/self-absorbed comments of my students, and then I'd realize that **I was also like them when I was young. And as you grow older, you develop into a more mature person with wisdom. And as I said earlier....parental boundaries make a difference.
Also, limitations can be set on how ipods, cell phones, and Internet should be used.
Re: Disappointed in today's youth
^ agree with all the points above. I've been a University professor for the past 7 years, and over the years, I've noticed a considerable difference in the level of sincerity that students exhibit towards learning, and the level of respect they confer to their teachers as well as their peers. Sometimes I feel that I’m falling prey to the same tendency when my elders used to say “in our times, we used to…” – but I’m not even that far apart from my students in terms of age – so it’s not even a matter of generation gap per say – or so I’d like to think.
To relate to njgal’s point about intellectual conversations, there are a few tangible observations that I have made over my last few years of interacting with students year after year. I believe that the convenience afforded by new technologies and tools has resulted in their relaxed and often careless work ethic. I’m not saying that technologies are to blame… the relaxed aptitude and over-reliance on superficial information is just a symptom of not using technologies effectively. For example, most students are too dependent on Google and Wikipedia… which is okay as a starting point for research, but they don’t even use those tools effectively… and rarely follow it up with additional resources to do more research. In my classes I refer to this behavior as heuristic processing of information, i.e. depending too much on obvious, tip of the iceberg information, and primarily relying on technology cues to decipher what information is relevant. The opposite behavior which I require from students is what I call systematic processing of information where someone takes the time to think through the problem, devise a plan and approach their tasks more methodically with an analytical mindset.
On the other point about respect and decorum - again, in my opinion, it’s the disproportionate preference for the corporeal over the ethereal that makes youth discourteous towards their colleagues. Their perceptions are dominated by commercialism, and they see everyone’s role in terms of material exchanges. As a professor, it’s my job and I get paid for what I do… so they are simply my customers and I’m providing a service to them, and beyond that relationship, there’s little deference that needs to be afforded to me. Again, I’m not saying every student is like this… but many are.
In the end, a lot of it actually boils down to what redvelvet said about parental upbringing and the atmosphere at home. It is very easy for me to identify the type of rearing an individual has had at home when I talk to them. I also agree that you can’t always expect rational behavior from teens, but once someone is in their early 20s, things ought to be a little different… a little more serious… and that’s the time when you can really tell whether the irrational, careless, and disrespectful behavior in the teen years was just an aberration, or a lasting personality trait.
Today, if a man asks a woman to become a full time mother , she screams back and says how dare you stop me from following my career ... They think they can do everything .. but the fact is that the time they spend away from their kids is the time they should have been with them.
Do today's women believe in religion? they have twisted it for their own good ..
do they believe in the morals that the former generations used to believe in ? nope, the morals are old fashioned and for the third world to follow ...
Those who themselves do not believe in knowledge/ Islamic culture / religion ... you cant expect them to bring up morally and culturally strong individuals....
Kids are the reflection of the elders in a family... and today the law teaches them kids "freedom" at age 4 !! by 12 years of age they are fully grown up and capable of making decisions .. stop them and you can end up in jail ...
We are witnessing the degeneration of the next generation !
PS : we all as individuals have become so strongly opinionated and that is half the damage done .. coz the more a person becomes opinionated and judgemental the more he/she stops listening to people around him/her.... In olden times, women used to listen to the elders and respected them no matter what they said and followed them sincerely .. but its the other way round these days !
As I teenager - I remember that I could always hold a decent or intellictual conversation with any person of any age.
teenagers of all eras think exactly that of themselves.
i think you are just getting old, because you are talking like my preachy uncles and aunts did when i was a teenager. except it was the television instead of the ipod which took the blame then.
and now these uncles and aunts watch every frikkin desi soap that airs on their much maligned evil telly.
Re: Disappointed in today's youth
its all give and take :)
Almost all ‘senior’ generations have been crying the same way for centuries 
^ agree with all the points above. I've been a University professor for the past 7 years, and over the years, I've noticed a considerable difference in the level of sincerity that students exhibit towards learning, and the level of respect they confer to their teachers as well as their peers. Sometimes I feel that I’m falling prey to the same tendency when my elders used to say “in our times, we used to…” – but I’m not even that far apart from my students in terms of age – so it’s not even a matter of generation gap per say – or so I’d like to think.
