@Spaceship - You shouldn’t worry about such things. Just blame George W Bush and move on.
Relative to other periods of time, we did hit a peak for unemployment about 5 years ago, but that has improved exponentially in the last 5 years–see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/business/us-unemployment-rate-history.
What I think is absolutely more stressful is the cost of education in real dollars to other periods of time. Student debt is becoming a fundamental problem for a vast section of an entire generation.
i work at a college. have any of you considered that kids call the counseling office because the people there answer the phone? the road to getting a mouse out of your university living quarters is not always simple call to facilities…sometimes you have to call a lot of places before you get a helpful response.
count me in as a person that is not fully comfortable criticizing the “kids today” in this way. at a college reunion we learned about what happened to our less resilient classmates who are not available to comment on a forum…several suicides and a particularly brutal domestic violence incident. so they are not here to tell us how playing unsupervised in the backyard and problem solving in the playgrounds of the 1970s helped THEM to grow up resilient.
I am not here to provide a class on deductive reasoning, that said, I think my pithy little story was to convey that sometimes, less parental involvement, can be a good thing. This is consistent with entire schools of thought that endorse that children, at times, are better left off to their own devices, so they can develop coping mechanisms and the ability to resolve their own problems.
I have taught at several universities, both public and private ones–and as well, I am the parent of 3 daughters. So, my perspectives are obtained out of thin air. The other extreme is to cultivate a generation marked by dependent self-pleased solipsism. My point being is that there is a middle ground.
Kids are soft nowadays because of global warming. I had to walk to school uphill both ways in knee-deep snow.
Now that all the snow has melted, kids have a lot more free time to devote to obsessing over BS.
^ I agree completely! D missed the bus this morning, and being the pampered and helicoptered child she is, I solved her problem by driving her to school. I couldn’t believe my eyes: there were crossing guards stationed at not just 1, but at 3 of the small streets exiting the housing development immediately across from the high school. In other words, we aren’t making high school students walk up the sidewalk 1 small block or 2 to reach a safe crossing zone. Sorry, but this is ridiculous.
GFG- in my town it takes a LOT to get a traffic light installed or some other intervention on a busy street. So a couple of enterprising taxpayers have learned that it takes almost no effort to get a crossing guard (basically call the school superintendent’s office and leave a voice mail complaining about how you saw an illegal U-turn or someone speeding in a school zone and voila- a crossing guard materializes on Monday morning). Then, a few months later, you’ve got enough “data” (an interview with the crossing guard) to put in an application to public works to get your traffic light, speed bump, or whatever.
So don’t assume that it’s the HS kids who need the crossing guards. It could be the neighbors (many without kids) who are just doing a creative “workaround” on your municipality.
Here’s a sobering piece of data: The average preteen, teen, and college student today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient of the same age in the 1950’s.
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2000/12/anxiety.aspx
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp7961007.pdf
Re: #67
“Today” in those linked pages was 1993 or 2000.
If we are in a “winner take all” society, how can we fault students for panicking at the thought that they might not be a “winner” and try to convince them that it will be worth their while to remain in the game after set-backs?
I’m curious. Why do you think you failed him when you say he’s thriving? It sounds like you did things just fine. This was supposed to be a reply to one of the earlier comments, but I can’t get it in the right place, and I can’t delete it either.
GFG: Are you certain the crossing guards are solely for the HS students and not for all grade levels? Are those intersections particularly dangerous for crossing due to the HS being there? The traffic at our HS is such that the crossing guard is needed to get the kids across the street in a group, otherwise cars would never get through (kids would be constantly crossing). Those same kids are perfectly capable of crossing the street by themselves.
As someone said above, every generation complained that their kids were softer and more spoiled. There may be more spoiled kids these days, and more of them have parents that can afford to helicopter and send them to college. But there are many more kids in this world that have to fend for themselves. It is not surprising that kids who have an easy life may be less able to handle challenge. Isn’t it true that the second (or third) generation running a business often is less successful than the founder? Less hunger and drive? But many kids of privilege come from families with very high expectations and are self starters, strong, and high achieving. Many kids in families with low expectations are not. And the reverse is true in both cases.
That being said, ease of communication does make a difference. My parents could try to call me, but if I wasn’t in my dorm room, nobody would know where I was. With our kids, a call or text can reach them anywhere.
I was very self reliant. Moved to the opposite coast with a friend and no family right after college graduation. Probably called home once per week. But I still remember a few years later when I started grad school and did poorly on my first big math test, I wanted comfort from my mom! And if I had a household problem, I probably would have called my dad. Of course now I would google it and find the how to on youtube.
Well, yeah, but I was just quoting from the article. I would think that anxiety in this age group has worsened since then.
Re #69
In another thread, there are posters arguing how important SAT scores are or should be for post college employment. I.e. more high stakes and stress in high school, since a low SAT score in high school will make you unworthy of employment at such places, no matter how well you did in college.
Some sort of standardized test scores are needed to apply for certain kinds of jobs. My daughter’s first job was in consulting, and she had to provide her SAT scores. She could have provided GRE or GMAT scores instead, but she didn’t have them because she was applying for jobs, not planning to go to graduate school right away. Those tests are for people applying to graduate programs.
I suppose that if you are not pleased with your SAT scores, you could take the GRE even if you plan to go into the workforce after college graduation and provide those scores instead.
I just read every single item linked in this thread, and many of the items linked from what those links led to, and I’ve done a good bit of reading on this subject myself in the past. And you know what? As far as I or anyone with actual data I’ve read has found, there is really no difference between teen and 20-something resilience then (whenever that was) and now. You know what has changed? People can get help and continue with things like college rather than having to drop out (as a number of people on this thread have pointed out).
So yes, more college students may be showing less resilience—but that isn’t a reflection of less resilience on the part of college students, it’s simply a reflection of there being more of them. So sorry, folks, but you can’t blame this one on parenting styles or smartphones or whatever.
Really, though, I see the whole “Students today are fragile little snowglobes!” as simply another example of the rhetoric that every generation goes through—those older than them criticize them for some supposed generational flaw not because that flaw is there, but because we all apparently forget going through the same hazing process ourselves.
I mean, anybody remember that the original widespread name for gen-X was “slacker generation”? And it’s not like the boomers had many friends among those older when they were the hippies. And so on—in fact, you can look at media for the last more than a century and find this pattern repeating over and over.
Really, the kids are alright. It’s their parents and grandparents who have issues. (But at least we can be pretty sure that statement will continue to be true when today’s kids become the parents.)
@Zinhead I’m certainly not a fan of the Bush Administration, but just blaming them and moving on does nothing to solve the problem, and it’s rather arguable just how much of it is actually their fault, anyway (I think we often greatly overestimate just how much control a presidential administration has). Plus, we do have to confront these problems if we want a positive outlook for our future. We certainly can’t just move on pretending the problems aren’t there. Of course, confronting problems is incredibly stressful.
@boolaHI It’s not just straight unemployment numbers, though. There is a serious underemployment problem, where people with degrees either find only lower paying work, only part time work, or both. A lot of these new jobs being created won’t pay a liveable wage while paying off college debt, and a ton of people are working part time because they can’t find full time work (It’s getting common to open two part time jobs instead of one full time job, because then you don’t have to offer benefits and can justify lower wages). Unemployment numbers are getting better, but the problem isn’t just people being unemployed.
Point taken about the positives about reaching out for counseling services, but calling 911 because you see a mouse in your apartment? Really? No one finds that pretty ridiculous? And I say that as someone who has an extreme aversion to/repulsion of/fear of rodents.