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Yes, but what century? Or millenium, even.</p>
<p>Sorry I have not reat every single post on this thread to see if anyone has mentioned this. Boy, does this this look familiar! I think I’ve seen this “list” a couple of years ago e-mailed around as a quote from Bill Gates’ speech at his alma mater HS.</p>
<p>[Bill</a> Gates’ 11 Rules of Life - Urban Legends](<a href=“http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_bill_gates_speech.htm]Bill”>Humor & Whimsy)</p>
<p>LOL.</p>
<p>thanks to all the hippy liberals at Google, I found this</p>
<p>Why am I not surprised?</p>
<p>"Charles Sykes is a radio talk show host, author, and columnist who straddles the line between libertarian and conservative.</p>
<p>A host on WTMJ radio in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Sykes not only calls himself a libertarian but also has a long history of writing about government failures and abuses. At the same time, he is a research fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, and takes a more traditionally conservative position on foreign policy.</p>
<p>Sykes is perhaps best known as the author of Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good about Themselves, but Can’t Read, Write, or Add (1995). The book was praised by Kirkus Review as a “scathing critique” of government-run schools and self-esteem-centered “feel-good learning.” Sykes’s proposed remedies include abolishing the federal Department of Education.</p>
<p>Sykes is also the author of The End of Privacy: Personal Rights in the Surveillance Society (1999) and A Nation of Victims: The Decline of the American Character (1992)."</p>
<p>Interesting. Given our kids’ schools (selective privates also), it also doesn’t match our experience. As but one example, I was stunned to learn that from grade one onward…a late assignment was an assignment not done and a fail. We were not allowed to come rescue our kids with forgotten forms, lunches, homework. And so on. Let kids deal. It used to seem harsh but now so appreciated.</p>
<p>googling on Charles Sykes AND Alfie Kohn is most amusing.</p>
<p>
I didn’t find anything the least bit “tongue in cheek” about it. It was a sour, bitter, nasty screed…like those stereotypical “five miles in the snow both ways with no shoes” rants, only without the goofy charm. </p>
<p>Like some others here, I saw only sporadic resemblance between the hypothetical teenagers the rant was directed at and the real teenagers (including my son) that I know. I too can hardly remember ever hearing my son say “it’s not fair” about anything, maybe because he has spent most of life surrounded by fair-minded people–an experience that I sense Mr. Sykes has been denied, for which I pity him, but not to the degree of buying into his venom. </p>
<p>And as someone else pointed out, it’s not necessarily true that in most workplaces (especially those inhabited by college graduates) nobody cares how you feel when you screw up. In fact as a boss I have many times found myself having to reassure someone who has screwed up that they haven’t done as much damage as they think, and they’re still a valued employee. I do this not only because I don’t want them to feel bad, but also because time they spend beating themselves up is time not spent learning from their mistake and getting back to being productive.</p>
<p>There should be a special circle in hell for every teacher who took grades off or even gave F’s for late assignments, but didn’t themself manage to grade papers on time, post homework assignments in a timely manner, etc.</p>
<p>"I too can hardly remember ever hearing my son say “it’s not fair” about anything, maybe because he has spent most of life surrounded by fair-minded people–an experience that I sense Mr. Sykes has been denied, for which I pity him, but not to the degree of buying into his venom. "</p>
<p>Mr Sykes is a talk radio host, and is affiliated with the Hoover Institution. Methinks this is part of a larger agenda. </p>
<p>[Sink</a> Or Swim | The New Republic](<a href=“http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/sink-or-swim]Sink”>Sink or Swim | The New Republic)</p>
<p>There should be a special circle in hell for every teacher who took grades off or even gave F’s for late assignments, but didn’t themself manage to grade papers on time, post homework assignments in a timely manner, etc.</p>
<p>LOL…I agree with that! (One teacher took over 3 months to grade an assignment…she missed 2 quarter marking periods!)</p>
<p>As for the kids’ claim of “not being fair.” That is just normal kid stuff…they complain if sissy got new shoes, or brother got a new bike, or neighbor has the latest Nintendo system, or friend gets to go to DisneyWorld, and on and on. It’s not about whether the child lives with adults who treat him rather fairly; it’s that kids don’t always have the discernment to consider everything…The neighbor may have the newest Nintendo, but the kid may have something the neighbor would like. </p>
<p>These are teachable moments for kids. When my kids would complain that someone has X toy, I would say, write up a list of ALL your toys, then write up a list of all your friend’s toys, and you’ll see that you both have a lot of toys…some are just different.</p>
