College students and their safe space

[Moliere]

Give those graduates a needed dose of reality

When I questioned his judgment, the principal said, "Just give the kids some sound graduation advice."

I asked, "Should I tell them I hear the Monsanto plant is hiring?"

"No," said the educrat. "Encourage them. Tell them they can do anything."

"So I should lie? Have you seen most of these kids? They can't do anything. Most think Shariah law is a daytime TV show hosted by a no-nonsense judge."

That's the problem. Kids are getting pie-in-the-sky advice and, judging by obesity rates, they are also eating the pie.

Should I turn into Maya Angelou and tell entitled kids — who graduated because of grade inflation, who think Mao Zedong is the Asian equivalent of French kissing, who don't read newspapers and who can't find Syria on a map — that they can do anything? Or would a healthy dose of reality be preferable?

[RuperT]

"Today's kids lack mettle," wrote the opinion columnist unironically.

[AWS260]

Jesus, that column is insufferable.

"Few schools teach about the value of hard work, ingenuity, gumption and entrepreneurship."

Gumption!

[Moliere]

Jesus, that column is insufferable.

"Few schools teach about the value of hard work, ingenuity, gumption and entrepreneurship."

Gumption!

The gumption to do anything!

[Fitzy]

It amazes me how people can simultaneously think the government is this ineffective, bumbling, illogical entity, but still capable of complex and rational conspiracies.

[Isgrimnur]

Tuskegee experiment, Bacillus globigii experiments, Operation Gladio, Prohibition alcohol poisoning, MK Ultra, Operation Northwoods...

[GreenGoo]

It amazes me how people can simultaneously think the government is this ineffective, bumbling, illogical entity, but still capable of complex and rational conspiracies.

Don't forget people who think the government is one huge, coherent entity with a single philosophy and consistent behave across all things.

[Fitzy]

Tuskegee experiment, Bacillus globigii experiments, Operation Gladio, Prohibition alcohol poisoning, MK Ultra, Operation Northwoods...

Exactly. All things we know about! Certainly various branches/offices/people of the government will attempt to keep things secret. The government is a bunch of giant pitchers filled with water, but there are holes in the bottom, the holes are different sizes, but every single pitcher has one. Some of the water takes a bit to get out. People are constantly adding more. It's all going to leak out in the end.

Don't forget people who think the government is one huge, coherent entity with a single philosophy and consistent behave across all things.

This is hilarious too. People in the same government office can't even agree on anything. Spread that out and it's a huge mess of individuals paralyzed by fear that they'll be used as a political example.

[Moliere]

Waaa!! I'm an annoying college student too busy being progressive and an activist to attend classes or study. Let's eliminate low grades and midterms.

Protest surged again in the fall of 2014, after the killing of Tamir Rice. “A lot of us worked alongside community members in Cleveland who were protesting. But we needed to organize on campus as well—it wasn’t sustainable to keep driving forty minutes away. A lot of us started suffering academically.” In 1970, Oberlin had modified its grading standards to accommodate activism around the Vietnam War and the Kent State shootings, and Bautista had hoped for something similar. More than thirteen hundred students signed a petition calling for the college to eliminate any grade lower than a C for the semester, but to no avail. “Students felt really unsupported in their endeavors to engage with the world outside Oberlin,” she told me.

[Isgrimnur]

That 1970 ruleset was still in place in 2002:

The current grading scale, which does not record No Entry grades on a student’s transcript, was approved by the faculty in 1970. At that time, the faculty was looking for ways to encourage student experimentation in different academic subjects, as well as decrease the pressure on students to achieve “good” grades. According to Geitz, a third of the faculty even went so far as to vote to abolish grades at Oberlin; the Credit/No Entry system represented somewhat of a compromise. Many schools experimented with nonstandard grading systems in the 1970’s; However, Oberlin and Brown University are the only remaining schools that do not enter failing grades on student transcripts.

