

Dear Millenials: Your Parents Lied to You - aliston
http://toughsledding.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/dear-millennials-your-parents-lied-to-you/

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hristov
Now this is funny in at least two ways. First is this cute but silly idea that
the study of PR is so difficult and rigorous that it makes people cry.

The second way this is funny, is just imagining young PR flacks crying because
their papers were graded badly. That just warms up my heart. I mean the
thought that a human being would be so depraved (or is forced by the economy
into such a depraved condition) as to dream about being a PR person when they
grow up is rather depressing. But thinking of them suffering along the way is
a bit of a bright spot.

Unfortunately, the whole thing was written by a PR professor so I just don't
believe it. He is probably just exaggerating in order to establish some cred
for himself as a tough no-nonsense professor and also to create the idea that
PR is a rigorous field of study.

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mattmiller
I think a related problem is that college professors are usually soft. I have
been in a number of classes where a group of students take control and demand
a curve, or an extension of a project, and in their defense, why not? Many if
not most professors will cave.

The best classes were usually taught by strict professors with the confidence
to stick up for their original lesson plan.

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simon_
I think a related problem is that he is interacting with "PR majors".

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oldgregg
You're ignoring the fact that almost all Americans ARE "PR majors" -- lots of
other names for shitty degrees, of course -- but the hard sciences are
dominated by indians and asians.

Communications, sports medicine, all these majors attract a disproportionate
amount of slackers BECAUSE they are easy. The only reason the hard sciences
are not AS BAD is because the subject matter makes it much harder to dumb
down.

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vsync
> You're ignoring the fact that almost all Americans ARE "PR majors" -- lots
> of other names for shitty degrees, of course -- but the hard sciences are
> dominated by indians and asians.

sod off, racist

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Dove
_Millenials, those born between '78 and '95_

That's shifted a good five or ten years back from what I thought. I was born
in '82; my parents are Boomers. I thought that made me Generation X.

I. . . I don't want to be a Millenial.

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sophacles
I was born in 80, and consider myself on the cusp. I identify w/ X in some
ways and Millenials in others. It was actually highly amusing in college,
there was a noticable shift between the oldest of my peers and the youngest of
my peers, which when I described it to some of the older ones said they didn't
notice between a similar variance of their peers. Obviously such things are
fuzzy, but that is the general feeling we noticed. Overall 'start time' is
usuall referenced between 80 and 85 somewhere. Generational stuff used in this
sense is wierder still because those born in 1960 have a completely different
gen X experience than those born in 1980. I mean they were adults when I was
born...

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lotharbot
I think for those born in the 1980-1982 range, which generation they fall into
depends very much on their personal experiences.

I was born in 1980, but I had 2 older brothers and I was heavily involved in
their social circles. MacGyver and the A-Team were the stuff of my generation.
I always felt like my younger sisters were weird; Power Rangers was a show of
their generation. I would consider myself at the tail end of Gen X.

My wife was born in 1982, watched Power Rangers, and doesn't remember the fall
of the Soviet Union... but also grew up using UNIX, remembers Vinyl, owned a
Walkman as a teen, and feels most socially comfortable with people in the
35-50 age bracket (who often assume she's in her late 30s.) I'd say she's more
Gen X than Millennial.

Another close friend of mine was born in 1981, and I'd consider him 100%
Millennial.

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trjordan
Somewhat tangentially, I had very few writing teachers/profs that forced me to
write better. The ones that did were not the hard-asses willing to bruise my
ego and fill the page with red ink; they were the ones who could destroy my
thesis and render my examples impotent with 3 comments at the end of the
paper.

Invariably, if I got a teacher/prof who bled all over my creations, I'd start
with B-s at the beginning and end up with As by the end. I didn't improve my
writing. I just figured out the teachers pet peeves and learned to work around
them. My teachers were invariably smarter and more experienced than me when
dealing with the subject at hand, but that doesn't prevent them from being
flesh-and-blood people with idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies.

I'd love to believe I'm just a millenial who could stand to learn at lot from
an ego-crushing set of experiences, but just because a person hurts your
feelings doesn't make them a better teacher.

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brc
I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you. The ego needs to be
bruised in order to deflate the head of the youngster so learning can begin.

