Instead of blaming kids for being addicted to technology that is literally designed to make even fully grown adults addicted, let’s talk about the parents giving their kids this technology with no boundaries- but also the society that forces both parents to work to exhaustion and have no time for their kids.
I’ve seen so much complaining about children watching low quality content on UA-cam shorts aimed at children but not ONE PERSON complaining about youtube failing to regulate it
Yes, I think we need to step back from the 40 hour workweek as it is literally killing us. It is insane to expect everyone to work so much that they do not have time to live their lives and they always feel exhausted and stressed. Many children and parents have their relationship destroyed because the parents work too much to spend any time with the kids. And most of the work we do is neither fulfilling nor important.
It’s always “kids these days” but never “what systems have we designed for kids to grow up like this?” Always “Kids are glued to their cell phones!” Never “Social media app companies have a profit incentive to make sure its target audience are constantly using the app so that its advertisements reach maximum screen time.”
No, their fault as well, they created social media, as much as we might not like it, it has helped people, but also hurt them, is all up to the parents to tell their kids where they should use it.
It's up to parents and parents enable it. Parents need to change things. We can age restrict social media but parents are ultimately responsible for their kids.
“Gosh darn millennials and their participation trophies!” (Nevermind the fact that the parents were the ones to create this system and force it upon their kids)
I taught gen alpha for two years as a swim instructor, and there were kids who wouldn’t listen, kids who picked everything up quickly, kids with fears of water, etc. It would be impossible for me to sum up the newest generation because they’re a diverse group of people just like my generation is. Most of them were lovely and I miss teaching them every day. Even the ones that wouldn’t listen would crack me up a lot of the time, and the vocabularies of the two year olds were extremely advanced and they followed instruction well. Some kids just need extra help, I am also a slower learner and it’s so frustrating. I can’t imagine being outright shamed for this, something I can’t control. The institutionalization and standardization of learning seems so odd to me.
Exactly! I help teach on the weekends and the groups we've had have been such a range. Some kids pick things up easily, some of them are more hyper, and that's just the start! I don't like when people try to generalize any groups. Nobody will be the exact same as anyone else, so there's not much of a point to it!
For a bunch of animals who's purpose is to multiply, I'd say we're doing a phenomenal job. Teachers were still allowed to strap us when I was a kid and parents were expected to beat us.
This generation may be the one true exception. The human experience never really changed that drastically, like it has these past 20 years. Technological advancement will be a disaster to the human race
Right. It's never "the adults these days." At least not with any meaningful expectation, as though there's any chance of them fulfilling their obligations to be decent human beings.
Every generation is under scrutiny, but the poor state of education now (at least in my country, Romania) is, I think, way worse than ever before. The question is not if it's bad or not, but rather what should be done about it. And I'm glad Alice is pointing out that the causes are much more complex, as everybody over here who's concerned with the subject is leaning towards the conservative solution.
@raduungureanu2080 what is the conservative solution in Romania? Because in the US the conservative "solution" is dismantling public education, demonizing teachers, and giving free money to their friends running charter schools.
To a point I agree, I see the same tendencies in fellow gen z people that milenials had towards us. Lots of this new generation is lazy or stupid or whatever. That stuff I’m not worried about since gen x did it to milenials and boomers did it to gen x and so on. The part I’m more concerned about is them not being able to read, write, or focus. I was able to read and write by 3 and do it propperish by 8, but I’m seeing teachers say kids older than that can’t do any of them.
Re: Kids causing a racket at a restaurant. What a crock - the same thing was being said about me and my friends when we hung out at at a local restaurant BACK IN THE EIGHTIES. And while they were correct - we did take up a lot of space, make a lot of noise, and in general were a self-involved and disrespectful bunch of teenagers - the same thing was being said of our detractors back in their day. And so on until at least the later Victorian era when school was made compulsory. FFS...
I think it’s also important to note that most of the time kids aren’t trying to be disruptive to them they’re just hanging out with their friends and if you ask them to be a bit less disruptive a lot of the time they can be accommodating
It's indeed not a new phenomenon. Just let me remind you of a quote from SOCRATES: “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
I find it hard to believe that gen z or a are ''the worst''. kinda reminds me of how in primary school teachers would say ''your class is the worst'' when in hindsight now, it wasn't even bad. it's almost as if they said that to every class or something
nah, things are really bad. your generation didn't have mobile phones and was at least pretending to pay some attention. however, the point of the video was not if it's bad or not, but rather what should be done about it. most people lean towards the conservative solution and, as Alice points out, that's rather the root cause than the solution.
@@raduungureanu2080 "Was at least pretending to pay some attention" Well, they still weren't paying attention, either way. I wouldn't say that's any better. I think people WANT very badly for it to be true, deep down. Either millennials and older who have a superiority complex and will take any bad press about younger generations as fact, or late gen z/gen alpha kids with a superiority complex who have the "I'm not like other kids my age. I'm more mature!" mentality and like to have their beliefs of themselves confirmed.
I'll be honest another factor that can be talked about here is how children become accessories for their parent until they themselves become a parent and then recreate that cycle, as someone living in south Asia I can say how someone's children's education is their social capital
I often say birth rates get lower because why lose your youth to cram school so you can rip someone else out of perfect nonexistence and send them to cram school?
As a queer Indian I have to suffer all the consequences of not being able to expand the capital invested by my birthgivers in my upbringing via a heteronormative lifestyle so I feel your comment on a different level. When I think about it, I feel social capitalism and the endless desire for the expansion of social capital like you say has been the ancient father of capitalism all along, and economic capitalism is just a recent 2.5 century old newborn rapidly taking over the aging father
"They're all mistakes, children! Filthy, nasty things. Glad I never was one." -The Trunchbull Feels like a lot of judgemental adults forget what it was like to be a kid and think they were always bastions of good behavior. 🤦
I studied in a french primary and middle school in turkey. After 8 years of insane discipline I was like I can't have this anymore. In high school went to a more relaxed but really good american high school (again in turkey). And the freedom I felt (because this one particular school in turkey is nice it doesnt mean all american schools are like that) was insane. I didnt need to cut my hair in a particular way, didnt need wear black shoes, no need to have white socks. And besides that *most* the teachers were more relaxed. When I did some stuff wrong I did not feel like I should be ashamed and it was the end of the world. I still have dreams, more like nightmares, in which I'm still in my french school or I have to go back to that school. ps also your teacher is crazy
Same thing, except for me that was my high school. But contrasted with what you said, discipline was also a relief for me. To equalize everyone to same level. I felt good when authority was applied because I was the docile one, I was following the rules already so nobody had a right to break them. There is some kind of envy-revenge relationship in me concerning discipline weirdly.
@@ersu3 I can totally relate to that. I guess when you are emersed into a system that thrives on "ultra-discipline" by way of shaming those who dare to break the rules, you start to feel some contempt, if you will, against those who break the rules while you are doing the best to adhere to them.
The same for me! I went to a British primary school in China, then later integrated into Chinese middle school, I felt literally miserable, even developed severe depression and anxiety 😢
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”.......Socrates, ~400 BC
It's a wonderful quotation, but it was not said by Socrates in 400BC. It was first written by Kenneth John Freeman in 1907. In the 1920s, newspapers started falsely attributing it to Socrates to make it sound more ancient and wise.
This quote is not from Socrates. Quote investigator attributed it to Kenneth John Freeman’s dissertation, but in fact it’s a rough translation of a passage in Aristophanes’ Clouds, a play that makes fun of Socrates. But it is not said by Socrates in the Clouds either, but by a personified “Fair Reason”. Writing a paper on it rn and want to share.
I was worried about my 20 y.o. Son’s reading skill because he just doesn’t seem to be into it but then we were playing through a video game and he was just skipping through the text and I was all, “Don’t you need to read that?” To which he responded, “Yeah, I did read it.”…turns out that he’s a snob about his anime and only watches “subbed, not dubbed” and watches it at 4x speed, or something like that…he reads as fast as I do, and I read fast!
Just because someone doesn’t like reading doesn’t mean that they can’t. If they are passionate about something, they will make sure to absorb every detail no matter what.
See, I usually prefer dubbed, but I’ll still watch subbed from time to time, particularly if that particular anime doesn’t have an English dub. And I’ve also watched shows entirely in German with English subtitles (Mostly just Deutschland ‘83 and its sequels ‘86 and ‘89)
@@Pollicina_db nostalgia is clouding your judgement there yeah. Any country has "a good dub" but a good dub is still a dub. The mismatch between audio and lip movements alone is horrible
Yes this is something I keep seeing ignored or minimised by those talking about this issue. Not only would it affect education but general social development too, I felt especially sorry for only children going through lockdowns who may have had no contact with someone their age for weeks/months at a time and that's not even considering the extra harm that may have been done to kids in abusive/neglectful families. If kids aren't acting at least a little out of character after going through the pandemic it would honestly be a miracle.
As someone who grew up in the US education system with undiagnosed disabilities...yeah, shame is everywhere. The first response was ALWAYS to blame instead of "Maybe the child is struggling", even when I was literally 5 years old. I even remember having a Kindergarten teacher who would "train" students not to use the bathroom by refusing to let them go, waiting till they peed themselves, and then giving them fresh pants from some giant safe. (Without fresh underwear mind you). This is already a nightmare and abusive imo, but is even worse for kids with sensory issues who 1. May not be able to use the pants she gave them or 2. Would not be able to read their body's signs to pee well in the first place.
For real. I grew up in US schools during the early 2000s and I basically got bullied from day 1, kindergarten and beyond. I had a teacher for Kindergarten who "trained" kids to not use the bathroom so much by refusing to let them go, letting them wet themselves, and giving them pants from a giant safe--still no fresh undies tho so you would have pee soaked undies and fresh pants. (Was a NIGHTMARE for my sensory issues, and I got bullied for it. So glad that your story was different!!) Honestly, I hated school, lmao. It was prob worse than some prisons, at least for the disabled kids. I had some nice teachers here and there, but they were the outliers. @@celticajayk
I'd be shocked to hear that is true tbh. I've lost count of how many teachers during K-12 actively refused the bathroom. I have perminant bladder damage from that. @@stephaniepantera
@@cassiopeiasfire6457 And that’s not even the worst thing going on. I could go on for hours Tbh about the crap I went through that gave me school-related-PTSD.,
In my experience, while there is plenty of evidence that there is some decline, to simply dismiss whole generations especially to suggest that it's some moral failing on their part is not good critical thinking. As a teacher of young people with learning disabilities in a private institution, I can say this customer mindset is a real thing. Parents feel like they're paying for a grade and we owe it to them whether the work is being done or their kid needs more adjustments or not. And that control piece where we force neurodivergent kids to behave in "normative" ways--walk in a straight line, have all your papers in color coded folders etc. etc. It's sad and it's hurting the kids. Great video as always, Alice! Have a great week! :-)
That's how some parents in private institutions have always behaved, though. Including where they treat neurodivergent kids like it's their fault they're not NT.
@@MCArt25 Oh of course it is, which is why, as Alice points out, the issue is deeper than schooling--it's the capitalistic mindset that individuals can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps if they just want it bad enough and that everything is just a matter of money.
What I am hearing about gen alpha right now is pretty much what I experienced in middle school, including abhorrent discipline, kids not being able to read into their tweens, and constantly being told that we are the worst class the teacher has had to teach. I guess it just happened a bit earlier in my country
yeah i remember starting high school and i changed school districts so they had initially put me in the "lowest level" english class (this is in america, so first language). i couldn't believe that an entire classroom full of 20+ kids had no clue at all what a noun was and could barely read things that i thought were simple. i honestly think that a lot of the people complaining about this stuff just didn't actually see how bad it was when they were kids (it would be easy to miss if you are only friends with people at your own skill level, or you just mind your own business, or you only take "higher level" classes as you get older).
Perhaps it's the ADHD, but I don't play on my phone all day. Quite often I'll go tear something apart or _whatever._ Meanwhile SO MANY of the middle aged people around me are ALWAYS on their phone. Like, doesn't browsing facebook and playing ad infused shovelware not get boring after a while?
"I love it when people speak straight out of their assess without much consideration for the topic at hand. And then call it opinion." ❤ The quote of the day
@@johnbeard7252 It is but I would consider it less valid if you make blatant statements with such certainty when in fact you haven't informed yourself enough. If I'm asked for an opinion on a topic I don't really know much about, I'd give my initial opinion but I'd note that my knowledge of the topic isn't broad to be certain so I'd have to research more. I like the quote merely for situations when people behave like they know so much when in fact they don't and are even condescending . My comment comes from a personaI experience of knowing people with horrible discussion skills. I wouldn't apply the quote to a respectful discussion.
@@johnbeard7252 Yes, but I think there maybe a subtle difference in the French meaning of opinion to the English one, a French speaker would have to answer but, I think in French the word carries more of a meaning of personal judgement after the facts rather than a mere flippant conclusion after not actually thinking about it at all.
Alice captures well what Confucius taught about education for self-transformation (that in turn transforms the world). He also said in the Analects '有教無類' which means 'having education without distinction of social classes'. His favourite student, Yan Hui, was a homeless man. Confucius accepted as small as a stick of dried meat as a tuition fee. His title 'The Exemplary Teacher of Myriad Ages' is so true even to these days.
Fantastic video. There’s similarities in the historic East Asian and south Asian cultural models with respect to education. I feel a conflict with the attitudes of my peers, having grown up in the anglo, protestant west. Yes, your computer science degree teaches outdated programming frameworks, but why are you in school? Do a coding boot camp, if your only goal is to get a job - the degree teaches you the more fundamental underpinnings of the computational network state we live in. It’s a math degree, essentially. As a South Asian I think about this a lot - our history is entrenched in the dissemination of knowledge and education - and this is reflected in cultural attitudes towards what education is, a builder of tools to understand and perceive the world, through a multi variate lens based approach. Yes, rationally, but also in other ways. The sort of ultimate goal is to become a learned human, eventually seeking enlightenment. Now this is in the philosophies of “Hinduism” (which by the way isn’t really a religion, just a western label used to discredit the decentralized collection of philosophies it encompasses, including Buddhism). I think it’s part of the reason why my parents care little about the financial success I’ve had on the side, as I’m just now completing a higher education - that was the first priority in their view. Historic South Asia seems to have been always highly educated (see the Gurukuls), and this seems to persist across eras (Vedic, mauryan, etc). Even during times of destitution (post and during Turkic, Arabic and European colonialism), the British recorded fairly higher levels of education in a number of states than in Britain (this is in the 18th century).
Also, my response sort of points out a flaw in the video, which is endemic with these sorts of videos, which is even when acknowledging a western bias… you retain it. Specifically, the relationship between capitalism and education. It’s part of the issue I have with western marxists who are well meaning but still completely operate within a western perspective, unable to conceive of cultural situations where capitalism is highly valued alongside a parallel education track with its own virtues kept intact (eg see historic Gujarat).
