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Flower Children and the Hand-Me-Down World
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I grew up in the 60s and early 70s. We were the generation of the future. We were going to make the world a better place. We were opposed to bigotry, intolerance, double-standards, and the regimentation that we saw society imposing on people. We were in favor of peace and understanding, and we promoted individuality. We were the ones who preached that hair length and other appearance didn't matter when measuring the worth of an individual. It was a big joke. We sang "don't give me no hand me down world." Yes, that was one of our songs. We loved it, because it blamed our parents for the world they had given us. We were mad that our parents had given us a world were prosperity was growing, most families needed only one wage earner, and children were safe when walking to school. But the bounty that had been piled on our silver platter simply wasn't enough. Life was tough for us then, we said, and we were determined that we were going to fix things when we grew up and took over. We rebelled against institutions. When I went to school, we didn't have police roaming the hallways. We didn't have metal detectors. We were expected to learn. And we considered the atmosphere oppressive. We burned college buildings (to protest the violence of war, of course). Now our schools have lost control of the students, the learning environment is filled with violence, and trouble makers are tolerated because it might damage them emotionally if they are expelled; which means, of course, that not only are the trouble makers not learning now, nobody is learning, because the jerks are disrupting class so much. We rebelled against bigotry. Yes, we were the tolerant ones. We deplored the fact that people were judged by their hair length; yet, we ridiculed those who wore their hair too short. We bemoaned the fact that clothes mattered; so we all dressed alike and called it individuality. We rebelled against grades. We had some great ideas. Grades didn't matter. It was a person's feelings that mattered. Besides, everybody was supposed to be equal, and using grades as a measure was somehow racist or otherwise unacceptable. Now we have children graduating from high school unable to fill out a job application. Now a high school diploma means nothing, because everybody knows that you get one whether you've learned anything or not. We have now contented ourselves with having illiterate idiots running loose in the world, like the person who calls himself a hacker "Lord Sandman." (See more on Lord Sandman and how he is a fine specimen of our educational system.) We chanted, "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote." Yes, we hated the draft. We hated fighting wars against assholes. So we said if we have to fight, give us the vote. So they gave us the vote; we still refused to fight, and it turned out that we were too lazy to vote. The age group 18-21 has the lowest voter participation of any age group. We didn't mean what we said. We were just selfish, and looking for a way to blame somebody. Yet, there was a certain sensibility to the notion that somebody who might have to fight a war should vote. But that was then. Now, the issue is not whether fighters should vote, but whether voters should be able to get drunk. There are our children--we taught them well, didn't we? The world we have handed down. So we were the flower children. We had all the answers. We knew what was wrong, and we wouldn't make those mistakes. What was the result? The result was that a family now cannot make it decently without two wage earners. Divorce rates are higher than when we were children. The poverty rate has not changed. Crime is more rampant, in the streets, in the schools, in the homes. Our children are illiterate and bigotted, and cannot divide 100 by 10 without a calculator. (How is your child's handwriting? Can you read it?) A major educational testing service recently was revealed to be the victim of widespread cheating. The service knew all the time it was going on, but did too little to correct the situation. A representative of the service explained that cracking down on cheating is harder today, because it's more readily tolerated by society and not viewed as a big thing! As reported in Reuters on November 11, 1997, a survey of 3,210 straight A or B plus students among those who appeared in the 1997 edition of Who's Who Among American High School Students revealed that 76 percent of them admitted cheating in school. Most said they did so because it "didn't seem like a big deal." According to Paul Krouse, the publisher of the Who's Who volume, "What demystifies the issue is that last year we did a survey of parents and asked them what their attitude towards cheating was. It was almost exactly the same -- that they didn't consider it a big deal." Cheating in school is not a big deal? The parents--my generation--say this? I ask you: what are our children going to do when they realize how we--the flower children who complained of the hand me down world--have royally screwed things up, and handed down to our children a world that is morally and educationally bankrupt, or at least becoming that way? Will they resent us? Or do we hope they remain as stupid and ignorant as we have made them, and pray they never are bright enough to realize what a mess we've made of things? My generation blamed the previous for the mess they made of the world. Today, children can blame my generation for the mess we made of them. And how did we, the flower children, create a generation who idolizes people like Eminem? I am truly ashamed of my generation for making the next generation a mob of ignorant boobs. |
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