Apparently abolished in 2004

[Moliere]

Grading policy change draws protests at Johns Hopkins

Hopkins has been one of the few schools nationwide that "cover" the grades of their newest students, shielding them on transcripts and keeping them out of grade-point averages as the freshmen make the transition to college.

But as nearby Goucher College considers joining the small club, Hopkins is planning to get out.

The policy change, which the university says was decided by a committee, is scheduled to go into effect in 2017. Current students will not be affected — they've been through their first semester, and their grades are to remain covered.

Still, two dozen student groups have united in opposition to the change.

Maybe when they start a new job the boss can ignore their performance for the first 6 months to help them with the transition.

[Zarathud]

Let's just say that Oberlin is not your typical college -- it prides itself as being THE most liberal laboratory. They were first in admitting regardless of race in 1835 and women in 1837. You don't join a fraternity or sorority, you join a residential coop. Apparently there are even pants optional days.

[Grifman]

On a related note, I have a wife of a friend who has worked closely with college kids the last 25 years or so. At a recent get together of old college friends she was asked by our group what is the biggest change from our day (early 80's) to today's kids and she said they are just "helpless". Totally unprepared for the real world, coddled and told they were the best by helicopter parents. I guess it will make for an interesting retirement while they start to run the country.

[stessier]

It would interesting to take a survey over the generations. My guess is that it has always been that way.

[Chrisoc13]

It would interesting to take a survey over the generations. My guess is that it has always been that way.

Yep. Only looking back to people think they were less helpless than they were. Times are different and kids today have different challenges than any of us did in our respective times. Different. Not easier.

[GreenGoo]

Grading policy change draws protests at Johns Hopkins

Hopkins has been one of the few schools nationwide that "cover" the grades of their newest students, shielding them on transcripts and keeping them out of grade-point averages as the freshmen make the transition to college.

But as nearby Goucher College considers joining the small club, Hopkins is planning to get out.

The policy change, which the university says was decided by a committee, is scheduled to go into effect in 2017. Current students will not be affected — they've been through their first semester, and their grades are to remain covered.

Still, two dozen student groups have united in opposition to the change.

Maybe when they start a new job the boss can ignore their performance for the first 6 months to help them with the transition.

Meh. I don't have an issue with the first year being pass/fail. Presumably these students qualified to attend the university in the first place, and the first year is the easiest of most degrees. If a university wants to reduce some of the pressure on their first year students, I don't have a problem with it.

I'd like to see some studies on the effects of such a policy after it has been in place for a decade or something.

[tgb]

I blame the whole "everybody is a winner just for taking part" mentality. There's no incentive to strive for best. Some of you youngsters may not remember this, but once upon a time if you didn't learn what you were supposed to in school, they kept you back and had you repeat the class until you fucking well did. I know of people who were in the 3rd grade 2 or 3 times. Yes, it was sometimes inappropriate because things like Dyslexia weren't understood as well, but more often than not it was justified. OTOH, if you were reasonably intelligent and motivated, you could skip entire years. I entered high school in a program that accelerated 7th and 8th grades into a single semester, so I went from freshman to senior in one year.

The other issue is with kids today being coddled (I have a friend who refers to it as "raised like veal"). And I'm not talking about how in my day I walked five miles to school each way in the snow, barefoot. I'm talking about being trusted at taking on responsibility at an early age.

When I was a nipper, a had a lot of allergies in addition to severe hay fever. In Summer I had to go to the doctor's office for 4(!) allergy shots every week. When hay fever season was over, it was every other week. When I hit 12 or so, my folks decided I could do it on my own, and would just give me bus fare to get the office and back. Which I did. Around the same time my friends and I would take the subway into Manhattan just to walk around and perhaps catch a movie. My parents never gave it a second thought.

How long do you think it would take for CPS to come to your house if you tried that with your kids today?

[GreenGoo]

Protecting children from the consequences of their actions (or inactions) is not the same as being supportive to everyone, even "losers".