To relate to njgal’s point about intellectual conversations, there are a few tangible observations that I have made over my last few years of interacting with students year after year. I believe that the convenience afforded by new technologies and tools has resulted in their relaxed and often careless work ethic. I’m not saying that technologies are to blame… the relaxed aptitude and over-reliance on superficial information is just a symptom of not using technologies effectively. For example, most students are too dependent on Google and Wikipedia… which is okay as a starting point for research, but they don’t even use those tools effectively… and rarely follow it up with additional resources to do more research. In my classes I refer to this behavior as heuristic processing of information, i.e. depending too much on obvious, tip of the iceberg information, and primarily relying on technology cues to decipher what information is relevant. The opposite behavior which I require from students is what I call systematic processing of information where someone takes the time to think through the problem, devise a plan and approach their tasks more methodically with an analytical mindset.
On the other point about respect and decorum - again, in my opinion, it’s the disproportionate preference for the corporeal over the ethereal that makes youth discourteous towards their colleagues. Their perceptions are dominated by commercialism, and they see everyone’s role in terms of material exchanges. As a professor, it’s my job and I get paid for what I do… so they are simply my customers and I’m providing a service to them, and beyond that relationship, there’s little deference that needs to be afforded to me. Again, I’m not saying every student is like this… but many are.
In the end, a lot of it actually boils down to what redvelvet said about parental upbringing and the atmosphere at home. It is very easy for me to identify the type of rearing an individual has had at home when I talk to them. I also agree that you can’t always expect rational behavior from teens, but once someone is in their early 20s, things ought to be a little different… a little more serious… and that’s the time when you can really tell whether the irrational, careless, and disrespectful behavior in the teen years was just an aberration, or a lasting personality trait.
nicely said proffesor!
Re: Disappointed in today's youth
Example of a conversation with my 19 (yes 19 not 15 year old cousin). He scored a 33 on his ACT so I know he's not stupid and my aunt and uncle did not raise him like this.
Me: Salam Saquib. How are you?
Him: Sup Coz
Me: I haven't seen you in a while. What have you up to? how are classes?
Him: Lame
Me: Seriously? It thought you were really enjoying college life.
Him: Nah
He's not the only one. Most kids have this "one word answers" approach to everything. Just obesrve them - don't even converse amongst themselves anymore.
I am not talking about watching too much T.V or listening to music - it's the instant gratification bit that scares me.
They find the answer to a question on wikipedia and then close the browser. NOT taking the NEXT step to read the whole page and get a bit more information about the subject.
These days coporate training centers are changing the format of learning for the new user. They believe that they new generations will not be able to grasp too much information at one time. They will tid bits of information - need to know basis. On demand learning.
I guess the world will adapt - it always has.
Re: Disappointed in today's youth
^^
It is just perception..
You know in a particular Pyramid there is an inscription which laments the ways of the young. The human race has done well for itself. :D
Today, if a man asks a woman to become a full time mother , she screams back and says how dare you stop me from following my career ... They think they can do everything .. but the fact is that the time they spend away from their kids is the time they should have been with them.
Do today's women believe in religion? they have twisted it for their own good ..
do they believe in the morals that the former generations used to believe in ? nope, the morals are old fashioned and for the third world to follow ...
Those who themselves do not believe in knowledge/ Islamic culture / religion ... you cant expect them to bring up morally and culturally strong individuals....
Kids are the reflection of the elders in a family... and today the law teaches them kids "freedom" at age 4 !! by 12 years of age they are fully grown up and capable of making decisions .. stop them and you can end up in jail ...
We are witnessing the degeneration of the next generation !
PS : we all as individuals have become so strongly opinionated and that is half the damage done .. coz the more a person becomes opinionated and judgemental the more he/she stops listening to people around him/her.... In olden times, women used to listen to the elders and respected them no matter what they said and followed them sincerely .. but its the other way round these days !
Why dont you look at the matter positively. People are able to think for themselves and take independent decisions which are good for them. They just dont blindly follow what is given to them. They have the "freedom" to think. Just by saying that we are witnessing the degeneration of the next generation is not going to take us anywhere. There has been no marked rise in crime and people are still living with all these problems.
^ agree with all the points above. I've been a University professor for the past 7 years, and over the years, I've noticed a considerable difference in the level of sincerity that students exhibit towards learning, and the level of respect they confer to their teachers as well as their peers. Sometimes I feel that I’m falling prey to the same tendency when my elders used to say “in our times, we used to…” – but I’m not even that far apart from my students in terms of age – so it’s not even a matter of generation gap per say – or so I’d like to think.