I too had my ego bruised and spirits crushed by hard-marking, discipline
demanding examiners. In each case, they're the only the ones I remember. All
the wishy-washy as-long-as-you-tried ones are as forgotten as they were
useless to my learning.

Half the battle in teaching young people is making them realise the scope of
the things they don't know, so they can appreciate how far they have to
travel. Call me old-school, but I don't see how you can do this without
brusing a few egos and crushing a few spirits. It's precisely the ego that
says 'this is good enough, I'll submit that'.

~~~
trjordan
I suppose I should have been more clear. There's a difference between drowning
a paper in red ink and words like "trainwreck" and actually showing error.
More bluntly, yelling at a student for being stupid and showing a student
where they made their errors are entirely different, and I would argue that
the second is much more effective.

To my point above, the vindictive teachers were not necessarily the most
insightful, and they were not the ones who deflated my ego. The comments that
hurt were the terse ones that showed both that they clearly understood what I
was trying to say, and that I was wrong. Pointing out a logical inconsistency
in my argument in a polite way is a much less abrasive and much more effective
way of teaching.

Perhaps I should say that a students ego often gets in the way of producing
increasingly better work, but being a dick to them isn't always the answer.

~~~
brc
>Perhaps I should say that a students ego often gets in the way of producing
increasingly better work, but being a dick to them isn't always the answer.

And I would agree with you there. As long as the point is driven home that the
work is below par, and the reasons why, without any fancy wrapping or ego-
massaging. Being direct without being a dick, though there are plenty of
people who don't know how to do one without being the other.

I'm still appreciative to a Grade 8 maths teacher who humiliated me in front
of the class for slacking off during the semester and letting grades slip.
Because I sure worked hard to prove him wrong next time. I don't know if there
would have been any other way to get through to me at that time.

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thribbler
Who are preferable, today's "helicopter parents" or the "because I say so"
parents of the previous generation?

Or the "Beat you till you cry" parents of the generation before.

Or the "Off to the factory, brat" parents, etc.

~~~
sophacles
Probably some happy medium. Helicopter parents don't really give kids a chance
to just learn to be themselves...

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oldgregg
Telling people to "toughen up" is missing the point. The University of Chicago
is built around creating Nobel prize winners (which they do a damn good job of
it). But they also drive students so hard that they often fail out or just
commit suicide. No joke. But they don't mind sacrificing these people because
the select group that survives will shit nobel prizes. Survivor bias will tell
you they are a model school, but I don't think so.

Our culture is obsessed with degrees-- not learning. Because of this the
education system doesn't let teachers actually do their job. In elementary and
high school it's truly unconscionable how students pass from grade to grade.
By the time they get to college it's way too late. Tenured hard-ass professors
are the only people who can get away with it-- but if you think you can flunk
half your students and still make tenure you're delusional. Incentives are
completely misaligned. Make no mistake, Education Inc. exists to further the
institution, not the student.

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jim_dot
My parents also taught me some jerk with a blog would put ads that have
enormous popups on mouseover all over his page while ranting about how I'm too
sensitive.

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blhack
I wonder how much of this is regional? I was born in the late 80s and didn't
experience _any_ of the coddling people associate with my generation. Is it
because I grew up in MN? Did any other HNers grow up in the same time/place?
(Yes, I know, I'm young and still growing up).

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drinian
These editorials always make me wonder if my friends, cousins, and I are some
sort of statistical outlier in my generation, or whether, maybe, it's just
that the good workers my age don't get comment.

Then again, I've been told I'm too critical quite a bit.

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TheSOB88
True enough, I guess, but this seems like a bunch of complaining. It doesn't
really provide any measures to improve the situation.

Also, I don't understand the part about said kids having had "adult
responsibilities" - wouldn't that create the opposite kind of person, one who
can take failure? Perhaps it was ironic.

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muckraker
This guy is lying to his students by riding the wave of this lingering
assumption that contemporary conventional schooling works to garner the
results that remedy what he is complaining about.It doesn't,and it never will.
Conventional education is a crock of shit and so is this guy... and the
"millennials".

Bypass it all be creating alternatives like this:

khanacademy.org

This kind-of-thing is the future regardless.

Problem solved.

He's one of the few that "survived" all that bullshit and is doing it how it
should be done.