@@pulse3554 Thank you very much for your input! I really like your description that the goal of education is to become a learned human. The Confucian tradition considers that there are two classes of "learning", elementary and Great learning. Elementary learning is composed of the six arts; Calligraphy, Archery, Music, Ritual, Charioteering or Horsemanship, and Mathematics. It is the root of Great learning Great Learning is self-transformation to become a sensitive and authentic moral person, be sensitive to suffering of the people and myriad things, and intuitively live a moral life. The goal of the two learning is then to become "human". Not human as we are but human as we ought to be.
@@pulse3554 I am not a Marxist and I am not a westerner but I do agree with Alice that the main goal of capitalism is to produce living machinery that serves the capitalistic mode of production. It may coexist with Asian ideals of education in certain cultural contexts, but at the end when it becomes stronger it will crush those ideals. Sadly, there are many Asian parents who do not care about their kids becoming a learned person but a financially successful engineer or doctor.
about shame in education: i am not french but austrian.. anyways.. i experienced lots and lots of shaming myself. i was a very bad reader and stumbled over every sentence. my teachers 'just wanted to help me' and let me read all the time to the point that i was only avoiding eye contact and i remember always to look on the floor in order to not embarrassed. i was making a fool of myself for years and the 'smart' teachers always reminded me of my place and very frequently called me out in front of the class to tell me how awful it was that i stumble over this or that word. turned out they just did not know of a concept dyslexia in the 90s. well.. about 1-5 years after i left school EVERY child was tested for dyslexia. because of that i was forced to take a normal apprenticeship in construction (as an electrician) and because of that i ruined my health and got very very sick. as an adult i took an official dyslexia test myself, and then i started to study philosophy... it was not a 'skill issue'. but the trauma and the problems with my health i got from this simple misunderstanding are still very very much there... basically my life got ruined because of this mindset you describe there. so be aware 'gen alpha'! whatever that means :D
Okay, I’m a gen z teacher and I teach gen alpha in middle school. So far from what I remember, the kids don’t act that differently from when I was in school. But on the other hand it’s really tiring because the school administration keeps telling me I have to be more enforcing of school laws, enforcing their discipline and silence, that I’m the ruler of my classroom. Tbh, I’m just tired. I love my job but I wish there were clearer solutions to our problems
Me too. In the exact same position, gen z teaching Gen alpha middle schoolers. Only my first year but it's so exhausting some days. Trying to find my stride but it feels like clear answers and support are always out of reach. Prof development trainings are always about progressive policies and what not but there's not much support and they feel half heartedly implemented. And when I struggle with classroom management the advice from veteran teachers and admin is to toughen up, enforce more rules, be more strict, don't be so nice to the kids. And I just don't know if I have it in me to be harsh or mean to 12, 13, and 14 year olds. They are just kids after all...
@@Bluedc21 Exactly, omg, finally someone that understands me. I'm not a fan of screaming to get them to shut up or be mean to them either. Let's hang in there, and hope the experiences we get guide us to a better future
"times are bad. Children no longer listen to their parents, and everyone is writing a book" - ancient assyrian tablet. As long as there's been kids, there's been old people complaining about them.
I am so tired of the oversimplication of complex issues on the Internet. I would like to thank you for this interesting take. Tbh I am very curious to see how the "problem" with gen Alpha settles in the future.
The increasing analysis of generations while they are still literal children is so infuriating. The whole point is more of a post analysis like wyen the supposed generation is well into adulthood and we can historically analyse their behavior, tastes etc.
AGREED! The oldest ones are just starting high school, and that’s pushing it. I’m getting a teaching credential right now and all the high schoolers I’m observing are clearly Gen Z. LET. THEM. COOK.
@@PASH3227 Almost all Gen Z are adults who either are in university or passed it. It's mainly Gen Alpha who are schools now, it's just that during the pandemic, some Millennials were going through a third life crisis and starting hating on the generation below them as the "youngins on the internet" like the Baby boomers did with them, even though said youngins were already adults and Millennials were on the same sites so they had to make a bunch of stuff up about what Gen Z did which was mainly what Millennials did what they were younger and not what Gen Z does.
@@tylersmith3139no PASH is right. one of my brothers is a hs sophomore and gen z. we’re concerned that middle schoolers lack morality. have middle schoolers *ever* had morality? though you’re also right about most of gen z being out of hs
You can still analyze a generation while they’re still children if it’s comparative analysis between other generations when they were the same age. That’s the good thing about having many decades of research on learning and child development. For example, it’s fair to say that Gen alpha has a lower attention span because we can compare their average attention spans to prior generations of children. There has been an increasing decline in the average attention span of kids born after the 2000’s, which is not surprising given the increased presence of technology.
The decline has been happening since the 90s and probably early. It's why adhd diagnoses have gone up. Anyone who thinks gen alpha is fine is lying to themselves. This isn't millennials hating on gen alpha. This is people saying gen alpha has serious developmental gaps that society needs to understand and prepare to handle. I don't think all gen alpha is the same. Many weren't raised by technology and social media. They are fine. The ones who were are what concern me.
As a Brazilian, raised in a house made up of educators. I was very happy to see Paulo Freire mentioned in the video, Alice. His works were and are fundamental to Brazilian pedagogy today! Pedagogy of the Oppressed is an excellent book. I recommend everyone to read it Hugs from Salvador, Bahia, Brazil :)
I was a notorious procrastinator when I was in high school back the 2000s. It was frequently painted by both my teachers and parents as a moral failing, and now as an adult I have severe depression and low self esteem for feeling like a lazy piece of shit. But nobody every asked me why I was always procrastinating. Nobody ever asked me about my underlying anxiety due to a fear of failure and an expectation to be the "smart" kid. They never sought to understand...only shame and correct. And I still struggle with the mental damage this did years later, not to mention it never actually fixed my procrastination problem, which I still had in college and now at work.
I'm a pre-k special education teacher at a public elementary school with a heavily at-risk population. In Texas. I see how capitalism and transactional, "merit" based education sets up enormous systemic hurdles for my kids everyday. Then I get to go to trainings and hear my job described as "customer service." It's only by virtue of the special needs of my students giving me greater autonomy that I'm able to still like what I do and feel Iike I'm making any difference at all for my kids.
When teaching becomes customer service, it's lost its way. Because the idea of customer service is that the customer is always right!! That idea is ludicrous in teaching, if a student is wrong, the student needs correction. Students are not customers!!
@@andrewmiller159Customer service makes sense to a degree because individual learners are going to require different approaches. If someone is struggling to understand the material, you’re going to have to talk to them and figure out what’s wrong.
As brazilian, I’m happy to see Paulo Freire is respected and studied in other countries, because here the right wing is extremely disrespectful towards him and all his legacy. Very sad! Thanks for the video! :)
@@gsf02 yeah, but it doesn't illustrate that. The commenter speaks of the validation of Freire's ideas, which is a good thing by itself. Since it sadly doesn't properly happen in Brazil, it's nice to see that it happens at all, if only outside of Brazil.
@@lrgui9792 I guess you could frame it that way, but I'm skeptical, since to me that is indulgent. The matter of the opinion on Paulo Freire's ideas among Brazilians isn't about a unanimous disapproval, but rather a polarized topic that is dictacted by one's political spectrum. Hence, there are millions of left-leaning (or merely reasonable) Brazilians that admire his work. So I reemphasize my impression that what prevalently make us, Brazilians, celebrate the citation of M. Freire's work by a prominent French UA-camr is not the citation itself, disregarding who's cited it, but the fact that that came from a foreigner (here I'm disconsidering Mme. Cappelle's distinction).
I hate this trend. My daughter is a tween Gen Alpha and she's empathetic, intelligent, creative, etc. she does things that bother me as a parent, but they're like, normal kid things that just need to be corrected and redirected. Her generation is up against so much with the coming techno authoritarianism, financial decline.... They need our support and guidance as they navigate a world we won't understand.
This is a great breakdown!! I taught high school chemistry for two years, and though I don’t teach full time anymore, I teach and am a student part time. And 100% the idea that a teacher provides a a SERVICE is something that makes so much sense, but I never thought to frame it like that. Thank you so much for this video, there’s so much food for thought.
I think what gets me about people complaining about gen z and gen alpha is that those same people will admit that they engaged in the behaviors they’re complaining about, just not towards adults. This is not at all to say that teachers are finally getting their comeuppance or anything like that, everyone deserves to be respected, but I feel like we’ve all had parents grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends’ parents, etc. talk about how they got drunk and disorderly in college, hazed the freshman class, got bullied or were bullies to siblings and other kids, but they’d never cross a nun, “old-school teacher”, or parent because you’d get beaten, belittled, or denied necessities. I think permissive parenting as opposed to gentle parenting is part of the issue, but I think the older generations just expected to have the privilege of never being questioned and don’t have the normalization of punitive punishment (abuse) at their disposal to “discipline” kids. We’re trialing better ways of parenting and teaching, and people are mad that the interim and the unlearning of maladaptive habits are difficult, especially with systematic barriers like the underfunding of public schools, lack of physical and mental health resources, and exploitation of the working class.
15:25 THANK YOU. I'm a "zillennial" and I find this generation war exhausting. Every generation is so quick to blame the other and completely fails to acknowledge the biopsychosocial and economic factors/power structures that affect us ALL. In children's nursing, we look at *Brofenbrenner's ecological systems theory* which illustrates this beautifully. It honestly gave me an epiphany of how the world works and I think EVERYONE needs to see this diagram. I would absolutely love it if you include it in a video. Spoiler alert, capitalism (sits in the macrosystem) affects everything.
at least in my country, Romania, they are failing. The question is not if they are or not, but rather what should be done about it. As Alice points out, it is way more complex than the simple answer of "We should go back to the old ways of children being more disciplined", which is, at least over here, the default answer for everybody concerned with the issue.
@@justaname999 Yeah, I feel like this is early gen z adults who think they're millennials complaining about gen z, but they're actually complaining about gen alpha kids.
@@justaname999 as a gen z myself, i just find it weird that ppl in my gen r like this also me literally defending my siblings (gen alphas) for the life of me
@@mynameisreallycool1 But even then, why the need to complain? Obviously, times are changing, always have. I'm a millennial, I guess, although I grew up with many gen X around me because of my much older siblings' influence in terms of music and style and me mostly emulating favorite characters' styles rather than being fashionable (I was the geek in a Dana Scully suit, which... oh boy, looking back is just... at 14 🤦🏻♀). And very clearly kids like 5 or 6 years younger had different things they did, the internet just got going big around then with social media starting to be more important. And we would maybe jokingly complain about "kids these days" but this current vitriol is weird.
The behavior of kids and teens are determinant factor in the continuation of teachers carrer. Speaking as a teacher, dealing with violence that mine past teachers didn't face in classroom make me wanna give up of this profession. Public schools doesn't have resorces to deal with lack of familiar bond. As a leftist I question why so many leftists believe that organization and discipline is direct conected whith violence (in every single case). The most organize and colaborative a school is more it students are able to develope a coletive view of society. Where there is caos, lack of acontability and comom interest more stresseful and unfair is the enviroment.
I agree with u, but I also think when discipline and organization are been talked about in the education sector it’s usually beatings, public shaming, etc. as someone who went to a school that did all this things this didn’t really help, we just adapted to those things, and just tried not to get catch when we were being “unruly” What kind of disciplinary action would you suggest that actually works? I personally think teachers aren’t given the chance to be true authorities in country and the parents here dont help on that issue at all.
As a pretty "leftist" teacher myself, I totally see this. Schooling as a social act will always be imperfect and require some degree of conformity (pay attention, listen and be respectful to others, be responsible for your own preparation and work) in order to succeed. In many ways the attack on this communal/community aspect of schooling has always tended to come most from the political fringes. Liberals were always complaining about the conservative (preserving/perpetuating the status quo) nature of schools- often comparing them to "factory" models. Conservatives often complain that the social nature of schools (which include ideas and even people they don't agree with), undermines their authority. And as the video points out, there are other forces at play a bit harder to pigeonhole as left or right. Capitalist or "neoliberal" objectives are more libertarian in message- schools are there to service individual "customers". As a teacher who cares about students developing a broad perspective, analytical skills, and human understanding, this is a hard game to win.
It has nothing to do with the feminization of the school system. Or outsourcing of the Production/Technology. Or that "everyone deserve a higher education" with some useless degrees. Nobody even reads in the Universities. My professors literally said that nobody would pass the exams, if they would ask the questions from our course books. So nobody even buys them.
Work in contemporary capitalism is broken, and chronically underpaid. I'm not shocked that young people don't all buy into it uncritically. And if they are to change things, not being compliant (i.e. polite) is the first step. More power to them.
I feel the meltdown of so many older people about younger people is one of the most embarrasing things in human history. Every generation ever has complained about the next generation but lucky for them there was no internet back them so the meltdown was never as public as it is now. This is the first generation where the full range of their insecurities, jealousy and anxiety about the generation that will replace them is fully out there for everyone to see
I've been in the American school system all my life, and I'll be graduating before the summer of this year (unless something drastic happens). And then going to college, to hopefully gain the skill and knowledge I need to become an urban planner or anything surrounding civil engineering. I want to get a job that highlights my strengths, math, science, and creativity, but will give me enough money and hopefully free time to relax. It sucks to look around me and constantly see comparison and comparison and comparison between peers in my own school, but also people around the world. I could be considered smart, being in AP Physics and BC Calculus as a senior while some of my friends and classmates are in Algebra 2, but I don't feel that way when I see the people in my STEM classes doing intense extracurriculars, like sports or theatre, while I practically do nothing. I like to write, I like to draw, I like to read, I like to analyze, I like to journal, I like to sing... but what's that compared to someone who actually shows it off? What's one sketch compared to this mural a person younger than me made? What's that drawing compared to the hard work put into performing a play? What's that play you were part of when your peer in the theatre does sports at the same time? Or has a part-time job? And then you look at education outside of the U.S... sure, some aren't great, but they're using the resources they have. They have passionate people. I feel incredibly stressed thinking that I'll be stuck to one career choice by the major I pick in college at 18, but people, kids, at 14 years old pick the high schools they want to go to, that narrows down their career choices, to my understanding. Students outside of the U.S. are under heavy amounts of stress because of exams, and yet I'm here complaining? It feels unfair, looking around myself, outside the country I live in. I want to be better. And I know now to try, now that I've overcome two years of Covid in High school, and lack of motivation (maybe depression) last year. But it's very difficult. For me, the first step isn't bettering myself, it's unfortunately aiming for a good grade.