Supporting everyone is not the same as making sure everyone is a winner no matter how they perform.

There is a middle ground between "win at all costs or you suck" and "everyone is equally good at everything, here are your trophies".

There is absolutely a trend to keep kids from assuming responsibility. I don't know why this is and it is a problem. When I let my 8 year old blonde haired little girl walk 2 (decent sized) blocks to her friend's house during the day, I don't worry about her being snatched (well, not too much anyway ), I worry about public opinion of my parenting skills. Losing face in my community does actually have some impact on my and my kids lives, so it's a real thing.

I struggle with this with my oldest. He's 12 and he would starve to death in a grocery store. He's smart as a whip and completely lacking in initiative and problem solving skills. I've talked about this before. I think a summer camp would be awesome for him, but I worry that he would be starting so far in the hole that the counsellors would just give up on him.

I do throw him in the water on occasion just to make him swim, but it doesn't stick. I completely admit it's my fault and his mother's, I'm just at a loss as to what I can do about it.

[Zarathud]

Keep throwing him into the water.

[Rip]

I will just say that kicking them out of the car at the edge of a forest isn't a good idea.

Or so I have heard.

[Kraken]

On a related note, I have a wife of a friend who has worked closely with college kids the last 25 years or so. At a recent get together of old college friends she was asked by our group what is the biggest change from our day (early 80's) to today's kids and she said they are just "helpless". Totally unprepared for the real world, coddled and told they were the best by helicopter parents. I guess it will make for an interesting retirement while they start to run the country.

Wife sees the same characteristics in her grad students. (In case you thought they might outgrow it.)

[Max Peck]

I hear that they just coined a new phrase: "Kids these days..."

[Isgrimnur]

The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.

[ImLawBoy]

No, no, no. This time it's different. In the old days, the old folks were just being curmudgeons. This time, though, it really is the entitled, lazy youth!

[El Guapo]

No, no, no. This time it's different. In the old days, the old folks were just being curmudgeons. This time, though, it really is the entitled, lazy youth!

I wonder if there will ever be a generation that looks at the following generation and says, "Actually, these guys are pretty good. I think we're in good hands."

[GreenGoo]

No, no, no. This time it's different. In the old days, the old folks were just being curmudgeons. This time, though, it really is the entitled, lazy youth!

In our curmudgeonly defense, there is a WIDE discrepancy in what my wife and I were doing at certain ages compared to what "kids these days" are doing. And it ain't for the better.

For the record, I still don't feel particularly responsible or mature, so maybe you have a point.

[El Guapo]

No, no, no. This time it's different. In the old days, the old folks were just being curmudgeons. This time, though, it really is the entitled, lazy youth!

In our curmudgeonly defense, there is a WIDE discrepancy in what my wife and I were doing at certain ages compared to what "kids these days" are doing. And it ain't for the better.

For the record, I still don't feel particularly responsible or mature, so maybe you have a point.

Unsurprisingly there are actual cultural generational differences. Obviously cultural norms for what a child (especially younger children) are allowed to do on their own without a parent present is significantly different than it was 30 years ago. That's gotten out of hand (especially to the extent that child services are called on parents for letting kids play in the park), and I hope that shifts back to a more sensible middle ground.

It's where the argument gets beyond specific cultural practices like that and gets into "kids these days are worse / more helpless / lazy / etc." that the arguments tend to be full of suspiciously qualitative and anecdotal points.

[Max Peck]

[coopasonic]

My wife and I have been lamenting how our kids are never going to have the run of the neighborhood like we did as children. Going to friends houses and to the park and whatever without parental tethers... and then this spring it just started happening with our 9 year old. Now he doesn't have the range of miles I did as a child, but a half mile gets him to the house of basically every kid that goes to his elementary school, so he doesn't need much more range.

