Y GENERATION

THE NEXT GENERATION OF CHILDREN: THE ‘WHY’ GENERATION

Although this book seeks positive solutions, let us ponder the profound words of Marcy Musgrave, a student at Texas A & M who wrote in the May 2^nd, 1998 edition of the Dallas Morning News. This is a chilling epilogue of the yet-to-be-named generation following Generation X to be called Generation WHY. The questions posed are the critical matters facing this country for our children;

“After the massacre of Littleton, I realized that as a member of this generation that kills without remorse, I had a duty to challenge all of my elders to explain why they have allowed things to become so bad…

• Why did most of you lie when you made the vow of ‘til death do us part’?
• Why did you fall victim to the notion that kids are just as well off being raised by total strangers at a day care center than by their own mothers or fathers?
• Why is work more important than your own family?
• Why does the television do the most talking at family meals?
• Why is money regarded as more important than relationships?
• Why is ‘quality time’ generally no longer than a five- ten minute conversation every day?
• Why do you try to make up for the lack of time you spend with us by giving us more and more material objects that we really don’t need?
• Why haven’t you lived moral lives that we could model our own after?
• Why do you allow us to spend unlimited amounts of time on the Internet but still are shocked about our knowledge of how to build bombs?
• Why are you so afraid to tell us ‘no’ sometimes?
• Why is it so hard for you to realize that school shootings, and other violent juvenile behavior results from your lack of attention more than anything else is?

To continue the questioning, Chris Mercogliano of the Alternative Community School in New York adds these questions reflecting education:

• Why have we walled our schools off from the outside world and let them become warehouses for youthful energy, creativity and purpose?
• Why have we turned teachers into overwhelmed taskmasters, instead of enabling them to serve as mentors, guides and role models?
• Why have we allowed schools to become so hyped with standards that they pay no attention to the emotional well being of our children?
• Why have we let them turn education into the regurgitation of homogenized data, rather than a search for knowledge based on experimentation and real experience?
• Why isn’t learning a cooperative enterprise and why aren’t students included in the design and the maintenance of the system?
• Why do students maintain internal status structures that ape the larger society and that fuel the drive to split off into separate, exclusive groups?
• Why do we accept the level of fear that surrounds the learning process?
• Why do we permit schools to corral our children into a state of sheep-like anonymity?
• Why are teenager’s expressions of boredom, anger and alienation only met with intensified management and control?
• Why do we go on believing that our schools just need minor tinkering, rather than a fundamental reevaluation and re-visioning?

In an American grocery store, a five-year-old is crying in a cart. Perhaps hungry, tired or uncomfortable with the cold metal seat, yet parents, either continue shopping, attempt to muzzle the child, placate it by buying a toy or sweet treat, or disrupt the unhappiness with a violent act. What does this teach the child? Children learn that denial of basic human needs is a way of life. Also, behavior patterns are introduced to adapt to the circumstances reinforcing disruptive behavior in the future to placate desires. Or children learn to deny tiredness, hunger and basic bodily functions and feel comfortable living on the edge. Others develop patterns of oral fixation, like drinking, smoking or over eating, to suppress emotions.

Children learn through the media that rather than bonding with appropriate adults and mentors, clever campaigns fill the void with products- like the Pepsi generation. Mother is portrayed as a fool in one commercial, when, after a long week at work, she spends hours in the kitchen to prepare meals, color code them and order them for easy access, to have the family spend the weekend at the local fast food restaurant. A well-known cracker snack commercial has mom proselytizing the virtues of sharing as she eats the entire box of goodies from her young daughter and then hands her an empty box. Recall as well the family of the Simpson’s, a set of parents who are morons compared with the bright and intelligent children. These subliminal messages cut at the core of the American family values as well as the respect children display towards parents and authority figures.

Adding to Marcy’s insights, the question remains why are we deaf, blind and dumb to our demise? When are we going to change? What will it take to transform our thinking?