This might be a long read and it might not feel right to you now to think about it this way yet, but you really don't need to put too much high a value on how other people are excelling in AP calculus or whatever dance class they're taking as extracurriculars. You will learn to think about how the skills you gained from all your own learning will allow you to teach people, help people, interact with other people on the job. Maybe those skills are not 100% relevant for being a sports coach or something because you didn't pursue sports long term, but do you think everyone who did dance during school is going to become a dance teacher? People won't see your grades once you leave school or training, your value is more than the grades, so your main goal should be to understand that doing something like example: presentations which you may hate so much, helps build communication, research skills, and knowing how to present summarized information in writing/visual form to people who don't know what you are talking about. These are not tied to any specific major at all. You might want to discuss with school resources who can help you build your resume/interview answers of what skills you'll have gained after college. You'll keep learning on the jobs you try too, how to better use your writing, analysis skills, and general creativity to solve problems. (Like for example, the new manager in charge of my workplace is a FILM-industry worker of 20 years, and he's now in a human resources job coordinating with our staff and repair people to make sure the building is safe. The difference in what he's doing now seems so big, but you can assume that he's got experience listening to the problems and also giving people tasks for preparing film sets or lighting in editing so we can get a project to completion.)
@@MikuHatsune159hey, I did say I love reading! Thank you for being so kind to my rambling, haha. What I'm seeing here is that I need to dissect what makes my schoolwork actually important, in order to understand why it's being assigned (this won't apply to some assignments, but it'll be helpful to stay motivated more often than not(, and that anything I do outside of school still builds skills, even if I don't find them useful now, and to find an unbiased party (or slightly in my favor,) to figure out how to present my habits in a good way in resume form. Thank you for reassuring me about the career-related woes. I'm still not confident on how, where, and what I want to work for for kinda sorta the rest of my life, but I'm sure I'll figure it out :).
@@coovulm glad I could help in any little way! 🙂 I gotta say I'm also not the most confident with my own career opportunities either, but if you're living somewhere with career help resources or even those existing in the college you plan to go to. I would highly suggest speaking to them, because trying to wrangle all that stuff in your own head is just mentally taxing sometimes.
Millennial here. The generations after us are excellent. Honestly you give me hope that we can turn this around. I agree that folks love the "kids these days" rhetoric. Don't buy it, embrace it. Lead a better life than those that came before you. Be the generation that says, "Wow! Kids these days!"
I went to a school were the teachers who gave a specific language were often native speakers and your experience with French teachers is mimicked here in my personal anecdote. Everybody hated French as a subject, as the french teachers, with the exception of one non-french native speaker of french, all had a very derogatory way of teaching, almost entirely centered around putting students down or "in their place". Humiliation rituals and derogatory comments were common place. Even typically harder subjects like maths and physics, were enjoyed a lot more by people, because for these subjects were taught by people who fostered curiosity, and creative problem solving.
The funny thing is; The adults that cry about literal kids being kids, don't realize that in their selfish search for pleasure and contempt, they are being just as childish.
If a generation is characterized by novelty, physical displays, egotism, generalism, and physical objects or details the group cares about, and that generation is culturally dominant, that would make anyone look old.🙂Change and novelty are emphasized far more in media than they were in the past, and as a result, the same can be said about culture.
Great break-down, Alice. Under capitalism we are basically sending our children to places that drain them of all curiosity and creativity. They are not learning empathy by being disciplined, but how to best avoid punishments. And their teachers are exhausted from being forced to put all their energy into that while being woefully underpaid.
That's not something to pin on capitalism. What you are describing could appear in any hierarchy. Teachers have wanted obedient students for as long as their have been teachers. A school under communism would be even worse. Capitalism thrives on creativity and curiosity. That's how companies make better/new products. All the cool things you own are the result of someone being curious and/or creative.
Speak for yourself. Public education in the US isn’t one thing. Teacher pay fluctuates wildly by what state you’re in and within the state too. Talk to teachers or visit schools instead of watching a video essay from someone who has never worked in a school.
Thank you! This is the first video made by a millennial/genZ (I don't know) person that is not just a litany of complete panic and accusations of how gentle parenting is spoiling the children. And it's not even the right-wing people who upset me. It's the people on the left who somehow converge on the same talking points I find truly odd. Also, interesting complementary example to the one you cite from your school time: I went to school with a group of kids who clearly had mostly partying and pot in mind and some would casually smoke during school days over lunch. One of them came to class 15 minutes late, carrying his school stuff in a plastic bag. The teacher made a similar remark about him but the difference is, nobody cared, least of all the guy. Because he (and all the other kids who could afford daily pot) was comfortably upper middle class and a remark like that couldn't affect him. He was considered cool by everyone and his future was fairly safe. Kids from a lower socio-economic backgrounds, however, would always be hit hard by remarks like that and suffer. In some ways, I was raised to believe that money doesn't matter (my parents were both immigrants from socialist countries), but around middle school at the latest, I was quickly dispelled of that notion.
I only had a couple years experience in American public school, but it was depressing. For the most part there was absolutely no attempt by the teachers to make the subjects interesting, they mostly handed out packets of dry, dull information that we were supposed to “summarize”. They were essentially babysitters for teenagers, there to prevent students from leaving or from creating too much disturbance, and not much else. Naturally the students were disinterested in what was being “taught”, so the students didn’t put much effort in. Which in turn does not motivate the teachers to actually put effort in, because the students don’t care. And of course the curriculum they had to follow was not conducive to interesting lessons. Like you say, it was transactional.
Policy talk (also amongst the public) tends to go in cycles; progress in a wobbly line -- probably slowly up on average, as we keep attending to the crises as they appear over the centuries
I want a distincetion to be made clear: there is a fifference between being an authority on a subject and having authority given through systematic means. Basically, you are the authority of your experiences. You often know what your life is like better than someone who is not you. You know your likes nd dislikes. Authority through structural means are authority figures who have must be respected, regardless of their qualifications. Pereonally, i think the best way to approach teaching would be through curiosity and at times, discussion. There are times when students need to be taught some basic function or idea, and then given the time to further explore the subject. Then they can be guided and given more resources. In some subjects, too, there can't be hard and fast rules, such as art and literature. Giving students time to give their thoughts and try things out help them find a way forward. It gives students time to get a feel for the subject matter
I don't buy the whole "gen alpha can't behave" stereotype. I find it interesting that when you hear stories about older generations doing worse things as kids or teens, people either portray it in a "Oh, yeah. This was back when kids were tougher!" or they automatically sympathize with those kinds of kids, assuming the worst about their parents or their lives, but when the new generation is doing it, they're "undisciplined" or "spoiled". Teenagers used to give kids swirlies and smoke at school in the 80s (and this is said by people who were teens during this time, whenever they want to brag about how tough they were or "how bad they had it"), who were not stopped, but for some reason, if you call THOSE teens spoiled or say, "Their parents never told them no!", you get a ton of angry people defending them and saying, "Well, they probably had a bad home life! That's all!" But kids today don't get those type of excuses. I literally remember my dad telling absolutely horrible stories about some of the awful things his classmates did in high school, including throwing tantrums in field trips because they didn't get any souveiners, putting hot pepper flakes in the air vents, and hitting old men with sling shots. My dad is in gen x, so guess his peers are excused. Meanwhile gen alpha is being labled as the worst generation because they have their phones out in class or make fun of a teacher's hairline, which are bad, but I think that everyone just has a habit of judging the youngest generation as all being "spoiled" while kids from older generations who acted badly are portrayed in a better light.
excellent video and description of this problem. I have noticed it myself as my high school shifts toward online classes that give college credit and are clearly not as enriching over classes with an actual teacher that are more generalized. soon enough it seems kids are going to have to decide their future career by the time they are 16 so that they can get their specialized education for that job asap to skip as much college as possible because its way too expensive. problems come from every angle
Your deduction is super logical and I agree that the system does play a factor in the gen alpha moral panic. Most people cannot realize this and just see the immediate impact, like people just see a river/pond, whereas don't see the ocean/water source from which the river/pond stems as an analogy. Being an engineer and problem solver, this problem is unsolvable and it's complicated, shifting between liberalism & conservatism, especially in america.
haven't watched yet but the only thing i feel a little concern over is reading comprehension and the figurative aspects of language in fiction. i've been getting back into reading and it's becoming more and more obvious to me that we'd all benefit from reading more literature (both classics and modern work). the figurative thing has stood out to me lately. i feel people express overly literal thinking sometime, and particularly when re-reading farenheit 451, i started wondering if some of that is to do with so many of us not reading fiction. authors like bradbury write figurative descriptions (calling flying cars in his world "beetles" or the firetruck "salamander") and when i read those sentences i felt parts of my brain activating that hadn't been activated in a while. like it's stretching muscles that deal with abstraction and association. idk if that made any sense, lol
It makes perfect sense! Its the difference between just reading and comprehending. I'm a physics teacher and a lot of my students read the problems I give them, but when they're given a problem where they use the same equation to solve for something other than what we've solved before, they immediately say they don't understand it and "we didn't learn this." Over the semester, though, they've learned to think more critically and apply ideas to problem solving (which is a bit scary given that they're juniors in hs and should've probably learned this sooner, but I digress...) It's just like your reading example- the bridge between reading and comprehending is a daunting one to cross, so it makes sense why a lot of younger people try to find ways around the bridge or ways to not even have to cross it. I agree though, all generations alive rn need a better grasp on comprehension/interpretation, which can easily be solved through flexing those muscles (like by reading!)
I always chuckle when the people who created the world we grew up in refuse to take reasonability for how we turned out. I chuckle because at this point I'm out of tears.
This is very interesting. Thanks for the video! I sometimes get the impression from the teacher tik toks about "kids these days" that not only are kids (and parents) not willing to acede to the authority of the teacher but also that the teachers don't feel that they should have to prove they are worthy of trust. Teachers complain that students question them. But, as a preschool teacher, that's what I want, children who learn to question me. If I can't give a good explanation, I don't deserve the authority. As adults, I think we should be willing to build that trust with children to show them we are worthy of the authority we have over them. Of course, it's hard and I definitely don't always operate this way. But, ideally, yes, children should question me and I should have an explanation.
Alot of times schools create students who don’t stay obedient and they will create future activists without realizing it Right now many colleges are learning that lesson the hard way
this video found me at the perfect time! I'm a scout mentor in a Balkan country, and we've been noticing for a few years now that the kids are getting more impatient, apathetic, disrespectful and are in general harder to enthral. our troop leaders are young people from 16 to cca 24 years old, which is a part of our organization's concept and philosophy: young people work with young people. they have passed specializded courses for working with kids, but are mostly lost in what to do when the children have no respect for their hard work and knowledge whatsoever. People like me, who mentor the leaders, are in our mid to late 20s and even we don't have the skills to to work with the kids. The work that we do is slowly becoming too difficult for our organisation to handle, and if this continues we will have to change the entire system and its structure. the reasons you explained in the video make perfect sense actually. and it feels good to know that we have theoretically identified the problem, even if it relies on the system. ++ another thing but I went to Waldorf school (or Steiner school, similar to Montessori) for primary and high school and that was an interesting experience too. the lack of pressure on the grades and competitiveness, and more hands on experiences at different subjects were great. But at the same time you would get public community service or get shamed in front of the entire teaching staff if you skipped 1 class or shouted in the halls. the duality lol.
I would like to say that we also tend to forget about the internet when we talk about education. It’s easy to see it as strictly entertainment but as a kid that grew up with a lot of access to it, people online hugely impacted the way I perceive the world and the way I act. Luckily I was surrounded by kind people and “influencers” that truly wanted the best for people and to educate them. So I grew up learning to think and view the world that way. But I was lucky, I was under the best conditions to surround myself with them. Not every kid has the same situation as me and in an algorithm like TikTok where shock value is the most important, younger brains will learn to become like it and learn that attention grabbing behaviour is the best behaviour. Or at least with other people who grew up with TikTok and that have the same mindset. That’s why I think that children (at least the ones I exist with) are more likely to act as they do. Also I want to add that they don’t understand sarcasm and yet, even tho irony and sarcasm are all that they consume.
It fascinated me how school was always telling us about the dangers of the internet and cyberbullying when the crap I encountered in school was so much worse than anything I encountered online as a teen.
I think your point is illustrated well by all those cool teachers that we all had (at least one). They always treated pupils equally, it didn't matter if they were A or F students, they cracked jokes and saw us as humans, but they also never had favorites in tests and if you got an F or an A you knew that it was on you. These seemed to be the real educators and all students respected them. They had authority not because of being manipulative or shaming others, but standing on "I know thongs and I'm here to teach you, but that's just that" I was so lucky to have a few of them
Omg! @8:42 - you include a picture of my mom's high school of Hibbing in Northern Minnesota! The building itself is a testament to the iron mining industry in the town, which boomed in the early 20th century. Was not expecting to see it in this video!
@@Ty-mu7gl Yep that's his hometown! The town used to do a bunch of stuff for Dylan fans like "Dylan Days" and a restaurant called "Zimmy's" after his actual last name Zimmerman but sadly Zimmy's closed a while ago and I don't know if they still do "Dylan Days". It's not a big town and there's been a decline in the population over the years.
I'm a gen x. This video really made me think. I studied sculpture in the early 90s. My wife lectures film and TV today. What she describes is a complete contrast to my experience even though both subjects are the arts and involve creativity. Back then we were respected as individuals with our own interests and our tutors who we respected were there to guide our growth and suggest better ways of meeting the goals we set ourselves. It really was about broadening the horizons of the individual and nurturing their growth as an artist - not dictating what they had to do. Today though, everything seems to be about modules and marks, students jumping through hoops and lecturers seen as service providers who must tick the right boxes so that the students can get the grades they arrive on day one thinking they deserve. A constant complaint from my wife is students constantly asking "what do I need to write to get a good grade", "what do I need to put into my film and in what order to pass". There's no philosophy of discovery, growth or creativity in the majority it seems - I would argue as a failure in education policy from the earliest years.
I'm sorry. There are a lot of interesting things to say about education under capitalism and this video doesn't mention any of them. This is the most surface-level 'let's apply some philosophy to an industry without trying to understand anything about how that industry works' analysis I've seen long time. If anyone is looking for a much better discussion about what's going on in modern education I would strongly suggest watching Zoe Bee's "The Right-Wing War on Education." The biggest issue with education under capitalism is the insistence that schools be run like businesses. Parents are the customers, 'educated students' are the products those parents are paying for (with their taxes), and teachers are a replaceable and exploitable labor force who are treated like cogs in a machine rather than professionals with expertise. The people making all of the decisions about how our educational system work, from those in the federal department of education down to local principals and district superintendents, generally don't understand education as a process. They're managers by training, not educators, and politicians who require short-term quantifiable results to stay in office. Attempts to increase "accountability" among schools by cutting the funding of underperforming schools make sense to someone with a background in business but are antithetical to how education works (students who are struggling need *more* support, not less). This emphasis on accountability and leaders who care only about metrics they can use to prove their business is delivering high quality products has made "teaching to the test" the dominant strategy in way too many classes. Students today are lacking a lot of the skills and abilities which previous generations took for granted because they don't show up on standardized tests and have been optimized out of most schools to make way for more test prep. Students are reaching me at the college level not knowing how to study, having difficulty reading anything longer than 10 pages, and with an understanding that "learning" means "memorizing things by rote without and then forgetting it after the test" which absolutely fails them the second they have to actually understand what they're doing. None of that is their fault, it's entirely in how their schools are failing them. But you didn't mention a single one of those failures. Philosophy is fine, but if you want to apply it to the real world then you need to understand the parts of the world you're talking about. Otherwise you're just wasting everyone's time.
