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Kids these days
May. 29th, 2007 11:15 amTwo things that caught my eye this morning:
This article from New York magazine about New Yorkers at West Point. What particularly struck me was this:
Not for the first time. it strikes me that a lot of kids these days have better manners and more class than the people teaching them.
(Rachel)
Cobb has an interesting analogy regarding people and how they succeed in life (or don't) which harks back to the villeins and outlaws of Sherwood Forest. He also talks a bit about the screwed-up "acting white" phenomenon that affects a lot of middle-class black kids and drags them down into self-destructive behavior...kind of like the "Jackass"/frat boy thing that derails a lot of white kids, I guess. A year or two back I did an extended rant on how failure was in fact an option for a lot of people, and this post of Cobb's harks back to it in a lot of ways. Indeed, you need to quit screwing around in the forest and settle down on the farm if you're going to make anything out of your life.
Related: this essay at Flares Into Darkness. (Maggie's Farm)
This article from New York magazine about New Yorkers at West Point. What particularly struck me was this:
Rosenberg recently went back to Hunter, her old high school, to talk to students about what it’s like to be a cadet right now. Mostly the students were respectful; the faculty was another story. “One of the teachers, when I walked down the hall in my uniform, yelled, ‘No blood for oil!’” she says, her face reddening. “Um, I had nothing to do with that. Then I talked to my old art-history teacher, who’s a sweet guy, and I wanted to tell him I’m taking a bunch of art-history courses now. He was like, ‘Oh, so you’ll know what [the] buildings are before you drop bombs on them.’”
Not for the first time. it strikes me that a lot of kids these days have better manners and more class than the people teaching them.
(Rachel)
Cobb has an interesting analogy regarding people and how they succeed in life (or don't) which harks back to the villeins and outlaws of Sherwood Forest. He also talks a bit about the screwed-up "acting white" phenomenon that affects a lot of middle-class black kids and drags them down into self-destructive behavior...kind of like the "Jackass"/frat boy thing that derails a lot of white kids, I guess. A year or two back I did an extended rant on how failure was in fact an option for a lot of people, and this post of Cobb's harks back to it in a lot of ways. Indeed, you need to quit screwing around in the forest and settle down on the farm if you're going to make anything out of your life.
Related: this essay at Flares Into Darkness. (Maggie's Farm)