On the other hand he often spends the entire day in the house. Hell if I had the internet, the computers, game consoles and various other electronic devices I probably never would have left the house either. I only ended up playing outside and on the cross country and tennis teams (and in the Army) because there was nothing better to do.

[tgb]

tlr just started a new job. It's in a call center, so most of the other noobs in her training class are 20-somethings. During training they were issued a very clear list of policies in place, such at cel phones are to be stored in lockers, you have to be out of training for 60 days before you can get pto, no eating at desks. They always have a training class going because being a call center, there's a lot of turnover. It's not like anybody is indispensable.


She's been out of training for 2 weeks now and every day she comes home with stories about people yapping on cel phones at their desks, showing up whenever they want, deciding to not come in because it was a nice day, etc. One woman drove to work, parked her car, and then went to sleep inside it.

I told her they were goddamned lucky I wasn't management over there because I would be doing some serious housecleaning.

[ImLawBoy]

Outrageous! I happen to know for a fact that no one used a cell phone at their call center jobs 50 years ago!

[El Guapo]

I told her they were goddamned lucky I wasn't management over there because I would be doing some serious housecleaning.

I would hazard a guess that at the pay that management is willing to offer, the new people who came in post housecleaning wouldn't be any better.

[tgb]

I told her they were goddamned lucky I wasn't management over there because I would be doing some serious housecleaning.

I would hazard a guess that at the pay that management is willing to offer, the new people who came in post housecleaning wouldn't be any better.

$10/hour, which isn't great but isn't minimum wage, either.

[Combustible Lemur]

I told her they were goddamned lucky I wasn't management over there because I would be doing some serious housecleaning.

I would hazard a guess that at the pay that management is willing to offer, the new people who came in post housecleaning wouldn't be any better.

$10/hour, which isn't great but isn't minimum wage, either.

I worked a call center for a couple months I've never had an easier job in my life. It was regimented by the second, scripted, well tech supported, well paid, incentivized, with legit advancement opportunity. After 60 days I wanted to jump off a bridge. Turnover was an absolute constant.
Despite a small number of "lifers" everyone, particularly the most talented had a foot and a half out the door. The least "responsible? Professional? " were the most loyal.

Clean house? You'd have an empty call center in days.

[tgb]

I told her they were goddamned lucky I wasn't management over there because I would be doing some serious housecleaning.

I would hazard a guess that at the pay that management is willing to offer, the new people who came in post housecleaning wouldn't be any better.

$10/hour, which isn't great but isn't minimum wage, either.

I worked a call center for a couple months I've never had an easier job in my life. It was regimented by the second, scripted, well tech supported, well paid, incentivized, with legit advancement opportunity. After 60 days I wanted to jump off a bridge. Turnover was an absolute constant.
Despite a small number of "lifers" everyone, particularly the most talented had a foot and a half out the door. The least "responsible? Professional? " were the most loyal.

Clean house? You'd have an empty call center in days.

That's fine. If they don't like the job they can leave and find something else. But someone on the second week of the job ignoring company policy? Not in my world, Buster.

[GreenGoo]

I told her they were goddamned lucky I wasn't management over there because I would be doing some serious housecleaning.

I would hazard a guess that at the pay that management is willing to offer, the new people who came in post housecleaning wouldn't be any better.

$10/hour, which isn't great but isn't minimum wage, either.

I worked a call center for a couple months I've never had an easier job in my life. It was regimented by the second, scripted, well tech supported, well paid, incentivized, with legit advancement opportunity. After 60 days I wanted to jump off a bridge. Turnover was an absolute constant.
Despite a small number of "lifers" everyone, particularly the most talented had a foot and a half out the door. The least "responsible? Professional? " were the most loyal.

Clean house? You'd have an empty call center in days.

If you can't (or won't) discipline them for violating company policy, why bother having company policies?

[Combustible Lemur]

I don't disagree with you but there is a balance that has to be reached when you desparately need workers, who are generally okay with walking out.
Restaurants for example. Hard work, demanding customer service, rife with drugs and inappropriate relationaships.