It's an extremely rare but moving feeling to have teachers, whether in an educational or professional environment, to whom it is liberating to submit to - such teachers are, undeniably, emancipators.
I think that gen Alpha will definitely have some problems, but like cmon now. We need to treat them like our little siblings and stick up for them. Can you imagine being a kid and everyone seems to hate you for no reason?
ah, as a millenial, this makes me nostalgic for when we were kids and literally everything we did was wrong, and then we were teenagers and young adults and everything we did was "ruining an industry". But I guess now we're ruining gen alpha, so it never really ends
I loved going to a school with a uniform for middle school (age 11-13 in US) but only in retrospect -- while wearing it I basically didn't care. The place I grew up (suburb of Baltimore) had a crazy amount of inequality. My public middle school everyone wore the same polo shirt and chino pants. My high school had no uniform policy and I immediately felt the effect of that. Suddenly kids (the exact same kids that had previously mingled) were separated by visually obvious indicators of class/status.
These days thrifting has become a lot more accepted which I think has made a massive difference in bullying related to clothing like when the rich kids and the poor kids are both thrifting clothes then there aren’t as many superficial differences that can be used to exclude people
@@lizardguy4236 Finding high quality, trendy clothes at thrift shops is a useful, rewarding, but also time-intensive process. It requires transportation to and from the thrift store. It requires money to purchase the clothes. It requires resources and friends to determine what is and is not fashionable. It might be a mitigating factor, but it is not a solution to this problem.
Sometimes my mum asks the following rhetorical question: Do you really think the neighbours are interrested in books? Why bother learning; I heared them mock your studies. Most people don't want to learn. It's a solid point, one I haven't found an answer for.
So incredibly simple: knowledge is best obtained for personal empowerment. Caring about the opinions of others as far as your learning is concerned is a disservice. Misery loves company. The ignorant resent those who seek lthe light of knowledge. It just seems to be their way. Why it is this way is a question i'd like to see discussed, too.
for some reason people understand that people dance for pleasure, watch tv for pleasure, yet somehow they cannot understand someone being interested in something for pleasure. you don't need to justify yourself, you just follow what feels worthy of attention
@@aleksandrawilkos1278 the way people try to regulate what you should or should not enjoy bugs me so much, they put things into categories and say "ugh why are you doing that? It's for kids, only silly irresponsible people like doing that" or "eww that's so weird and boring only old people do that" and of course, all the unnecessary gendering of things. As a girl who liked a lot of "boy" things when I was younger, started crocheting in my early 20s and now roller skates in my 30s, please just let people enjoy the shit they enjoy, no ones forcing you to do it too.
I am doing workshops and after school art classes to teens for five years now and see A LOT of bright creative minds. Teens, who want to become artists, teachers and preschoolteachers. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are not worse than other generations. They just need to find their place and carve their path. I am really proud of the current young generation!
yeah i was also raised in the french education system and they would say things like ‘i will never bother learning your name’, girls getting humiliated at the board especially in math and science, some kids being targeted as the dumb guy/troublemaker and being picked on and insulted by the teacher all year, and you had to shamefully and silently watch your classmates go through these experiences every day and live them yourself, it was an awful time honestly it traumatised me in some ways, you really put it into words
Reminder to all boomers, your college was probably free or affordable with a part time job, you could get married at age 23 consistently and didn’t have to deal with the risk of your wife deciding you weren’t hit or rich enough and being able to leave for selfish reasons. You could also buy a home for what amounts to like $80k today whereas a home in anywhere with good paying jobs will cost like $600k.
Thanks for this. I'm a public school teacher in DC working with 100% low-income students of color, and it's so frustrating how my school is labeled as "failing," my students are perceived as "in crisis" and me and my colleagues are viewed as "underperforming" or "ineffective." All based on standardized test scores that mainly privilege. It's so frustrating because we're no better or worse than any other school. The catastrophizing needs to stop. The only emergency is segregation and inequality, but my kids do not need to be fixed, nor do the teachers.
I'd argue that choosing to follow what someone says bc you trust in their knowledge or judgement is a very different thing from submitting to authority, which, to me, implies a lack of choice and having to follow their commands even if you don't understand or disagree. TL;DR: It's not authority if they don't need to pull rank
Something I learned yesterday that is fun. The author Robert A. Heinlein thought that children of his day were running out of control thanks to the social sciences telling people that corporal punishment is bad. So in his book starship troopers, that was as much a political manifesto as adventure story, he predicted that society would totally collapse due to gangs of feral youths roaming the land robbing and murdering at will. Thing is he wrote this in the 1950s. So the out of control delinquent generation he was talking about were the baby boomers :p
As a foreigner in France, I feel sorry for the discipline kids experience here. And at the same time, I understand where the microaggressions I suffer every day from people with good intentions come from. Viva Paulo Freire!
seeing fellow gen z repeating the same shit boomers kept repeating about both us and millenials the moment gen alpha enjoys something a lot of us don't understand honestly makes me cringe so much, like, i thought we were better than that
I just want to say thank you for speaking about the shame based education system in many European countries, as someone who went to public school in Spain for kindergarten - second year of secondary school (eight grade for americans) I find myself having to unlearn so much shame in my daily life just from the trauma of the spanish school system and I feel like it's not nearly discussed enough/it's too normalized ESPECIALLY in how abusive teachers will behave towards literal children
I’m deeply ashamed - and basically fell off my peers’ ‘liberalism’ into dialectical materialism (and metamodernism…?) years ago (not that it helps much, and it’s rather lonely for a 58 yo…). MY GENERATION gave our young a political economy across the OECD that can’t work for our own kids. And THEN we derate them for not “working hard enough”? Individualisation of failure is as bad as financial ‘freedom’ itself - especially since we don’t teach our young anything heterodox, tools for criticism. And we leave the bill for our very private “growth” to our own kids and grandkids…? This is modernism beyond its own capacity, there’s only one imperative here - our very common *ecology* …!
This is an absolute feature of neo-liberal/conservative politics. Their views can be summed up with the idea that they privatize benefits/victories and socialize losses.
@@samhutchison9582 Sadly, i know… Started my journey in the aftermath of 2008 bailouts by studying Stiglitz. Been a member of Progressive International and DiEM25 last four years. It’s been a long walk, still walking… 👍
Having spent 35 yrs teaching biology at University level. The most noticeable change over those 3 and 1/2 decades was the increase in students feeling they are owed good grades! The students we get are probably the top 15,% from high school but even these students ask repeatedly for extra credit! I make it very clear that I don't do extra credit, I have enough credit built into the course for you to succeed. It makes no sense to request more work if you are struggling with the work already built into the course!! Wish high schools would get that lesson and stop with the extra credit crap!! It feeds into this feeling of I deserve the best grades!!!
General Education in schools has had flaws since I was in school. Just now gen alpha is exp a public education system that hasn’t changed & small times it did it was for worst. Commodification has a stronghold on education. Instead of figuring out how to educate students differently doubling down on old ways.
Who are the shareholders in public education? It’s a free service funded through property taxes. Sure cooperations sell goods to aid education (computers, textbooks, software etc) but that’s been happening for at least 100 years. “They can’t read.” Most of them are still in elementary school. The oldest ones are just starting high school. Give them time.
Don't knock general education courses. When I was an undergrad I had to take an Art History course. At the time it seemed a waste of my effort but later on I had the chance to travel to Europe and see a lot of the art in person, I remembered some of what I was taught in that course. It made the trip more rewarding!!
When you spoke about the museum tour I immediately thought of the scene from "Midnight in Paris" about Rodin 🤣 I love hearing your voice on such topics. Thank you for adding to the scales of compassion and understanding! I always say that rich people are like children who don't help their parents carry the groceries, and then have the nerve to expect them to cook. A simplification, but I do feel that those in power don't wield it responsibly. But they do profit from it.
Not "capitalism" as much as "neoliberalism," outright letting company interests lobby in politics as something normal and the biggest fish dominate everything. Everything. Even education which is a national service, *not* a market.
@@NazarioOrbe It really isn't hard to just look up "neoliberalism wikipedia" and click on the first link you know. Not a conspiracy, it's an economic model of capitalism pioneered in practice by those like Thatcher and Reagan, with earlier ties to theorists like Milton Freedman
@@NazarioOrbe Obviously politicians and theoreticians alike come from their material conditions, nobody denies that. Look at especially the US economy in 1960 and it now. A massive difference since Reagan
The gen alpha reading level idea has bugged me since the beginning. Reading competency or ability doesn’t have to be related to an educational stage like 3rd grade or even entirely related to a person’s chronological age.🙂
@@codenamepyro2350 People have different cognitive styles, and educational stages don't make sense. Age mixing and competency based learning make more sense.
@@RebeccaBalcom-p1n It's true they should become sufficient at reading, but people tend to only look at metrics at a surface level which can be misleading this case. It doesn't make sense to relate the metrics to a grade just like it doesn't make sense how we treat time in society, not to mention one size fits all metrics don't make sense in this context due to differences in cognitive styles, extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation, and interest in the reading material. Plus, the writing is likely very dated, and reading speed isn't constant. The dopamine related effects of digital technology and its effects on attention span as well as much of gen alpha reading far less (not just books) have probably made things worse, though.
I'm not sure why UA-cam recommended this video to me today as a late Gen X, but I'm glad I watched it. The kids are alright. One of the ways I am non-typical for my demographic, is that I went to a small school and was ahead of my peers intellectually. Starting in 3rd grade, I was given alternate "advanced" assignments, which essentially amounted to 'take this book and go write a report' most times. By the time I was in high school, the teachers for STEM subjects would bring their leftover college textbooks for me to use for a semester at a time. By the time of graduation I had developed a habit and a process for independent learning that has served me well ever since then.
Really appreciate this video, Alice. What you said about this mindset of educators being 'servivce providers' is exactly right. I work in education, & in my convos with teachers I've heard so many educators concerned about the transactional nature of current education. Kids are socialized to value high grades & good marks, to the point where they expect good grades for just showing up. I don't blame students for that entirely: it's more so the fault of parents & guardians, who put intense pressure on kids beginning all the way in preschool, to the point where students can't really focus their energies on actually learning. They skim, they occasionally use chat GPT, because the priority is getting an 'A' and not actually forming critical opinions.
As a private teacher I can relate with this so much. I’m just a service to ensure my clients get noticeable results and have fun; but if I give too much work or put too many demands on them, like repeat basics too much; they loose motivation quit and find a teacher that will provide more excitement.
Well the current average reading level of an American adult is that of a 6th grader, and honestly I wouldn't be surprised if it got lower in the coming decades
As a man in his fifties I assure you that not only were my generation like this, but all the generations since have been like this, and my own elders have reminisced about how THEIR generations were like this. Everybody wants to believe that THIS generation is DIFFERENT, because of some thing they don't like. What's different isn't the generation, it's just the thing. Every generation had a thing. The older generations didn't like it through some combination of not understanding it, and wishing they'd had it themselves. And when the younger generation does exactly what the older generation did, the olds clutch their pearls over some combination of "my generation never did that" (which is a lie), and "my generation wouldn't have done that if we had the thing" (which is also a lie). Young people gonna young. That's how it's always been. Your job as a grown adult is to try and prod them away from the biggest mistakes, so when they are themselves grown adults they have not ruined their lives. And their job is to not listen, as you know perfectly well if you have a functioning memory of being that age.
Instead of blaming kids for being addicted to technology that is literally designed to make even fully grown adults addicted, let’s talk about the parents giving their kids this technology with no boundaries- but also the society that forces both parents to work to exhaustion and have no time for their kids.
Adults accepting responsibility for their actions?!?! That's basically communism!
That's true, there's nowhere near enough holiday for parents, childcare must be a nightmare
I’ve seen so much complaining about children watching low quality content on UA-cam shorts aimed at children but not ONE PERSON complaining about youtube failing to regulate it
@@aliteralsnakewithatophat3247it’s called taking the iPad away from your kid. It’s not hard
Yes, I think we need to step back from the 40 hour workweek as it is literally killing us. It is insane to expect everyone to work so much that they do not have time to live their lives and they always feel exhausted and stressed. Many children and parents have their relationship destroyed because the parents work too much to spend any time with the kids. And most of the work we do is neither fulfilling nor important.
It’s always “kids these days” but never “what systems have we designed for kids to grow up like this?”
Always “Kids are glued to their cell phones!”
Never “Social media app companies have a profit incentive to make sure its target audience are constantly using the app so that its advertisements reach maximum screen time.”
No, their fault as well, they created social media, as much as we might not like it, it has helped people, but also hurt them, is all up to the parents to tell their kids where they should use it.
“Kids are glued to their cell phones!” - The correct answer to that is: "Do something about it if you really think it's a problem."
It's up to parents and parents enable it. Parents need to change things. We can age restrict social media but parents are ultimately responsible for their kids.
@@tc-tm1my there is a problem with your logic:
Humans don't have an instruction manual...
“Gosh darn millennials and their participation trophies!”
(Nevermind the fact that the parents were the ones to create this system and force it upon their kids)
I taught gen alpha for two years as a swim instructor, and there were kids who wouldn’t listen, kids who picked everything up quickly, kids with fears of water, etc. It would be impossible for me to sum up the newest generation because they’re a diverse group of people just like my generation is. Most of them were lovely and I miss teaching them every day. Even the ones that wouldn’t listen would crack me up a lot of the time, and the vocabularies of the two year olds were extremely advanced and they followed instruction well. Some kids just need extra help, I am also a slower learner and it’s so frustrating. I can’t imagine being outright shamed for this, something I can’t control. The institutionalization and standardization of learning seems so odd to me.
As someone traumatized by my education, thank you for being nice to the kids
@@jeffersonclippership2588 just doing my job :) I’m sorry you were put through that
Exactly! I help teach on the weekends and the groups we've had have been such a range. Some kids pick things up easily, some of them are more hyper, and that's just the start! I don't like when people try to generalize any groups. Nobody will be the exact same as anyone else, so there's not much of a point to it!
And yet many teachers would tell you the opposite, that it is very easy to sum them up.
It's always about ''the kids these days'' it's incredible how much we repeat the same mistakes as we age. Frankly embarassing for the human race
For a bunch of animals who's purpose is to multiply, I'd say we're doing a phenomenal job.
Teachers were still allowed to strap us when I was a kid and parents were expected to beat us.
It's the fault of the kids from yesterday!
This generation may be the one true exception. The human experience never really changed that drastically, like it has these past 20 years. Technological advancement will be a disaster to the human race
Right. It's never "the adults these days." At least not with any meaningful expectation, as though there's any chance of them fulfilling their obligations to be decent human beings.