To relate to njgal’s point about intellectual conversations, there are a few tangible observations that I have made over my last few years of interacting with students year after year. I believe that the convenience afforded by new technologies and tools has resulted in their relaxed and often careless work ethic. I’m not saying that technologies are to blame… the relaxed aptitude and over-reliance on superficial information is just a symptom of not using technologies effectively. For example, most students are too dependent on Google and Wikipedia… which is okay as a starting point for research, but they don’t even use those tools effectively… and rarely follow it up with additional resources to do more research. In my classes I refer to this behavior as heuristic processing of information, i.e. depending too much on obvious, tip of the iceberg information, and primarily relying on technology cues to decipher what information is relevant. The opposite behavior which I require from students is what I call systematic processing of information where someone takes the time to think through the problem, devise a plan and approach their tasks more methodically with an analytical mindset.
On the other point about respect and decorum - again, in my opinion, it’s the disproportionate preference for the corporeal over the ethereal that makes youth discourteous towards their colleagues. Their perceptions are dominated by commercialism, and they see everyone’s role in terms of material exchanges. As a professor, it’s my job and I get paid for what I do… so they are simply my customers and I’m providing a service to them, and beyond that relationship, there’s little deference that needs to be afforded to me. Again, I’m not saying every student is like this… but many are.
In the end, a lot of it actually boils down to what redvelvet said about parental upbringing and the atmosphere at home. It is very easy for me to identify the type of rearing an individual has had at home when I talk to them. I also agree that you can’t always expect rational behavior from teens, but once someone is in their early 20s, things ought to be a little different… a little more serious… and that’s the time when you can really tell whether the irrational, careless, and disrespectful behavior in the teen years was just an aberration, or a lasting personality trait.
I have got years of experience in the software industry and have watched each year as campus graduates join the company. I have seen a marked difference in the attitude with each passing batch. When I joined the industry, boss was God to us. Disagreeing with him had its own ramifications. It is not like that these days. Campus graduates question decisions and it is difficult to get a buy in from them. It is difficult to get them to work on weekends and for extended hours. The positive aspect is that these guys understand what is good for them and take decisions appropriately. They work hard when it is required and are smart. They are fast and at times am amazed by the productivity. There are odd ones out, but there were these losers in any generation. Hence I think it is wrong to make a generalisation.
Re: Disappointed in today's youth
^ that's why I didn't exactly make a generalization and I talked about my own tangible observations and qualified them by saying that in the end a lot depends on how a person is brought up. All I'm saying is if you look at "trends", then you will certainly notice some marked patterns toward more superficial work ethics, relaxed attitude, and disproportionate preference towards commercial exchanges over relational ones. All these things existed before as well... but while I saw these traits in 1 out of 5 people, today I see them in 3 out of 5 - that's all.
Why dont you look at the matter positively. People are able to think for themselves and take independent decisions which are good for them. They just dont blindly follow what is given to them. They have the "freedom" to think. Just by saying that we are witnessing the degeneration of the next generation is not going to take us anywhere. There has been no marked rise in crime and people are still living with all these problems.
Phhhullleeeeese give me a break simply ... crime rises? independent decisions ? what the heck are we talking about ?
crime is in every other person's life today ... kids got freedom so much so that they forgot to learn how to responsibly deal with that freedom ....
There is no freaking excuse in the world for forgetting ones religious values and respect for elders .. something which is drastically drastically drastically missing from today's generation .....
There is nothing positive about it ... this should be addressed by us coz imagine what kind of a world we are leaving behind for our kids to live in .. We are creating for them a highly materialistic world that will have a rat race in years to come , human values will deteriorate and only the survival of the best will be the ultimate possibility ... but unfortunately not every one is the best and therewont be anyone to look after the interests of the not so best people ... We must accept our follies and put in every effort to maintain a high decorum of human values and pass it on to the next generations as a very valuable gift.
I'd like to think i was pretty civil and well mannered in my behavior, though i'm no kid, i used to be once.
Perhaps another factor in why are youth are so bad (this could apply to everyones kids not just those of our people)
Is bad experiences in life.
I led a prettty harsh life myself. I used to bow and kow-tow to my elders and all that......but as i grew up and realised i was surplus to requirments being the fourth son in a fammily of five sons and two daughters!
So i became more barbaric, i realised my elders where always quarelling on useless points rather than working to bring food to our table! I had to work to keep the whole fammily fed and well looked after. My elder brothers were hardly as immaginative and inspiring as they should have been, the poor souls would work like mules and spend thier earnings before they got home.
