June 15, 2011

My Generation is Better Than Your Generation

I once asked a group of 25 college students a simple question: If you had a choice, would you rather grow up when you actually did, or when your kids will? These students were born in 1987-1989. Bill Clinton was the first U.S. president they remember. Generally speaking, their kids will be born over the next few years.
 
Of the 25 students, a total of zero said they would want to grow up in the next generation (when their own kids will grow up). Even when I reminded them of the advances in technology and medicine, they held firm: They wouldn’t want to grow up in the 2010s and 2020s. No way, they said, shaking their heads in unison.
 
“Why not?” I asked.
 
 “Everything’s gotten so materialistic,” said one young woman.
 
 “It’s like all kids want to do is play video games,” said another.
 
 2011 1517 page30“But that’s what everyone thinks about your generation!” I protested.
 
 “At least we knew how to play outside,” said one guy. “And we were more family-?centered than kids are now.”
 
 “So you’re saying the culture is going downhill,” I said.
 
 “Yes,” they replied. “Things are getting worse.”
 
 “OK,” I said, “we’ve gone about 25 years into the future, and you’re saying it’s worse. Let’s go 25 years the other way.” I wrote a couple of dates on the board: 1962 and 1937. “This is when your parents and grandparents were born. How many of you would rather have grown up when they did?”
 
The students paused; some of them smiled.
 
 “How many?” I repeated.
 
Three students raised their hands—two of them confidently, one not so sure.
 
“Three,” I said. “A total of three of you would rather have grown up in your parents’ or grandparents’ generation. That leaves 22 of you preferring to grow up when you did.”
 
I paused for a few seconds. “You know what you’re saying, don’t you?” I said. “You’re saying that you grew up at the perfect time in history. Things were gradually improving until your time. Then everything fell apart.”
 
We all laughed. I told them that I probably would have answered the same way. I loved the era in which I grew up, the 1980s. Without a doubt the music of the late eighties (my high school years) is the greatest music of all time. And eighties clothing styles are the coolest too.
 
It’s true. Most of us view “our era” as the perfect balance between yesterday and tomorrow. Life was still “simple,” yet we had modern conveniences that we couldn’t imagine living without. For me, it was a personal computer. For these students it’s e-mail and cell phones.
 
We talked about the attributes of each generation. “Let’s take your grandparents,” I said. “Chances are they’re very patriotic; very loyal to their country and to their churches. Right?” The students nodded.
 
“They were hardworking, and they were frugal. They had come out of the Depression. They have a lot of excellent qualities . . .”
 
I paused. “And they might be racist. To this day some of them still carry racist attitudes.”
 
The expressions changed as students recognized the truth of the statement when applied to their own grandparents and other relatives—perhaps heard in a shocking offhand remark made at the holiday dinner table.
 
It’s natural to feel loyalty to our generation—to the good as well as the bad. Grandma and Grandpa were no different. As children of the 1930s and 1940s, they saw how to be patriotic—and they saw how to be racist.
 
Generational loyalty can be just as much a problem for the rest of us. While college students today tend to be less racist than those who went before them, their generation tends to have its own problems, including a sense of entitlement and disrespect for authority.
 
“The challenge each of us faces,” I said, “is to keep the good and throw out the bad.” For some of us, that can be as hard as admitting that those cool college clothes . . . just aren’t cool anymore.
 
________
Andy Nash is a journalism professor, lay pastor, and author of Paper God. This article was published June 16, 2011.
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