Just because every generation says it, doesn't mean they're wrong
every generation gets this scrutiny. This time every little opinion can be put on record that everyone can see
The reproduction of class warfare and the capitalistic fight against community over nuclear family
Social Media do be fuckin up our mental health some though. We gotta look at that.
Not a generational thing though. It gets everyone.
Every generation is under scrutiny, but the poor state of education now (at least in my country, Romania) is, I think, way worse than ever before. The question is not if it's bad or not, but rather what should be done about it. And I'm glad Alice is pointing out that the causes are much more complex, as everybody over here who's concerned with the subject is leaning towards the conservative solution.
@raduungureanu2080 what is the conservative solution in Romania? Because in the US the conservative "solution" is dismantling public education, demonizing teachers, and giving free money to their friends running charter schools.
To a point I agree, I see the same tendencies in fellow gen z people that milenials had towards us. Lots of this new generation is lazy or stupid or whatever. That stuff I’m not worried about since gen x did it to milenials and boomers did it to gen x and so on. The part I’m more concerned about is them not being able to read, write, or focus. I was able to read and write by 3 and do it propperish by 8, but I’m seeing teachers say kids older than that can’t do any of them.
Re: Kids causing a racket at a restaurant. What a crock - the same thing was being said about me and my friends when we hung out at at a local restaurant BACK IN THE EIGHTIES. And while they were correct - we did take up a lot of space, make a lot of noise, and in general were a self-involved and disrespectful bunch of teenagers - the same thing was being said of our detractors back in their day. And so on until at least the later Victorian era when school was made compulsory. FFS...
I think it’s also important to note that most of the time kids aren’t trying to be disruptive to them they’re just hanging out with their friends and if you ask them to be a bit less disruptive a lot of the time they can be accommodating
Right?! That one had me saying 'Whoa!! You're telling me that teenagers are acting like teenagers? Shocking. 🙄'.
It's indeed not a new phenomenon. Just let me remind you of a quote from SOCRATES: “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
I robbed a drugstore once and ended up as an engineer....
@@penultimateh766 that makes perfect sense, it's the only way one could survive eng. school
I find it hard to believe that gen z or a are ''the worst''. kinda reminds me of how in primary school teachers would say ''your class is the worst'' when in hindsight now, it wasn't even bad. it's almost as if they said that to every class or something
nah, things are really bad. your generation didn't have mobile phones and was at least pretending to pay some attention. however, the point of the video was not if it's bad or not, but rather what should be done about it. most people lean towards the conservative solution and, as Alice points out, that's rather the root cause than the solution.
if every class a teacher has is "the worst," there's only one common denominator
That's true. We all know teachers can be very bias too.
Not gen D. Generation Alpha. We have started the alphabet all over again, but this time in Greek.
@@raduungureanu2080 "Was at least pretending to pay some attention" Well, they still weren't paying attention, either way. I wouldn't say that's any better.
I think people WANT very badly for it to be true, deep down. Either millennials and older who have a superiority complex and will take any bad press about younger generations as fact, or late gen z/gen alpha kids with a superiority complex who have the "I'm not like other kids my age. I'm more mature!" mentality and like to have their beliefs of themselves confirmed.
I'll be honest another factor that can be talked about here is how children become accessories for their parent until they themselves become a parent and then recreate that cycle, as someone living in south Asia I can say how someone's children's education is their social capital
Have you already forgotten? Children under 18 legally do not have human rights.
Quit complaining, object.
(This is not a joke.)
@@jooot_6850 Even above 18, you don't get shit if you are not financially independent, and some people even justify it by talking about dependence.
I often say birth rates get lower because why lose your youth to cram school so you can rip someone else out of perfect nonexistence and send them to cram school?
That’s a whole other conversation tbh
As a queer Indian I have to suffer all the consequences of not being able to expand the capital invested by my birthgivers in my upbringing via a heteronormative lifestyle so I feel your comment on a different level. When I think about it, I feel social capitalism and the endless desire for the expansion of social capital like you say has been the ancient father of capitalism all along, and economic capitalism is just a recent 2.5 century old newborn rapidly taking over the aging father
"They're all mistakes, children! Filthy, nasty things. Glad I never was one." -The Trunchbull
Feels like a lot of judgemental adults forget what it was like to be a kid and think they were always bastions of good behavior. 🤦
I studied in a french primary and middle school in turkey. After 8 years of insane discipline I was like I can't have this anymore. In high school went to a more relaxed but really good american high school (again in turkey). And the freedom I felt (because this one particular school in turkey is nice it doesnt mean all american schools are like that) was insane. I didnt need to cut my hair in a particular way, didnt need wear black shoes, no need to have white socks. And besides that *most* the teachers were more relaxed. When I did some stuff wrong I did not feel like I should be ashamed and it was the end of the world. I still have dreams, more like nightmares, in which I'm still in my french school or I have to go back to that school. ps also your teacher is crazy
Same thing, except for me that was my high school. But contrasted with what you said, discipline was also a relief for me. To equalize everyone to same level. I felt good when authority was applied because I was the docile one, I was following the rules already so nobody had a right to break them. There is some kind of envy-revenge relationship in me concerning discipline weirdly.
@@ersu3 I can totally relate to that. I guess when you are emersed into a system that thrives on "ultra-discipline" by way of shaming those who dare to break the rules, you start to feel some contempt, if you will, against those who break the rules while you are doing the best to adhere to them.
The same for me! I went to a British primary school in China, then later integrated into Chinese middle school, I felt literally miserable, even developed severe depression and anxiety 😢
Don't you have regular schools over there? Is it normal to go to x nationality schools?
@ville__ just wait until tomorrow and shut up
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”.......Socrates, ~400 BC
It's a wonderful quotation, but it was not said by Socrates in 400BC. It was first written by Kenneth John Freeman in 1907. In the 1920s, newspapers started falsely attributing it to Socrates to make it sound more ancient and wise.
There were tablets with similar discourse found in Sumer, the oldest writings humanity knows of.
@@mofoburrellthat's funny since it sounds nothing like what an ancient greek would say lol
Kids end up being the greatest teachers to their own parents.
This quote is not from Socrates. Quote investigator attributed it to Kenneth John Freeman’s dissertation, but in fact it’s a rough translation of a passage in Aristophanes’ Clouds, a play that makes fun of Socrates. But it is not said by Socrates in the Clouds either, but by a personified “Fair Reason”. Writing a paper on it rn and want to share.
I was worried about my 20 y.o. Son’s reading skill because he just doesn’t seem to be into it but then we were playing through a video game and he was just skipping through the text and I was all, “Don’t you need to read that?” To which he responded, “Yeah, I did read it.”…turns out that he’s a snob about his anime and only watches “subbed, not dubbed” and watches it at 4x speed, or something like that…he reads as fast as I do, and I read fast!
Just because someone doesn’t like reading doesn’t mean that they can’t. If they are passionate about something, they will make sure to absorb every detail no matter what.
See, I usually prefer dubbed, but I’ll still watch subbed from time to time, particularly if that particular anime doesn’t have an English dub. And I’ve also watched shows entirely in German with English subtitles (Mostly just Deutschland ‘83 and its sequels ‘86 and ‘89)
@@ninyaninjabrifsanovichthes45 you didn't need to tell us you were german, saying you prefer dubbed was enough for that
@@Joostmhw Honestly german dub is quite good, even though I’m not german I grew up on it so I have quite a nostalgia for it
@@Pollicina_db nostalgia is clouding your judgement there yeah. Any country has "a good dub" but a good dub is still a dub. The mismatch between audio and lip movements alone is horrible
It's crazy to me that the pandemic isn't mentioned in any of these discussions. A full year off-school will impact education for anyone.
Yes this is something I keep seeing ignored or minimised by those talking about this issue. Not only would it affect education but general social development too, I felt especially sorry for only children going through lockdowns who may have had no contact with someone their age for weeks/months at a time and that's not even considering the extra harm that may have been done to kids in abusive/neglectful families. If kids aren't acting at least a little out of character after going through the pandemic it would honestly be a miracle.
As someone who grew up in the US education system with undiagnosed disabilities...yeah, shame is everywhere. The first response was ALWAYS to blame instead of "Maybe the child is struggling", even when I was literally 5 years old. I even remember having a Kindergarten teacher who would "train" students not to use the bathroom by refusing to let them go, waiting till they peed themselves, and then giving them fresh pants from some giant safe. (Without fresh underwear mind you). This is already a nightmare and abusive imo, but is even worse for kids with sensory issues who 1. May not be able to use the pants she gave them or 2. Would not be able to read their body's signs to pee well in the first place.
For real. I grew up in US schools during the early 2000s and I basically got bullied from day 1, kindergarten and beyond.
I had a teacher for Kindergarten who "trained" kids to not use the bathroom so much by refusing to let them go, letting them wet themselves, and giving them pants from a giant safe--still no fresh undies tho so you would have pee soaked undies and fresh pants. (Was a NIGHTMARE for my sensory issues, and I got bullied for it. So glad that your story was different!!)
Honestly, I hated school, lmao. It was prob worse than some prisons, at least for the disabled kids. I had some nice teachers here and there, but they were the outliers. @@celticajayk
It’s illegal to not allow kids to go to the bathroom in the US
I'd be shocked to hear that is true tbh. I've lost count of how many teachers during K-12 actively refused the bathroom. I have perminant bladder damage from that. @@stephaniepantera
Oh my god that's horrific
@@cassiopeiasfire6457 And that’s not even the worst thing going on. I could go on for hours Tbh about the crap I went through that gave me school-related-PTSD.,
In my experience, while there is plenty of evidence that there is some decline, to simply dismiss whole generations especially to suggest that it's some moral failing on their part is not good critical thinking. As a teacher of young people with learning disabilities in a private institution, I can say this customer mindset is a real thing. Parents feel like they're paying for a grade and we owe it to them whether the work is being done or their kid needs more adjustments or not. And that control piece where we force neurodivergent kids to behave in "normative" ways--walk in a straight line, have all your papers in color coded folders etc. etc. It's sad and it's hurting the kids. Great video as always, Alice! Have a great week! :-)
That's how some parents in private institutions have always behaved, though.
Including where they treat neurodivergent kids like it's their fault they're not NT.
@@MCArt25 Oh of course it is, which is why, as Alice points out, the issue is deeper than schooling--it's the capitalistic mindset that individuals can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps if they just want it bad enough and that everything is just a matter of money.
stop defending the moral panic
@@khalidpatterson1422 I'm not. Like at all.
@@vulgarveil it's not a great comment. Appeal to authority is half of it
What I am hearing about gen alpha right now is pretty much what I experienced in middle school, including abhorrent discipline, kids not being able to read into their tweens, and constantly being told that we are the worst class the teacher has had to teach. I guess it just happened a bit earlier in my country
I think Plato said the same thing 2300 years ago.
@@eveningchaos1 and he even expressed it much better lol
@ville__good
yeah i remember starting high school and i changed school districts so they had initially put me in the "lowest level" english class (this is in america, so first language). i couldn't believe that an entire classroom full of 20+ kids had no clue at all what a noun was and could barely read things that i thought were simple. i honestly think that a lot of the people complaining about this stuff just didn't actually see how bad it was when they were kids (it would be easy to miss if you are only friends with people at your own skill level, or you just mind your own business, or you only take "higher level" classes as you get older).
Not being able to read in your tweens is mad different. I humbly cannot relate. My peers could read…
My mom has a worse phone addiction than my gen-alpha siblings
Perhaps it's the ADHD, but I don't play on my phone all day. Quite often I'll go tear something apart or _whatever._
Meanwhile SO MANY of the middle aged people around me are ALWAYS on their phone.
Like, doesn't browsing facebook and playing ad infused shovelware not get boring after a while?
"I love it when people speak straight out of their assess without much consideration for the topic at hand. And then call it opinion." ❤ The quote of the day
Isn't it an ignorant opinion, but still an opinion?
@@johnbeard7252 It is but I would consider it less valid if you make blatant statements with such certainty when in fact you haven't informed yourself enough. If I'm asked for an opinion on a topic I don't really know much about, I'd give my initial opinion but I'd note that my knowledge of the topic isn't broad to be certain so I'd have to research more. I like the quote merely for situations when people behave like they know so much when in fact they don't and are even condescending . My comment comes from a personaI experience of knowing people with horrible discussion skills. I wouldn't apply the quote to a respectful discussion.
@@johnbeard7252 Yes, but I think there maybe a subtle difference in the French meaning of opinion to the English one, a French speaker would have to answer but, I think in French the word carries more of a meaning of personal judgement after the facts rather than a mere flippant conclusion after not actually thinking about it at all.
Alice captures well what Confucius taught about education for self-transformation (that in turn transforms the world). He also said in the Analects '有教無類' which means 'having education without distinction of social classes'. His favourite student, Yan Hui, was a homeless man. Confucius accepted as small as a stick of dried meat as a tuition fee. His title 'The Exemplary Teacher of Myriad Ages' is so true even to these days.
Fantastic video. There’s similarities in the historic East Asian and south Asian cultural models with respect to education.
I feel a conflict with the attitudes of my peers, having grown up in the anglo, protestant west. Yes, your computer science degree teaches outdated programming frameworks, but why are you in school? Do a coding boot camp, if your only goal is to get a job - the degree teaches you the more fundamental underpinnings of the computational network state we live in. It’s a math degree, essentially.
As a South Asian I think about this a lot - our history is entrenched in the dissemination of knowledge and education - and this is reflected in cultural attitudes towards what education is, a builder of tools to understand and perceive the world, through a multi variate lens based approach. Yes, rationally, but also in other ways. The sort of ultimate goal is to become a learned human, eventually seeking enlightenment. Now this is in the philosophies of “Hinduism” (which by the way isn’t really a religion, just a western label used to discredit the decentralized collection of philosophies it encompasses, including Buddhism).
I think it’s part of the reason why my parents care little about the financial success I’ve had on the side, as I’m just now completing a higher education - that was the first priority in their view.
Historic South Asia seems to have been always highly educated (see the Gurukuls), and this seems to persist across eras (Vedic, mauryan, etc). Even during times of destitution (post and during Turkic, Arabic and European colonialism), the British recorded fairly higher levels of education in a number of states than in Britain (this is in the 18th century).
Also, my response sort of points out a flaw in the video, which is endemic with these sorts of videos, which is even when acknowledging a western bias… you retain it. Specifically, the relationship between capitalism and education.
It’s part of the issue I have with western marxists who are well meaning but still completely operate within a western perspective, unable to conceive of cultural situations where capitalism is highly valued alongside a parallel education track with its own virtues kept intact (eg see historic Gujarat).
@@pulse3554 Thank you very much for your input! I really like your description that the goal of education is to become a learned human.
The Confucian tradition considers that there are two classes of "learning", elementary and Great learning.
Elementary learning is composed of the six arts; Calligraphy, Archery, Music, Ritual, Charioteering or Horsemanship, and Mathematics. It is the root of Great learning
Great Learning is self-transformation to become a sensitive and authentic moral person, be sensitive to suffering of the people and myriad things, and intuitively live a moral life.