My meager pay of a soldier had to keep three elder brothers and thier fammilies fed and not only that but i had to look out for my parents and ensured that they could travel the world at my expense and do whatever they wanted. I helped bring up three of my siblings who were younger than me including my two sisters and help them out whenever i could.
all these pressures made me an absolute maniac of a teenager. I still bitterness in me, i helped my father and grandfather come to terms over a long standing feud. I helped my young brides fammily too, helping them in every way a son should and they didn't even look after my wife, she died in a hospital ward and not one person from my wifes fammily ever came to see her.
I'm not saying my life is typical but sometimes our youths go through hell especailly if like me they come from a poor and large fammily. I had to work hard to make something of my life and i still havent finished.
If i wasn't such a fiercely independant and cruelly efficeint teenager i would never have made it to my twenties becuase i'd have been weak. In the right environment any kid can grow up well, but as a kid i fought every day with the village kids and battered anybody who spoke against me regardless of the fact some were cousins becuase i didn't wan to face the fools at home.
My elder brothers were also inherently lazy so were my uncles and cousins......
if you grow up in a fammily where ever day is a struggle and where in a society you are looked down upon you grow a festering hatred for anythig that sparks your anger.(particularly things you see as controling factors like school, doctors MPs police practically anything your parents look up to!)
I'm a devout Muslim so i still have to respect my elders and i do, but some of them are such hypocrites i would crush them like beetles if they were not my elders.
Before blaming the youth look at the fammily they come from, you cannot blame the sons of poor fammilies for going against everything in society and civilisation if thier parents are blind to humanity.
I'd like to think i was pretty civil and well mannered in my behavior, though i'm no kid, i used to be once.
Perhaps another factor in why are youth are so bad (this could apply to everyones kids not just those of our people) Is bad experiences in life.
I led a prettty harsh life myself. I used to bow and kow-tow to my elders and all that......but as i grew up and realised i was surplus to requirments being the fourth son in a fammily of five sons and two daughters!
So i became more barbaric, i realised my elders where always quarelling on useless points rather than working to bring food to our table! I had to work to keep the whole fammily fed and well looked after. My elder brothers were hardly as immaginative and inspiring as they should have been, the poor souls would work like mules and spend thier earnings before they got home.
My meager pay of a soldier had to keep three elder brothers and thier fammilies fed and not only that but i had to look out for my parents and ensured that they could travel the world at my expense and do whatever they wanted. I helped bring up three of my siblings who were younger than me including my two sisters and help them out whenever i could.
all these pressures made me an absolute maniac of a teenager. I still bitterness in me, i helped my father and grandfather come to terms over a long standing feud. I helped my young brides fammily too, helping them in every way a son should and they didn't even look after my wife, she died in a hospital ward and not one person from my wifes fammily ever came to see her.
I'm not saying my life is typical but sometimes our youths go through hell especailly if like me they come from a poor and large fammily. I had to work hard to make something of my life and i still havent finished.
If i wasn't such a fiercely independant and cruelly efficeint teenager i would never have made it to my twenties becuase i'd have been weak. In the right environment any kid can grow up well, but as a kid i fought every day with the village kids and battered anybody who spoke against me regardless of the fact some were cousins becuase i didn't wan to face the fools at home.
My elder brothers were also inherently lazy so were my uncles and cousins......
if you grow up in a fammily where ever day is a struggle and where in a society you are looked down upon you grow a festering hatred for anythig that sparks your anger.(particularly things you see as controling factors like school, doctors MPs police practically anything your parents look up to!)
I'm a devout Muslim so i still have to respect my elders and i do, but some of them are such hypocrites i would crush them like beetles if they were not my elders.
Before blaming the youth look at the fammily they come from, you cannot blame the sons of poor fammilies for going against everything in society and civilisation if thier parents are blind to humanity.
Faris , my heart goes out to you dude ... When a person has a reason to fight against all odds then he is known as a brave man ... but not majority have had to fight such circumstances ... therefore there is no excuse for them for their behaviour ...
there are always exceptions like yourself , you have a valid justification of who you are and why you are what you are today ..... but those kids who find every facility of life at their disposal ,what reason do they have other then the fact that their parents were pathetic at parenting !
Re: Disappointed in today's youth
I will give you my own example. If you see me on the forums posting and flooding you will not even know I am a 4.0 student etc etc. I leave all my intellectuality for the blogs and university because I do not want to be labelled a nerd etc. These days even if people are intellectual enough to hold decent conversations they do not because they do not want to be uncool and they do not want to become typecasts.
