Wow, we couldn't see this one coming. The "Millenial Generation" coming out of college to mingle with us Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers in the workplace are having trouble coping:
"They wipe out on life as often as they wipe out on work itself," says Mr. Hannay, who let go more than a dozen millennials from his 130-person staff over the course of 2006.
That's when he stopped hiring them. "They get an apartment and a kitty, and they can't cope. Work becomes an ancillary casualty. They're good kids with talent who want to succeed. That's what makes me nuts."
[. . .]
"They've been overparented, overindulged and overprotected," she says. "They haven't experienced that much failure, frustration, pain. We were so obsessed with protecting and promoting their self-esteem that they crumble like cookies when they discover the world doesn't revolve around them. They get into the real world and they're shocked.
Of all the wrong turns taken by our schools, the self-esteem movement has done the most damage. It's not just the lack of preparation for adversity so well described in this article. It's also that those subjected to it have been so routinely praised so lavishly for the most mundane "accomplishments" that they have no real concept of what it means to succeed, either. May the movement die the death it so richly deserves.
Comments
What is it about the human psyche that causes us to generalize entire people groups -- usually negativesly? I know people in the early to mid-twenties who are doing very well.
I recall the frustration of being mashed in with the hippie generation of the late 1960s.
You know, every generation has apparently been worse than the last. GenXers such as myself were nothing but a bunch of slackers because of all the video games or whatever. Then we made the Internet bloom and the Boomers started to STFU about our supposed slackitude.
Similarly, I think it was the drugs and rock & roll music that made the Boomers so awful. Then they got the stock market booming in the 80s and whatnot, and the Greatest Generation stopped riding their collective behinds.
Mr. Gividen slipped in with a related sentiment.
Good comments from Messrs. Kenn & Doug aside, I think Leo's last paragraph nails it!
And while I don't feel each generation has gotten worse, the WORLD has gotten, if nothing else, a lot more "complicated", and it's this complication that illicits behavior that we (of our generations) might find less than desirable.
I will state that all this "self-esteem" crap is just that...crap. Always has been...always will.
It's another play on the "something for nothing" gig.
You have to FIRST instill a sense of ETHICS, INTEGRITY, and even a little MORALITY into the mix.
THEN, and only then, will you find a lot more kids with a lot more self-worth (or self-esteem).
But that itself raises a whole other set of questions regarding schools, family, parenting, etc.
No one said it would be an easy fix. And sadly, that's what everyone is LOOKING for.
Every generation that has problems will take at least 3 generations to UNDO those problems.
Good news is...we won't be around to see it fail.
Bad news is...we won't be around to see it succeed.
B.G.
Every generation has had it's issues, but I think everyone would have to admit the last two cycles have produced far more pussies than any other generation in history.
Dunno, Tim. Last I heard the ratio of male to female births was the same as ever.
Let me re-phrase.....hmmmm
The last two cycles have produced far more "testicularly challenged nancy boys" than any other generation in history.
Haven't ancient texts containing the same lament been uncovered?
Every new generation is a bunch of weak slackers, in the view of the generation that came before.
It's just history repeating itself.
I'm going to assume this post is not a slight on my generation, and I'm going to infer that this post is focused on the self-esteem movement.
And then I'm not going to have to say anything about how we weaklings are going to have to inherit world that your generation completely ruined.
So I don't have to say thanks to you, as representative of so many Boomers that look at our generation's struggles and completely forget about their vacuous past.
Enjoy that Social Security, by the way.
Interesting observation from last night while watching (briefly) the Oscar ceremony.
"And the Oscar goes too..."
Can't say winner, the others will feel as though their losers, right?
That's how we got a whole generation of whiners and slackers, no winners and losers....
You're ALL winners, mmmkay??