The goal of the two learning is then to become "human". Not human as we are but human as we ought to be.
@@chaiyasitdhi pretty incredible
@@pulse3554 I am not a Marxist and I am not a westerner but I do agree with Alice that the main goal of capitalism is to produce living machinery that serves the capitalistic mode of production. It may coexist with Asian ideals of education in certain cultural contexts, but at the end when it becomes stronger it will crush those ideals. Sadly, there are many Asian parents who do not care about their kids becoming a learned person but a financially successful engineer or doctor.
about shame in education: i am not french but austrian.. anyways.. i experienced lots and lots of shaming myself. i was a very bad reader and stumbled over every sentence. my teachers 'just wanted to help me' and let me read all the time to the point that i was only avoiding eye contact and i remember always to look on the floor in order to not embarrassed. i was making a fool of myself for years and the 'smart' teachers always reminded me of my place and very frequently called me out in front of the class to tell me how awful it was that i stumble over this or that word.
turned out they just did not know of a concept dyslexia in the 90s. well.. about 1-5 years after i left school EVERY child was tested for dyslexia.
because of that i was forced to take a normal apprenticeship in construction (as an electrician) and because of that i ruined my health and got very very sick.
as an adult i took an official dyslexia test myself, and then i started to study philosophy... it was not a 'skill issue'.
but the trauma and the problems with my health i got from this simple misunderstanding are still very very much there... basically my life got ruined because of this mindset you describe there. so be aware 'gen alpha'! whatever that means :D
Okay, I’m a gen z teacher and I teach gen alpha in middle school. So far from what I remember, the kids don’t act that differently from when I was in school. But on the other hand it’s really tiring because the school administration keeps telling me I have to be more enforcing of school laws, enforcing their discipline and silence, that I’m the ruler of my classroom. Tbh, I’m just tired. I love my job but I wish there were clearer solutions to our problems
Me too. In the exact same position, gen z teaching Gen alpha middle schoolers. Only my first year but it's so exhausting some days. Trying to find my stride but it feels like clear answers and support are always out of reach. Prof development trainings are always about progressive policies and what not but there's not much support and they feel half heartedly implemented. And when I struggle with classroom management the advice from veteran teachers and admin is to toughen up, enforce more rules, be more strict, don't be so nice to the kids. And I just don't know if I have it in me to be harsh or mean to 12, 13, and 14 year olds. They are just kids after all...
@@Bluedc21 Exactly, omg, finally someone that understands me. I'm not a fan of screaming to get them to shut up or be mean to them either. Let's hang in there, and hope the experiences we get guide us to a better future
"My job is to teach, not needlessly antagonise children."
"times are bad. Children no longer listen to their parents, and everyone is writing a book" - ancient assyrian tablet.
As long as there's been kids, there's been old people complaining about them.
I am so tired of the oversimplication of complex issues on the Internet. I would like to thank you for this interesting take. Tbh I am very curious to see how the "problem" with gen Alpha settles in the future.
The increasing analysis of generations while they are still literal children is so infuriating. The whole point is more of a post analysis like wyen the supposed generation is well into adulthood and we can historically analyse their behavior, tastes etc.
AGREED! The oldest ones are just starting high school, and that’s pushing it. I’m getting a teaching credential right now and all the high schoolers I’m observing are clearly Gen Z.
LET. THEM. COOK.
@@PASH3227 Almost all Gen Z are adults who either are in university or passed it. It's mainly Gen Alpha who are schools now, it's just that during the pandemic, some Millennials were going through a third life crisis and starting hating on the generation below them as the "youngins on the internet" like the Baby boomers did with them, even though said youngins were already adults and Millennials were on the same sites so they had to make a bunch of stuff up about what Gen Z did which was mainly what Millennials did what they were younger and not what Gen Z does.
@@tylersmith3139no PASH is right. one of my brothers is a hs sophomore and gen z. we’re concerned that middle schoolers lack morality. have middle schoolers *ever* had morality?
though you’re also right about most of gen z being out of hs
You can still analyze a generation while they’re still children if it’s comparative analysis between other generations when they were the same age. That’s the good thing about having many decades of research on learning and child development. For example, it’s fair to say that Gen alpha has a lower attention span because we can compare their average attention spans to prior generations of children. There has been an increasing decline in the average attention span of kids born after the 2000’s, which is not surprising given the increased presence of technology.
The decline has been happening since the 90s and probably early. It's why adhd diagnoses have gone up. Anyone who thinks gen alpha is fine is lying to themselves. This isn't millennials hating on gen alpha. This is people saying gen alpha has serious developmental gaps that society needs to understand and prepare to handle. I don't think all gen alpha is the same. Many weren't raised by technology and social media. They are fine. The ones who were are what concern me.
As a Brazilian, raised in a house made up of educators. I was very happy to see Paulo Freire mentioned in the video, Alice.
His works were and are fundamental to Brazilian pedagogy today! Pedagogy of the Oppressed is an excellent book. I recommend everyone to read it
Hugs from Salvador, Bahia, Brazil :)
e viva Paulo Freire 🇧🇷
Viva! @@melissamartins5110
marxists gotta marx
I was a notorious procrastinator when I was in high school back the 2000s. It was frequently painted by both my teachers and parents as a moral failing, and now as an adult I have severe depression and low self esteem for feeling like a lazy piece of shit. But nobody every asked me why I was always procrastinating. Nobody ever asked me about my underlying anxiety due to a fear of failure and an expectation to be the "smart" kid. They never sought to understand...only shame and correct. And I still struggle with the mental damage this did years later, not to mention it never actually fixed my procrastination problem, which I still had in college and now at work.
I'm a pre-k special education teacher at a public elementary school with a heavily at-risk population. In Texas. I see how capitalism and transactional, "merit" based education sets up enormous systemic hurdles for my kids everyday. Then I get to go to trainings and hear my job described as "customer service." It's only by virtue of the special needs of my students giving me greater autonomy that I'm able to still like what I do and feel Iike I'm making any difference at all for my kids.
When teaching becomes customer service, it's lost its way. Because the idea of customer service is that the customer is always right!! That idea is ludicrous in teaching, if a student is wrong, the student needs correction. Students are not customers!!
@@andrewmiller159Customer service makes sense to a degree because individual learners are going to require different approaches. If someone is struggling to understand the material, you’re going to have to talk to them and figure out what’s wrong.
Oh my god, that "customer" mindset language pisses me off too.
As brazilian, I’m happy to see Paulo Freire is respected and studied in other countries, because here the right wing is extremely disrespectful towards him and all his legacy. Very sad! Thanks for the video! :)
Nossa menina, sim! E ainda tem a coragem de falar que no Brasil temos a "educação Paulo Freire" de maneira pejorativa.
At the same time, your comment illustrates our need for foreign validation.
P.S. social critique, not personally targeted.
@@gsf02 yeah, but it doesn't illustrate that. The commenter speaks of the validation of Freire's ideas, which is a good thing by itself. Since it sadly doesn't properly happen in Brazil, it's nice to see that it happens at all, if only outside of Brazil.
@@gsf02it's not validation, it literally is just the merit of Freire's ideas.
@@lrgui9792 I guess you could frame it that way, but I'm skeptical, since to me that is indulgent.
The matter of the opinion on Paulo Freire's ideas among Brazilians isn't about a unanimous disapproval, but rather a polarized topic that is dictacted by one's political spectrum. Hence, there are millions of left-leaning (or merely reasonable) Brazilians that admire his work.
So I reemphasize my impression that what prevalently make us, Brazilians, celebrate the citation of M. Freire's work by a prominent French UA-camr is not the citation itself, disregarding who's cited it, but the fact that that came from a foreigner (here I'm disconsidering Mme. Cappelle's distinction).
I hate this trend. My daughter is a tween Gen Alpha and she's empathetic, intelligent, creative, etc. she does things that bother me as a parent, but they're like, normal kid things that just need to be corrected and redirected. Her generation is up against so much with the coming techno authoritarianism, financial decline.... They need our support and guidance as they navigate a world we won't understand.
This is a great breakdown!! I taught high school chemistry for two years, and though I don’t teach full time anymore, I teach and am a student part time. And 100% the idea that a teacher provides a a SERVICE is something that makes so much sense, but I never thought to frame it like that. Thank you so much for this video, there’s so much food for thought.
I think what gets me about people complaining about gen z and gen alpha is that those same people will admit that they engaged in the behaviors they’re complaining about, just not towards adults. This is not at all to say that teachers are finally getting their comeuppance or anything like that, everyone deserves to be respected, but I feel like we’ve all had parents grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends’ parents, etc. talk about how they got drunk and disorderly in college, hazed the freshman class, got bullied or were bullies to siblings and other kids, but they’d never cross a nun, “old-school teacher”, or parent because you’d get beaten, belittled, or denied necessities. I think permissive parenting as opposed to gentle parenting is part of the issue, but I think the older generations just expected to have the privilege of never being questioned and don’t have the normalization of punitive punishment (abuse) at their disposal to “discipline” kids. We’re trialing better ways of parenting and teaching, and people are mad that the interim and the unlearning of maladaptive habits are difficult, especially with systematic barriers like the underfunding of public schools, lack of physical and mental health resources, and exploitation of the working class.
15:25 THANK YOU. I'm a "zillennial" and I find this generation war exhausting. Every generation is so quick to blame the other and completely fails to acknowledge the biopsychosocial and economic factors/power structures that affect us ALL. In children's nursing, we look at *Brofenbrenner's ecological systems theory* which illustrates this beautifully. It honestly gave me an epiphany of how the world works and I think EVERYONE needs to see this diagram. I would absolutely love it if you include it in a video. Spoiler alert, capitalism (sits in the macrosystem) affects everything.
I've always had an ick with the "omg genz and gen alpha are failing" discourse, you succinctly put into words what I had been thinking, thanks!
at least in my country, Romania, they are failing. The question is not if they are or not, but rather what should be done about it. As Alice points out, it is way more complex than the simple answer of "We should go back to the old ways of children being more disciplined", which is, at least over here, the default answer for everybody concerned with the issue.
currently, it's gen Z that is coming for the gen alpha kids.
@@justaname999 Yeah, I feel like this is early gen z adults who think they're millennials complaining about gen z, but they're actually complaining about gen alpha kids.
@@justaname999 as a gen z myself, i just find it weird that ppl in my gen r like this also me literally defending my siblings (gen alphas) for the life of me
@@mynameisreallycool1 But even then, why the need to complain? Obviously, times are changing, always have. I'm a millennial, I guess, although I grew up with many gen X around me because of my much older siblings' influence in terms of music and style and me mostly emulating favorite characters' styles rather than being fashionable (I was the geek in a Dana Scully suit, which... oh boy, looking back is just... at 14 🤦🏻♀).
And very clearly kids like 5 or 6 years younger had different things they did, the internet just got going big around then with social media starting to be more important. And we would maybe jokingly complain about "kids these days" but this current vitriol is weird.
i mean, any complaint about children is just telling on yourself
'these kids are SO BADLY BEHAVED!'
yeah, good point. i wonder who taught them that?
People have been complaining about how the kids these days are lazy and rude for literally thousands of years and it never ceases to be funny.
The behavior of kids and teens are determinant factor in the continuation of teachers carrer. Speaking as a teacher, dealing with violence that mine past teachers didn't face in classroom make me wanna give up of this profession. Public schools doesn't have resorces to deal with lack of familiar bond.
As a leftist I question why so many leftists believe that organization and discipline is direct conected whith violence (in every single case). The most organize and colaborative a school is more it students are able to develope a coletive view of society.
Where there is caos, lack of acontability and comom interest more stresseful and unfair is the enviroment.
I agree with u, but I also think when discipline and organization are been talked about in the education sector it’s usually beatings, public shaming, etc. as someone who went to a school that did all this things this didn’t really help, we just adapted to those things, and just tried not to get catch when we were being “unruly”
What kind of disciplinary action would you suggest that actually works? I personally think teachers aren’t given the chance to be true authorities in country and the parents here dont help on that issue at all.
As a pretty "leftist" teacher myself, I totally see this. Schooling as a social act will always be imperfect and require some degree of conformity (pay attention, listen and be respectful to others, be responsible for your own preparation and work) in order to succeed.
In many ways the attack on this communal/community aspect of schooling has always tended to come most from the political fringes. Liberals were always complaining about the conservative (preserving/perpetuating the status quo) nature of schools- often comparing them to "factory" models. Conservatives often complain that the social nature of schools (which include ideas and even people they don't agree with), undermines their authority.
And as the video points out, there are other forces at play a bit harder to pigeonhole as left or right. Capitalist or "neoliberal" objectives are more libertarian in message- schools are there to service individual "customers".
As a teacher who cares about students developing a broad perspective, analytical skills, and human understanding, this is a hard game to win.
It has nothing to do with the feminization of the school system.
Or outsourcing of the Production/Technology.
Or that "everyone deserve a higher education" with some useless degrees.
Nobody even reads in the Universities.
My professors literally said that nobody would pass the exams, if they would ask the questions from our course books.
So nobody even buys them.
Most barely take note? @@bestdjaf7499
In most places in the world, discipline = violence
Work in contemporary capitalism is broken, and chronically underpaid. I'm not shocked that young people don't all buy into it uncritically. And if they are to change things, not being compliant (i.e. polite) is the first step. More power to them.
I feel the meltdown of so many older people about younger people is one of the most embarrasing things in human history. Every generation ever has complained about the next generation but lucky for them there was no internet back them so the meltdown was never as public as it is now. This is the first generation where the full range of their insecurities, jealousy and anxiety about the generation that will replace them is fully out there for everyone to see
I've been in the American school system all my life, and I'll be graduating before the summer of this year (unless something drastic happens). And then going to college, to hopefully gain the skill and knowledge I need to become an urban planner or anything surrounding civil engineering. I want to get a job that highlights my strengths, math, science, and creativity, but will give me enough money and hopefully free time to relax.
It sucks to look around me and constantly see comparison and comparison and comparison between peers in my own school, but also people around the world. I could be considered smart, being in AP Physics and BC Calculus as a senior while some of my friends and classmates are in Algebra 2, but I don't feel that way when I see the people in my STEM classes doing intense extracurriculars, like sports or theatre, while I practically do nothing. I like to write, I like to draw, I like to read, I like to analyze, I like to journal, I like to sing... but what's that compared to someone who actually shows it off? What's one sketch compared to this mural a person younger than me made? What's that drawing compared to the hard work put into performing a play? What's that play you were part of when your peer in the theatre does sports at the same time? Or has a part-time job?
And then you look at education outside of the U.S... sure, some aren't great, but they're using the resources they have. They have passionate people. I feel incredibly stressed thinking that I'll be stuck to one career choice by the major I pick in college at 18, but people, kids, at 14 years old pick the high schools they want to go to, that narrows down their career choices, to my understanding. Students outside of the U.S. are under heavy amounts of stress because of exams, and yet I'm here complaining? It feels unfair, looking around myself, outside the country I live in.
