This is split from The american recruitment thread this idea came to after i had read what JCalhoun said about young people and was wondering on some peoples opinions on my generation cus im 14 so please post your opinions.
Wow, that's letting yourself in for it! Hmmm, lazy, ill-educated, drug-taking good-for-nothing layabouts :lol: Seriously, we have a good number of 14-year olds at our wargames club. As people, I have no objections (to anyone of any age) but they do seem to be badly-educated, most probably not their failing, but that of the increasingly-"liberal" education system. As far as I'm concerned you've already got yourself a couple of good marks for 1) asking (very few people these days ask anything and 2) since you've joined this forum then you're (presumably) hoping to learn new things and exchange ideas, therefore you're obviously not as described in my first sentence. Basically people are people, I've been called rascist because I can state with a perfectly straight face that I hate X "race". Which I do, any race you care to name, but I always have time for individuals, it's groups I don't like, since "groups" work on a group identity. So as a "group" I don't like the young (or old or middle-aged), but as people in their own right I wait to find out what they're like as an individual - everybody manages to be a dickhead at some point in their life, but some people make a habit of it PS I particularly despise the English when they're abroad - our famous lack of language skills is hateful
yeh when its cold, i dont have my hood up unless its realy cold or its raining, i wear hoddies cus i like them, but it dont always have my hood up
to be fair peoples perceptions are very fickle. The yoof of today is attacked in the press as being ignorent of their elders, violent and intimidating in their dress. However 15 years ago I was a yoof and had a skin head, blue teans, bomber jacket and heavy boots and was constantly harrased by the police and made the public fearful. I would wear heavy hats in winter, due to not having hair, and as I walked or used public transport to get everywhere I would often wrap a scarf around my face. Before me there was the punks and then the rockers and always a string of rebalious and dissenfranchinsed people who stick their fingers up at society. I don't think todays youth are particualry any worse than yesterdays and I'm sure that the hoodies of today will become the doctors lawyers and mothers of tommorow just like the rockers, hippies and punks did. Obviously all western society have a %age of permenant drop outs and criminals but I don't think the %age is increasing. FNG
Yeah, nice comment. I used to be a punk (original - before it turned into a fashion thing) and I still wear a leather bike jacket (no bike at the moment, but I used to have a GSX-R750), mirror shades and dress in black with a "strange" haircut - people tend to walk round the edges of the room for the first hour when I go into a new pub, and after 10 minutes talking to me decide I'm a "pussycat". If people thought, instead of going with first impressions, there'd be a lot less bigotry. PS I still consider myself among that group, and I'm a 49 year-old professional design engineer :lol:
But you are still a valued member of society who contributes more than you take. That's what matters. FNG
Ummm, not quite true at the moment - I've managed to be unemployed for effectively 4 years now, ever since I took time off to go to uni to round out my education Society values me so much that I can't get a job because the idiot doing the recruiting (and I've had it said to my face) believes that I'm so qualified that I'll want his job in six months - to which my usual reply is that A) if I wanted HIS job, I'd have applied for it and B) I don't want his job, I want the job I applied for, where I would be doing something other than meaningless paper pushing, and I could contribute to the world in a concrete manner. And I'm about to apply for a free fridge - mine died about Christmas time. OTOH, I keep telling myself I've paid into the system for 27 years, I should be due something (ideally more than £55 a week!)
it is interesting that people perception of the youth of today hasnt changed over the years... i read an articule a few months back in a newspaper from the early 1920s about the shocking lack of respect behaviour and general manner of the youth and how it should be tackled. Its just a generation clash that has happened for centuries...you wait in 20-30 yrs time those who are 15-20 now will be moaning about how bad youngsters are..and so the cycle continues. anyway i coach football with kids age form 7-17 and on the whole they are all decent boys who dont cause me any trouble...pity cant say the same for some of their parents :angry: who often are older than myself and should no better!!
Yeah, but we had better music then :lol: My dad used to whinge about me playing heavy rock, and now I do the same about this rubbish "dance" music. R&B? What's that about, used to stand for Rhythm and Blues, of which ZZ Top were fairly good practitioners, now it's young kids who think wobbling their bottom lip and holding a note for thirty seconds is singing... When I was a lad :lol:
When I was a youngster, the Vietnam War was raging. I registered for 'the Draft' on my 17th birthday. (There is no draft in the United States today...) We grew-up without computers and video-games. We had Rock-and-Roll, that GREAT Mo-Town sound, and were much more connected to the natural world than most of the youth of today. I can remember skinny-dipping in the local quarries--limestone-- and engaging in my share of silliness and such. Looking back, it was a happy-time to be sure. We were lean and mean cause we didn't sit on our butts all day in front of a television or computer-screen. (To qualify that comment, I work in the Info Tech field today... ahem.) There was also a certain innocence that today's youth probably will never know. I grew-up in a small midwestern college-town, and we always had a number of foreign-nationals schooling, or teaching at the University. We rarely locked our doors, or our cars, and we trusted complete strangers for help when we needed it. Rarely did it come back to bite us. The youth of today will find their place in this world, just as we did in our time. I just wish they could find some decent music to listen to! Seems most kids here have embraced that 'Gangsta-Rap' crap and do their best to emulate inner-city ghetto-thugs. I just don't understand. It's not music. It's NOISE. Your generation needs better music. Tim
We have some, you just have to look long and hard and beyond gangsta rap. Honestly, you see these "the youth of today have no respect for their elders and have no manners whatsoever" lines everywhere. The oldest one I've been confronted with was Plato complaining that the boys of his age had no manners, and that in his youth that had all been different. I believe Plato lived in the 4th century BC. However, we will all be saying it at some point.