[msteelers]

So is this the thread where I bitch and moan about how old people I've worked with have been terrible employees, or is that a separate thread?

[Kraken]

I've heard tell that Thursday is the new Friday because millennials consider Fridays part of the weekend and won't work. IDK if that's true or just fits into the hate.

In my day, moving back in with your parents was the ultimate admission of failure. I would have lived under a bridge and eaten worms before I would have suffered that humiliation or taken any money from them. Adulthood began with independence, and there was something wrong with you if you weren't independent by age 18 (or early 20s for us college types).

I read that >30% of kids aged 18-34 live with their parents, making that the single most common living arrangement for the first time in 130 years. It's worst among boys (I hesitate to call them men) at nearly 50%. Living with a spouse came in a close second, living alone was third, and all other arrangements (such as roommates) made up the rest. In general, women of their generation are more independent and successful than men.

'Course, we didn't graduate $50,000 in debt into McJobs and insane rents, so mollycoddled childhoods aren't the whole explanation.

Just as an aside, I was telling Wife a few days ago how we used to play mumblety-peg when I was a lad.

Mumbley peg wasn’t just popular with boys. Men played the game, too. Cowboys would often circle around the campfire after a night of calf wrestling and play a few rounds of mumbley peg. Soldiers in both World Wars also passed the time throwing their knives in the ground.

The game waned in popularity starting in the 1970s as over-protective adults put a kibosh on the game at summer camps and as pocket knife-carrying became less prevalent among the male population.

There are different variations of Mumbley Peg. One version involves two opponents who stand opposite from one another, feet shoulder-width apart. The first player takes his pocket knife and throws it at the ground, so that it sticks into the ground as close as possible to his own foot. The second player take his knife and does the same. The player who sticks his knife closest to his own foot wins. A player could automatically win if he purposely stuck his knife into his own foot. What can we say, this was a time before Xbox 360. Kids needed something do.

The version that I played in the 1960s went more like this:

A much more complicated and, I think, more fun (i.e., less likely to end in a tetanus shot) version of Mumbley Peg can be found in the American Boy’s Book of Sport, from 1896. Instead of trying to get the knife to stick as close to your foot as possible, the aim is simply to get the knife to stick in the ground. What makes this version tricky is that it involves progressively more difficult trick tosses. The first man to successfully perform all the trick tosses wins and gets to drive the mumbley peg into the ground with the handle of his pocket knife. The loser has to pull the mumbley peg out of the ground with his teeth. While mumbling curses at the winner, naturally.

In the American Boy’s Book of Sport, there are 24 different trick tosses that must be performed correctly to win. Players take turns doing the throws. A player that completes a throw successfully can move on to the next. So it’s possible to have one player breeze through all the throws while the other guy is still stuck on the first throw. Got the basic gist? On to the throws!

I'll bet kids don't play that anymore.

[ImLawBoy]

I've heard tell that Thursday is the new Friday because millennials consider Fridays part of the weekend and won't work. IDK if that's true or just fits into the hate.

In my day, moving back in with your parents was the ultimate admission of failure. I would have lived under a bridge and eaten worms before I would have suffered that humiliation or taken any money from them. Adulthood began with independence, and there was something wrong with you if you weren't independent by age 18 (or early 20s for us college types).

I read that >30% of kids aged 18-34 live with their parents, making that the single most common living arrangement for the first time in 130 years. It's worst among boys (I hesitate to call them men) at nearly 50%. Living with a spouse came in a close second, living alone was third, and all other arrangements (such as roommates) made up the rest. In general, women of their generation are more independent and successful than men.

'Course, we didn't graduate $50,000 in debt into McJobs and insane rents, so mollycoddled childhoods aren't the whole explanation.

I mean, aren't you really doing a good job here of explaining why things might be so different, and it's not just because kids today are soft and overprotected?