I want to be better. And I know now to try, now that I've overcome two years of Covid in High school, and lack of motivation (maybe depression) last year. But it's very difficult. For me, the first step isn't bettering myself, it's unfortunately aiming for a good grade.
You won't be stuck in your career choice when you pick a major. That's a myth.
Plenty of folk change careers later in life. Sometimes multiple times.
This might be a long read and it might not feel right to you now to think about it this way yet, but you really don't need to put too much high a value on how other people are excelling in AP calculus or whatever dance class they're taking as extracurriculars. You will learn to think about how the skills you gained from all your own learning will allow you to teach people, help people, interact with other people on the job. Maybe those skills are not 100% relevant for being a sports coach or something because you didn't pursue sports long term, but do you think everyone who did dance during school is going to become a dance teacher?
People won't see your grades once you leave school or training, your value is more than the grades, so your main goal should be to understand that doing something like example: presentations which you may hate so much, helps build communication, research skills, and knowing how to present summarized information in writing/visual form to people who don't know what you are talking about. These are not tied to any specific major at all. You might want to discuss with school resources who can help you build your resume/interview answers of what skills you'll have gained after college. You'll keep learning on the jobs you try too, how to better use your writing, analysis skills, and general creativity to solve problems.
(Like for example, the new manager in charge of my workplace is a FILM-industry worker of 20 years, and he's now in a human resources job coordinating with our staff and repair people to make sure the building is safe. The difference in what he's doing now seems so big, but you can assume that he's got experience listening to the problems and also giving people tasks for preparing film sets or lighting in editing so we can get a project to completion.)
@@MikuHatsune159hey, I did say I love reading! Thank you for being so kind to my rambling, haha. What I'm seeing here is that I need to dissect what makes my schoolwork actually important, in order to understand why it's being assigned (this won't apply to some assignments, but it'll be helpful to stay motivated more often than not(, and that anything I do outside of school still builds skills, even if I don't find them useful now, and to find an unbiased party (or slightly in my favor,) to figure out how to present my habits in a good way in resume form. Thank you for reassuring me about the career-related woes. I'm still not confident on how, where, and what I want to work for for kinda sorta the rest of my life, but I'm sure I'll figure it out :).
@@coovulm glad I could help in any little way! 🙂 I gotta say I'm also not the most confident with my own career opportunities either, but if you're living somewhere with career help resources or even those existing in the college you plan to go to. I would highly suggest speaking to them, because trying to wrangle all that stuff in your own head is just mentally taxing sometimes.
Millennial here. The generations after us are excellent. Honestly you give me hope that we can turn this around. I agree that folks love the "kids these days" rhetoric. Don't buy it, embrace it. Lead a better life than those that came before you. Be the generation that says, "Wow! Kids these days!"
I went to a school were the teachers who gave a specific language were often native speakers and your experience with French teachers is mimicked here in my personal anecdote. Everybody hated French as a subject, as the french teachers, with the exception of one non-french native speaker of french, all had a very derogatory way of teaching, almost entirely centered around putting students down or "in their place". Humiliation rituals and derogatory comments were common place.
Even typically harder subjects like maths and physics, were enjoyed a lot more by people, because for these subjects were taught by people who fostered curiosity, and creative problem solving.
The funny thing is; The adults that cry about literal kids being kids, don't realize that in their selfish search for pleasure and contempt, they are being just as childish.
Wait we talking about Gen Aplha now? Man, I feel old af and Im just in my 20s
If a generation is characterized by novelty, physical displays, egotism, generalism, and physical objects or details the group cares about, and that generation is culturally dominant, that would make anyone look old.🙂Change and novelty are emphasized far more in media than they were in the past, and as a result, the same can be said about culture.
Great break-down, Alice. Under capitalism we are basically sending our children to places that drain them of all curiosity and creativity. They are not learning empathy by being disciplined, but how to best avoid punishments. And their teachers are exhausted from being forced to put all their energy into that while being woefully underpaid.
That's not something to pin on capitalism.
What you are describing could appear in any hierarchy.
Teachers have wanted obedient students for as long as their have been teachers.
A school under communism would be even worse.
Capitalism thrives on creativity and curiosity. That's how companies make better/new products.
All the cool things you own are the result of someone being curious and/or creative.
Speak for yourself. Public education in the US isn’t one thing. Teacher pay fluctuates wildly by what state you’re in and within the state too.
Talk to teachers or visit schools instead of watching a video essay from someone who has never worked in a school.
I love how people feel confident to choose any issue and claim it's a symptom of "capitalism".
How is this at all related to capitalism?
Thank you! This is the first video made by a millennial/genZ (I don't know) person that is not just a litany of complete panic and accusations of how gentle parenting is spoiling the children. And it's not even the right-wing people who upset me. It's the people on the left who somehow converge on the same talking points I find truly odd.
Also, interesting complementary example to the one you cite from your school time: I went to school with a group of kids who clearly had mostly partying and pot in mind and some would casually smoke during school days over lunch. One of them came to class 15 minutes late, carrying his school stuff in a plastic bag. The teacher made a similar remark about him but the difference is, nobody cared, least of all the guy. Because he (and all the other kids who could afford daily pot) was comfortably upper middle class and a remark like that couldn't affect him. He was considered cool by everyone and his future was fairly safe. Kids from a lower socio-economic backgrounds, however, would always be hit hard by remarks like that and suffer. In some ways, I was raised to believe that money doesn't matter (my parents were both immigrants from socialist countries), but around middle school at the latest, I was quickly dispelled of that notion.
I only had a couple years experience in American public school, but it was depressing. For the most part there was absolutely no attempt by the teachers to make the subjects interesting, they mostly handed out packets of dry, dull information that we were supposed to “summarize”. They were essentially babysitters for teenagers, there to prevent students from leaving or from creating too much disturbance, and not much else. Naturally the students were disinterested in what was being “taught”, so the students didn’t put much effort in. Which in turn does not motivate the teachers to actually put effort in, because the students don’t care. And of course the curriculum they had to follow was not conducive to interesting lessons. Like you say, it was transactional.
11:50 That's why I personally like to differentiate with the words "leadership" or "guide" instead of authority.
Policy talk (also amongst the public) tends to go in cycles; progress in a wobbly line -- probably slowly up on average, as we keep attending to the crises as they appear over the centuries
I want a distincetion to be made clear: there is a fifference between being an authority on a subject and having authority given through systematic means.
Basically, you are the authority of your experiences. You often know what your life is like better than someone who is not you. You know your likes nd dislikes.
Authority through structural means are authority figures who have must be respected, regardless of their qualifications.
Pereonally, i think the best way to approach teaching would be through curiosity and at times, discussion. There are times when students need to be taught some basic function or idea, and then given the time to further explore the subject. Then they can be guided and given more resources.
In some subjects, too, there can't be hard and fast rules, such as art and literature. Giving students time to give their thoughts and try things out help them find a way forward. It gives students time to get a feel for the subject matter
I don't buy the whole "gen alpha can't behave" stereotype. I find it interesting that when you hear stories about older generations doing worse things as kids or teens, people either portray it in a "Oh, yeah. This was back when kids were tougher!" or they automatically sympathize with those kinds of kids, assuming the worst about their parents or their lives, but when the new generation is doing it, they're "undisciplined" or "spoiled". Teenagers used to give kids swirlies and smoke at school in the 80s (and this is said by people who were teens during this time, whenever they want to brag about how tough they were or "how bad they had it"), who were not stopped, but for some reason, if you call THOSE teens spoiled or say, "Their parents never told them no!", you get a ton of angry people defending them and saying, "Well, they probably had a bad home life! That's all!" But kids today don't get those type of excuses.
I literally remember my dad telling absolutely horrible stories about some of the awful things his classmates did in high school, including throwing tantrums in field trips because they didn't get any souveiners, putting hot pepper flakes in the air vents, and hitting old men with sling shots. My dad is in gen x, so guess his peers are excused. Meanwhile gen alpha is being labled as the worst generation because they have their phones out in class or make fun of a teacher's hairline, which are bad, but I think that everyone just has a habit of judging the youngest generation as all being "spoiled" while kids from older generations who acted badly are portrayed in a better light.
excellent video and description of this problem. I have noticed it myself as my high school shifts toward online classes that give college credit and are clearly not as enriching over classes with an actual teacher that are more generalized. soon enough it seems kids are going to have to decide their future career by the time they are 16 so that they can get their specialized education for that job asap to skip as much college as possible because its way too expensive. problems come from every angle
Your deduction is super logical and I agree that the system does play a factor in the gen alpha moral panic. Most people cannot realize this and just see the immediate impact, like people just see a river/pond, whereas don't see the ocean/water source from which the river/pond stems as an analogy. Being an engineer and problem solver, this problem is unsolvable and it's complicated, shifting between liberalism & conservatism, especially in america.
haven't watched yet but the only thing i feel a little concern over is reading comprehension and the figurative aspects of language in fiction. i've been getting back into reading and it's becoming more and more obvious to me that we'd all benefit from reading more literature (both classics and modern work).
the figurative thing has stood out to me lately. i feel people express overly literal thinking sometime, and particularly when re-reading farenheit 451, i started wondering if some of that is to do with so many of us not reading fiction. authors like bradbury write figurative descriptions (calling flying cars in his world "beetles" or the firetruck "salamander") and when i read those sentences i felt parts of my brain activating that hadn't been activated in a while. like it's stretching muscles that deal with abstraction and association.
idk if that made any sense, lol
It makes perfect sense! Its the difference between just reading and comprehending.
I'm a physics teacher and a lot of my students read the problems I give them, but when they're given a problem where they use the same equation to solve for something other than what we've solved before, they immediately say they don't understand it and "we didn't learn this." Over the semester, though, they've learned to think more critically and apply ideas to problem solving (which is a bit scary given that they're juniors in hs and should've probably learned this sooner, but I digress...)
It's just like your reading example- the bridge between reading and comprehending is a daunting one to cross, so it makes sense why a lot of younger people try to find ways around the bridge or ways to not even have to cross it. I agree though, all generations alive rn need a better grasp on comprehension/interpretation, which can easily be solved through flexing those muscles (like by reading!)
I always chuckle when the people who created the world we grew up in refuse to take reasonability for how we turned out. I chuckle because at this point I'm out of tears.
This is very interesting. Thanks for the video! I sometimes get the impression from the teacher tik toks about "kids these days" that not only are kids (and parents) not willing to acede to the authority of the teacher but also that the teachers don't feel that they should have to prove they are worthy of trust. Teachers complain that students question them. But, as a preschool teacher, that's what I want, children who learn to question me. If I can't give a good explanation, I don't deserve the authority. As adults, I think we should be willing to build that trust with children to show them we are worthy of the authority we have over them. Of course, it's hard and I definitely don't always operate this way. But, ideally, yes, children should question me and I should have an explanation.
Thank you for being the voice of reason Alice ! Sick of hearing about this topic without any discussion of the systematic factors. Great video 👏
Alot of times schools create students who don’t stay obedient and they will create future activists without realizing it
Right now many colleges are learning that lesson the hard way
This might possibly be the best thing I’ve ever watched
Thank you for the video :) I'm a UK student, I love learning and I really appreciate how you present information in a clear and engaging way!
this video found me at the perfect time! I'm a scout mentor in a Balkan country, and we've been noticing for a few years now that the kids are getting more impatient, apathetic, disrespectful and are in general harder to enthral. our troop leaders are young people from 16 to cca 24 years old, which is a part of our organization's concept and philosophy: young people work with young people. they have passed specializded courses for working with kids, but are mostly lost in what to do when the children have no respect for their hard work and knowledge whatsoever. People like me, who mentor the leaders, are in our mid to late 20s and even we don't have the skills to to work with the kids. The work that we do is slowly becoming too difficult for our organisation to handle, and if this continues we will have to change the entire system and its structure.
the reasons you explained in the video make perfect sense actually. and it feels good to know that we have theoretically identified the problem, even if it relies on the system.
++ another thing but I went to Waldorf school (or Steiner school, similar to Montessori) for primary and high school and that was an interesting experience too. the lack of pressure on the grades and competitiveness, and more hands on experiences at different subjects were great. But at the same time you would get public community service or get shamed in front of the entire teaching staff if you skipped 1 class or shouted in the halls. the duality lol.
I would like to say that we also tend to forget about the internet when we talk about education. It’s easy to see it as strictly entertainment but as a kid that grew up with a lot of access to it, people online hugely impacted the way I perceive the world and the way I act. Luckily I was surrounded by kind people and “influencers” that truly wanted the best for people and to educate them. So I grew up learning to think and view the world that way. But I was lucky, I was under the best conditions to surround myself with them. Not every kid has the same situation as me and in an algorithm like TikTok where shock value is the most important, younger brains will learn to become like it and learn that attention grabbing behaviour is the best behaviour. Or at least with other people who grew up with TikTok and that have the same mindset. That’s why I think that children (at least the ones I exist with) are more likely to act as they do.
Also I want to add that they don’t understand sarcasm and yet, even tho irony and sarcasm are all that they consume.
It fascinated me how school was always telling us about the dangers of the internet and cyberbullying when the crap I encountered in school was so much worse than anything I encountered online as a teen.
I think your point is illustrated well by all those cool teachers that we all had (at least one). They always treated pupils equally, it didn't matter if they were A or F students, they cracked jokes and saw us as humans, but they also never had favorites in tests and if you got an F or an A you knew that it was on you. These seemed to be the real educators and all students respected them. They had authority not because of being manipulative or shaming others, but standing on "I know thongs and I'm here to teach you, but that's just that"
I was so lucky to have a few of them
Omg! @8:42 - you include a picture of my mom's high school of Hibbing in Northern Minnesota! The building itself is a testament to the iron mining industry in the town, which boomed in the early 20th century. Was not expecting to see it in this video!
Hibbing MN? As in, Bob Dylan's hometown? Pretty random for me to ask, but that's what I know the town for haha
@@Ty-mu7gl Yep that's his hometown! The town used to do a bunch of stuff for Dylan fans like "Dylan Days" and a restaurant called "Zimmy's" after his actual last name Zimmerman but sadly Zimmy's closed a while ago and I don't know if they still do "Dylan Days". It's not a big town and there's been a decline in the population over the years.
I'm a gen x. This video really made me think. I studied sculpture in the early 90s. My wife lectures film and TV today. What she describes is a complete contrast to my experience even though both subjects are the arts and involve creativity. Back then we were respected as individuals with our own interests and our tutors who we respected were there to guide our growth and suggest better ways of meeting the goals we set ourselves. It really was about broadening the horizons of the individual and nurturing their growth as an artist - not dictating what they had to do. Today though, everything seems to be about modules and marks, students jumping through hoops and lecturers seen as service providers who must tick the right boxes so that the students can get the grades they arrive on day one thinking they deserve. A constant complaint from my wife is students constantly asking "what do I need to write to get a good grade", "what do I need to put into my film and in what order to pass". There's no philosophy of discovery, growth or creativity in the majority it seems - I would argue as a failure in education policy from the earliest years.