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<p>Hunt and Garland I agree. I would also like to add that when you are treated unfairly or witness someone else being treated unfairly - don’t take it. Speak up and try to change things.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids: yes, that is normal behavior–for first graders. By the time they get to high school they should have long since stopped confusing “what I want” with “what is fair.”</p>
<p>my kid has taken two phil classes at CTY, and is something of an activist. When she says “its not fair” I can prepare myself for an argument from first principles of justice. I wouldn’t have it any other way. :)</p>
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</p>
<p>Eight hours? Only? Hunh. Where are these jobs, and how can I get one?</p>
<p>I harbor an intense dislike for condescending lists like this, as part of the “recently-a-kid” contingent. I’m 27, worked two jobs through college and grad school, and have been employed with two top-tier firms within my field since graduating with my masters degree. What I’ve found from watching this generation hit the workforce is that this is the generation that’s getting the squeeze from both ends, and the response is universally that “life’s not fair”. Right… We know that. If we didn’t know it, we learned it really quickly when we got out into the “real world.”</p>
<p>I hear tell from my parents and grandparents that it used to be that if you half-killed yourself in the corporate world, you’d do it so that the company would reward you later, maybe by keeping you employed when times got tough. That’s not the story anymore.</p>
<p>Now, you half-kill yourself just to keep your job. Companies are largely finding it to be too expensive to invest in their employees, so they’ve just stopped investing. My firm went from being one of the very best in its field, showing 8x10 glossies of how much incredible training they gave the employees, and how you would have to work very hard all the time, but that they’d never had layoffs and they had a lot of benefits. It was voted “Best Firm to Work For” three or four years in a row. Economic times turned, and those benefits dried up, young employees who put in seventy hours a week and had newborns at home were being laid off by the dozens (some had work visas and so are now in danger of being deported)… just to keep the company out of their line of credit. The company turned a profit last year. Training programs, which replaced design manuals (last edited in 1985) in order to train new engineers, have all been cancelled, so new engineers don’t have the tools they need to do their jobs. Salaries were cut by 10% across the board and we were told that the party line was “Business is great!” Don’t talk about the layoffs to anyone.</p>
<p>I guess it’s what the company has to do to survive, and I wouldn’t dare to breathe a word of complaint on anything non-anonymous like Facebook, since I have a job and am INCREDIBLY lucky to be in my situation (my husband’s unemployed right now; with an $800/month minimum payment on his student loans, we’d be utterly screwed if I were laid off), but there’ve been a lot of young, strained marriages, a lot of twenty-something engineers talking in hushed tones and shaking voices, a lot fewer people taking vacation time, floors full of sick people who wouldn’t dare take time off, and a lot more people working insane hours. Graduate engineers are expected to respond immediately to e-mails we receive at 11 PM and 2 AM on our phones, and we’re expected to be at the office to watch the sun rise and set. It’s clear now-- this small, once-family-like, employee-owned firm is not willing to risk their profit to be loyal to the employees. I talk to my college friends-- their companies are like this, too. Changing jobs wouldn’t make a whit of difference.</p>
<p>Tough times yield hard lessons. Nobody at my office has ever complained that it’s not fair. It’s put up and shut up right now, or you’re gone.</p>
<p>I compared notes with my husband the other day. When I started my first job in seventh grade, I had no idea what Social Security was, except that they gave me a unique identification number, and that I had to pay a tax. I learned about Social Security later, but both my husband and I understand and take for granted the fact that Social Security IS a tax… It’s not a buy-in program for anything, it’s just like a federal income tax except it’s tabulated differently on our paychecks. We don’t feel shortchanged because we’ve always known that we’d never get anything from Social Security. We started pouring money into our IRAs and 401Ks as much as we could, met with a financial planner, and came up with a plan on how to save for our retirement, how to save for a down payment for a house, and how to save for our kids’ college funds. It’s going to be incredibly difficult, but most things worth doing <em>are</em>. We nodded and started socking away as much money as two newly-employed kids can.</p>
<p>The tail end of the conversation I had with my husband went like this:
“Babe, we’re saving for retirement.”
“Yep.”
“Our parents aren’t saving for retirement, are they?”
“Your dad is, I think, but your mom didn’t. I’m not sure about my parents.”