I once posted intellectual advice in life 1 and mirch was shocked to know that I could think and hold intellectual conversations too.
I agree technology has to a certain extent diminished our capability to retain information and not be what our parents were but it has a lot to do with peer pressure too. Not all youth is how you describe them to be.
I had to give an interview and when it was transcribed it turned out to be 2300 words long. Just goes to show not every swan is white, if you spot a black one.
I'd like to think i was pretty civil and well mannered in my behavior, though i'm no kid, i used to be once.
Perhaps another factor in why are youth are so bad (this could apply to everyones kids not just those of our people) Is bad experiences in life.
I led a prettty harsh life myself. I used to bow and kow-tow to my elders and all that......but as i grew up and realised i was surplus to requirments being the fourth son in a fammily of five sons and two daughters!
So i became more barbaric, i realised my elders where always quarelling on useless points rather than working to bring food to our table! I had to work to keep the whole fammily fed and well looked after. My elder brothers were hardly as immaginative and inspiring as they should have been, the poor souls would work like mules and spend thier earnings before they got home.
My meager pay of a soldier had to keep three elder brothers and thier fammilies fed and not only that but i had to look out for my parents and ensured that they could travel the world at my expense and do whatever they wanted. I helped bring up three of my siblings who were younger than me including my two sisters and help them out whenever i could.
all these pressures made me an absolute maniac of a teenager. I still bitterness in me, i helped my father and grandfather come to terms over a long standing feud. I helped my young brides fammily too, helping them in every way a son should and they didn't even look after my wife, she died in a hospital ward and not one person from my wifes fammily ever came to see her.
I'm not saying my life is typical but sometimes our youths go through hell especailly if like me they come from a poor and large fammily. I had to work hard to make something of my life and i still havent finished.
If i wasn't such a fiercely independant and cruelly efficeint teenager i would never have made it to my twenties becuase i'd have been weak. In the right environment any kid can grow up well, but as a kid i fought every day with the village kids and battered anybody who spoke against me regardless of the fact some were cousins becuase i didn't wan to face the fools at home.
My elder brothers were also inherently lazy so were my uncles and cousins......
if you grow up in a fammily where ever day is a struggle and where in a society you are looked down upon you grow a festering hatred for anythig that sparks your anger.(particularly things you see as controling factors like school, doctors MPs police practically anything your parents look up to!)
I'm a devout Muslim so i still have to respect my elders and i do, but some of them are such hypocrites i would crush them like beetles if they were not my elders.
Before blaming the youth look at the fammily they come from, you cannot blame the sons of poor fammilies for going against everything in society and civilisation if thier parents are blind to humanity.
Are you for real Faris.. Somehow not everything adds up. Please re-read the post.
Phhhullleeeeese give me a break simply ... crime rises? independent decisions ? what the heck are we talking about ?
As much as you disagree, these are values that every person treasures. Living under dictatorships would have numbed the yearning for free thought.
crime is in every other person's life today ... kids got freedom so much so that they forgot to learn how to responsibly deal with that freedom ....
Crime is in every other person's life everyday through the generations. In the past hordes of barbarians used to kill at will and there was the rule of the jungle everywhere. Thankfull that is now past apart from some parts of the world where the rule of the law does not exist.
There is no freaking excuse in the world for forgetting ones religious values and respect for elders .. something which is drastically drastically drastically missing from today's generation .....
Let us be honest here. When you were young did nt your parents ask you to be more religious and pious. It happens in every generation. When I was young, I was often asked by my parents to be more religious and respectful of the old. It is again a matter of perception.
There is nothing positive about it ... this should be addressed by us coz imagine what kind of a world we are leaving behind for our kids to live in .. We are creating for them a highly materialistic world that will have a rat race in years to come , human values will deteriorate and only the survival of the best will be the ultimate possibility ... but unfortunately not every one is the best and therewont be anyone to look after the interests of the not so best people ... We must accept our follies and put in every effort to maintain a high decorum of human values and pass it on to the next generations as a very valuable gift.
This is the same kind of fear that the ancient Egyptians had. They were particularly worried about how the next generation was going to survive. They felt that the younger generation had no value for money. Dont worry. The human race would survive to become better and greater.
What is wrong with today's youth?
The more resources they have, the less information they retain. **Are IPODs diminshing their brains? **
As I teenager - I remember that I could always hold a decent or intellictual conversation with any person of any age. If nothing - I would learn something. My peers were the same way. There was sense of civility, manners and decorum.
Are these the future leaders of world? Scary...