I'm sorry. There are a lot of interesting things to say about education under capitalism and this video doesn't mention any of them. This is the most surface-level 'let's apply some philosophy to an industry without trying to understand anything about how that industry works' analysis I've seen long time. If anyone is looking for a much better discussion about what's going on in modern education I would strongly suggest watching Zoe Bee's "The Right-Wing War on Education."
The biggest issue with education under capitalism is the insistence that schools be run like businesses. Parents are the customers, 'educated students' are the products those parents are paying for (with their taxes), and teachers are a replaceable and exploitable labor force who are treated like cogs in a machine rather than professionals with expertise. The people making all of the decisions about how our educational system work, from those in the federal department of education down to local principals and district superintendents, generally don't understand education as a process. They're managers by training, not educators, and politicians who require short-term quantifiable results to stay in office. Attempts to increase "accountability" among schools by cutting the funding of underperforming schools make sense to someone with a background in business but are antithetical to how education works (students who are struggling need *more* support, not less). This emphasis on accountability and leaders who care only about metrics they can use to prove their business is delivering high quality products has made "teaching to the test" the dominant strategy in way too many classes.
Students today are lacking a lot of the skills and abilities which previous generations took for granted because they don't show up on standardized tests and have been optimized out of most schools to make way for more test prep. Students are reaching me at the college level not knowing how to study, having difficulty reading anything longer than 10 pages, and with an understanding that "learning" means "memorizing things by rote without and then forgetting it after the test" which absolutely fails them the second they have to actually understand what they're doing. None of that is their fault, it's entirely in how their schools are failing them. But you didn't mention a single one of those failures.
Philosophy is fine, but if you want to apply it to the real world then you need to understand the parts of the world you're talking about. Otherwise you're just wasting everyone's time.
It's an extremely rare but moving feeling to have teachers, whether in an educational or professional environment, to whom it is liberating to submit to - such teachers are, undeniably, emancipators.
I think that gen Alpha will definitely have some problems, but like cmon now. We need to treat them like our little siblings and stick up for them. Can you imagine being a kid and everyone seems to hate you for no reason?
ah, as a millenial, this makes me nostalgic for when we were kids and literally everything we did was wrong, and then we were teenagers and young adults and everything we did was "ruining an industry". But I guess now we're ruining gen alpha, so it never really ends
cheers from Brazil for quoting our great Paulo Freire!
I loved going to a school with a uniform for middle school (age 11-13 in US) but only in retrospect -- while wearing it I basically didn't care. The place I grew up (suburb of Baltimore) had a crazy amount of inequality. My public middle school everyone wore the same polo shirt and chino pants. My high school had no uniform policy and I immediately felt the effect of that. Suddenly kids (the exact same kids that had previously mingled) were separated by visually obvious indicators of class/status.
These days thrifting has become a lot more accepted which I think has made a massive difference in bullying related to clothing like when the rich kids and the poor kids are both thrifting clothes then there aren’t as many superficial differences that can be used to exclude people
@@lizardguy4236 Finding high quality, trendy clothes at thrift shops is a useful, rewarding, but also time-intensive process. It requires transportation to and from the thrift store. It requires money to purchase the clothes. It requires resources and friends to determine what is and is not fashionable. It might be a mitigating factor, but it is not a solution to this problem.
Sometimes my mum asks the following rhetorical question:
Do you really think the neighbours are interrested in books?
Why bother learning;
I heared them mock your studies. Most people don't want to learn.
It's a solid point, one I haven't found an answer for.
So incredibly simple: knowledge is best obtained for personal empowerment. Caring about the opinions of others as far as your learning is concerned is a disservice. Misery loves company. The ignorant resent those who seek lthe light of knowledge. It just seems to be their way. Why it is this way is a question i'd like to see discussed, too.
for some reason people understand that people dance for pleasure, watch tv for pleasure, yet somehow they cannot understand someone being interested in something for pleasure. you don't need to justify yourself, you just follow what feels worthy of attention
Everybody knows it's not natural reading books: you don't see horses doing it... punk magazine 1977
@@aleksandrawilkos1278 the way people try to regulate what you should or should not enjoy bugs me so much, they put things into categories and say "ugh why are you doing that? It's for kids, only silly irresponsible people like doing that" or "eww that's so weird and boring only old people do that" and of course, all the unnecessary gendering of things. As a girl who liked a lot of "boy" things when I was younger, started crocheting in my early 20s and now roller skates in my 30s, please just let people enjoy the shit they enjoy, no ones forcing you to do it too.
I am doing workshops and after school art classes to teens for five years now and see A LOT of bright creative minds. Teens, who want to become artists, teachers and preschoolteachers. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are not worse than other generations. They just need to find their place and carve their path. I am really proud of the current young generation!
0:50 Thank you for this. We’ve truly had enough of this narrative swirling around.
yeah i was also raised in the french education system and they would say things like ‘i will never bother learning your name’, girls getting humiliated at the board especially in math and science, some kids being targeted as the dumb guy/troublemaker and being picked on and insulted by the teacher all year, and you had to shamefully and silently watch your classmates go through these experiences every day and live them yourself, it was an awful time honestly it traumatised me in some ways, you really put it into words
Reminder to all boomers, your college was probably free or affordable with a part time job, you could get married at age 23 consistently and didn’t have to deal with the risk of your wife deciding you weren’t hit or rich enough and being able to leave for selfish reasons. You could also buy a home for what amounts to like $80k today whereas a home in anywhere with good paying jobs will cost like $600k.
Thanks for this. I'm a public school teacher in DC working with 100% low-income students of color, and it's so frustrating how my school is labeled as "failing," my students are perceived as "in crisis" and me and my colleagues are viewed as "underperforming" or "ineffective." All based on standardized test scores that mainly privilege. It's so frustrating because we're no better or worse than any other school. The catastrophizing needs to stop. The only emergency is segregation and inequality, but my kids do not need to be fixed, nor do the teachers.
Is this apart of that program george bush was talking about in the 2000s that was made to help kida read but just put tons of pressure on teachers?
@@snowghoul3813 yup!
I'd argue that choosing to follow what someone says bc you trust in their knowledge or judgement is a very different thing from submitting to authority, which, to me, implies a lack of choice and having to follow their commands even if you don't understand or disagree.
TL;DR: It's not authority if they don't need to pull rank
that’s one of the foundational ideas of anarchism: to be against unjust hierarchy but not all hierarchy
We're judging young people for behaving in a human way in response to outrageous expectations. Work harder while we ruin your future. No thanks.
1:27 "I'm glad you asked" 👑👑👑
In from Mexico and I discovered this channel thanks to a random AI conversation I had with a friend. This is so good comentary.
Alice as various Journalist characters is never not hilarious. Great job! 👏🏽
Something I learned yesterday that is fun. The author Robert A. Heinlein thought that children of his day were running out of control thanks to the social sciences telling people that corporal punishment is bad. So in his book starship troopers, that was as much a political manifesto as adventure story, he predicted that society would totally collapse due to gangs of feral youths roaming the land robbing and murdering at will. Thing is he wrote this in the 1950s. So the out of control delinquent generation he was talking about were the baby boomers :p
As a foreigner in France, I feel sorry for the discipline kids experience here. And at the same time, I understand where the microaggressions I suffer every day from people with good intentions come from. Viva Paulo Freire!
phenomenally well put. how you bring your thoughts together into such a cohesive argument is beyond me
seeing fellow gen z repeating the same shit boomers kept repeating about both us and millenials the moment gen alpha enjoys something a lot of us don't understand honestly makes me cringe so much, like, i thought we were better than that
I just want to say thank you for speaking about the shame based education system in many European countries, as someone who went to public school in Spain for kindergarten - second year of secondary school (eight grade for americans) I find myself having to unlearn so much shame in my daily life just from the trauma of the spanish school system and I feel like it's not nearly discussed enough/it's too normalized ESPECIALLY in how abusive teachers will behave towards literal children
I’m deeply ashamed - and basically fell off my peers’ ‘liberalism’ into dialectical materialism (and metamodernism…?) years ago (not that it helps much, and it’s rather lonely for a 58 yo…).
MY GENERATION gave our young a political economy across the OECD that can’t work for our own kids. And THEN we derate them for not “working hard enough”?
Individualisation of failure is as bad as financial ‘freedom’ itself - especially since we don’t teach our young anything heterodox, tools for criticism.
And we leave the bill for our very private “growth” to our own kids and grandkids…?
This is modernism beyond its own capacity, there’s only one imperative here - our very common *ecology* …!
This is an absolute feature of neo-liberal/conservative politics. Their views can be summed up with the idea that they privatize benefits/victories and socialize losses.
@@samhutchison9582 Sadly, i know… Started my journey in the aftermath of 2008 bailouts by studying Stiglitz. Been a member of Progressive International and DiEM25 last four years. It’s been a long walk, still walking… 👍
Having spent 35 yrs teaching biology at University level. The most noticeable change over those 3 and 1/2 decades was the increase in students feeling they are owed good grades! The students we get are probably the top 15,% from high school but even these students ask repeatedly for extra credit! I make it very clear that I don't do extra credit, I have enough credit built into the course for you to succeed. It makes no sense to request more work if you are struggling with the work already built into the course!! Wish high schools would get that lesson and stop with the extra credit crap!! It feeds into this feeling of I deserve the best grades!!!
General Education in schools has had flaws since I was in school.
Just now gen alpha is exp a public education system that hasn’t changed & small times it did it was for worst.
Commodification has a stronghold on education. Instead of figuring out how to educate students differently doubling down on old ways.
Who are the shareholders in public education? It’s a free service funded through property taxes. Sure cooperations sell goods to aid education (computers, textbooks, software etc) but that’s been happening for at least 100 years.
“They can’t read.” Most of them are still in elementary school. The oldest ones are just starting high school. Give them time.
Don't knock general education courses. When I was an undergrad I had to take an Art History course. At the time it seemed a waste of my effort but later on I had the chance to travel to Europe and see a lot of the art in person, I remembered some of what I was taught in that course. It made the trip more rewarding!!
I really appreciate your nuanced, thorough takes with lots of philosophy backround, I am so here for it, Alice
I see headlines like those, and all I can think is, "Aw shit. Here we go again."
When you spoke about the museum tour I immediately thought of the scene from "Midnight in Paris" about Rodin 🤣
I love hearing your voice on such topics. Thank you for adding to the scales of compassion and understanding!
I always say that rich people are like children who don't help their parents carry the groceries, and then have the nerve to expect them to cook.
A simplification, but I do feel that those in power don't wield it responsibly. But they do profit from it.
Not "capitalism" as much as "neoliberalism," outright letting company interests lobby in politics as something normal and the biggest fish dominate everything. Everything. Even education which is a national service, *not* a market.
@@NazarioOrbe
It really isn't hard to just look up "neoliberalism wikipedia" and click on the first link you know. Not a conspiracy, it's an economic model of capitalism pioneered in practice by those like Thatcher and Reagan, with earlier ties to theorists like Milton Freedman
@@NazarioOrbe
Obviously politicians and theoreticians alike come from their material conditions, nobody denies that.
Look at especially the US economy in 1960 and it now. A massive difference since Reagan
So the problem with neoliberalism is that it turns everything into capitalism
Alice I recently discovered your channel. Gotta say you are the most evidence based knowledge channel I've ever seen. Congrats 👏 for the great job!
The gen alpha reading level idea has bugged me since the beginning. Reading competency or ability doesn’t have to be related to an educational stage like 3rd grade or even entirely related to a person’s chronological age.🙂
Tik tok
It should though, especially when we're talking about children learning
@@codenamepyro2350 People have different cognitive styles, and educational stages don't make sense. Age mixing and competency based learning make more sense.
But they are supposed to be able to be at a certain level but are behind.. what is there to miss. They need to read to be equipped as adults
@@RebeccaBalcom-p1n It's true they should become sufficient at reading, but people tend to only look at metrics at a surface level which can be misleading this case. It doesn't make sense to relate the metrics to a grade just like it doesn't make sense how we treat time in society, not to mention one size fits all metrics don't make sense in this context due to differences in cognitive styles, extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation, and interest in the reading material. Plus, the writing is likely very dated, and reading speed isn't constant.
The dopamine related effects of digital technology and its effects on attention span as well as much of gen alpha reading far less (not just books) have probably made things worse, though.
I'm not sure why UA-cam recommended this video to me today as a late Gen X, but I'm glad I watched it. The kids are alright.
One of the ways I am non-typical for my demographic, is that I went to a small school and was ahead of my peers intellectually. Starting in 3rd grade, I was given alternate "advanced" assignments, which essentially amounted to 'take this book and go write a report' most times. By the time I was in high school, the teachers for STEM subjects would bring their leftover college textbooks for me to use for a semester at a time. By the time of graduation I had developed a habit and a process for independent learning that has served me well ever since then.
Really appreciate this video, Alice. What you said about this mindset of educators being 'servivce providers' is exactly right. I work in education, & in my convos with teachers I've heard so many educators concerned about the transactional nature of current education. Kids are socialized to value high grades & good marks, to the point where they expect good grades for just showing up. I don't blame students for that entirely: it's more so the fault of parents & guardians, who put intense pressure on kids beginning all the way in preschool, to the point where students can't really focus their energies on actually learning. They skim, they occasionally use chat GPT, because the priority is getting an 'A' and not actually forming critical opinions.
As a private teacher I can relate with this so much.
I’m just a service to ensure my clients get noticeable results and have fun; but if I give too much work or put too many demands on them, like repeat basics too much; they loose motivation quit and find a teacher that will provide more excitement.
People are acting like we're going to have a whole generation of adults that can't read and are incapable of holding a job. Give me a break.
A good chunk of them cannot read tho and have weak comprehensions skills.... Also they are really slow.
Well the current average reading level of an American adult is that of a 6th grader, and honestly I wouldn't be surprised if it got lower in the coming decades
As a man in his fifties I assure you that not only were my generation like this, but all the generations since have been like this, and my own elders have reminisced about how THEIR generations were like this.
Everybody wants to believe that THIS generation is DIFFERENT, because of some thing they don't like. What's different isn't the generation, it's just the thing. Every generation had a thing. The older generations didn't like it through some combination of not understanding it, and wishing they'd had it themselves.
And when the younger generation does exactly what the older generation did, the olds clutch their pearls over some combination of "my generation never did that" (which is a lie), and "my generation wouldn't have done that if we had the thing" (which is also a lie).
Young people gonna young. That's how it's always been. Your job as a grown adult is to try and prod them away from the biggest mistakes, so when they are themselves grown adults they have not ruined their lives. And their job is to not listen, as you know perfectly well if you have a functioning memory of being that age.