“We’re the only generation that has to pay for retirement for our parents and for ourselves, aren’t we?”
“Yep.”</p>
<p>We took a deep breath, nodded at each other, and then we cooked dinner.</p>
<p>I don’t think this generation is whiny and sheltered, I think <em>teenagers</em> are whiny and sheltered, and that as they progress in life, they’ll plainly see it: nope, life’s not fair. We don’t need a condescending little list to chew us out in order to know that life’s not fair, either. Life’s bound and determined to teach us that all on its own. </p>
<p>I’ll chuckle along with someone who says “Kids these days!” and “Get off my lawn!” but this list, and that book, are very deflating, particularly as another wave of college graduates prepare to walk across the stage this May and scramble to get jobs doing data entry. I think that by and large, college kids are doing pretty well with keeping their mouths shut about the fairness-or-unfairness of life right now.</p>
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This, in a nutshell, is why unions exist.</p>
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</p>
<p>It would be nice if I had the energy to unionize, nightchef. Instead, I’m just going to keep taking my anti-anxiety meds every day, my sleep meds every night, and keep coming to work every day so that my husband and I can keep from going homeless.</p>
<p>I’m usually more optimistic. It’s been a bad few weeks.</p>
<p>This list is not only obnoxious and condescending, but apparently the author is about 10 years behind kids today or is addressing people born in the '90s, who are no longer “kids” (I’m talking the early 90’s here, as in the kids who are adults and in college now). “Friends” hasn’t been on in years, and I can’t remember the last person I knew who honestly thought smoking was “cool”. Check out facebook if you need an example…there are several groups about this. My personal favorite: “You were hot until you put that cigarette in your mouth.”</p>
<p>I also can’t remember the last time I heard someone over the age of about 11 say “it’s not fairrrrr!”. Granted I’m not a parent, but still.</p>
<p>I hate lists like these. I agree with nightchef-reminds me of “in my day we had to walk 40 miles in the snow, uphill, both ways…just to get to our shoes.” Only not nearly as funny.</p>
<p>Sounds to me like the author had a bad experience in his teen years and is bitter.</p>
<p>I know that my high school refused to celebrate mediocrity, and thus only gave deserved awards. I also know that none of my friends expect to make anywhere close to $40k right after college.</p>
<p>Those “rules”, IMO, are complete and utter BS, and I find them insulting as hell as a member of the generation to which he is supposedly speaking.</p>
<p>Of course this list doesn’t represent all or most teens. </p>
<p>But, gee, all we have to do is go to some of the student posts on CC and find examples of many kids thinking it’s not fair that they worked so hard, yet… </p>
<p>they can’t go out of state,
or they don’t have the money to go to their dream school that they want (deserve) to attend,
or they believe they’re too good to go to the local state school (even when their stats are quite modest),</p>
<p>etc.</p>
<p>While these kids don’t represent the majority, some are quite loud about their “unfair” situation, so maybe it can seem like there are more with that attitude than what there truly is.</p>
<p>Most kids aren’t like this, but we can’t deny that some are like this…there are just too many examples on CC.</p>
<p>Perhaps, but you can find equal numbers of parents who are jerks on CC too. Do we want to wholesale judge generations by their worst members?</p>
<p>Snarky condescension is never illuminating. Not in the slightest.</p>
<p>While I can’t comment on much of the original post, I certainly feel qualified to say that it contains precisely the kind of condescending bitterness - almost entitlement, in a sense - that pushes kids to dye their hair purple and pierce their nose.</p>
<p>Something else I thought of: the “Friends” and Kurt Cobain references made me, as a lazy, good-for-nothing teenager, laugh how dated they were. But when the laughter stopped, I just felt bad for the author. Now he sounds like a sour old coot instead of just a bitter man.</p>
<p>Frankly, I doubt the current generation of teenagers is any worse than previous ones. Every generation thinks the new one is dissolute, lazy, etc. There’s nothing new under the sun.</p>
<p>If you watch the original That Darn Cat movie (the black-and-white one with the siamese cat, not the later remake), you’ll notice that while the teenage characters aren’t “sitting around talking about Kurt Cobain”, they are spending all their free time . . . going to surfer movies! (And making out, presumably, since they were drive-in movies.) Those lazy teenagers of 1965, huh? Obviously they will never amount to anything . . . </p>
<p>Life isn’t fair, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to be fair towards others. [url=]Even dogs get ticked off when treated unfairly.</p>