A Generation of Deluded Narcissists....

[noonwitch]

Once that dumbing down of high school began the other things like video games, violent movies, trophies for all, etc became players in the issue.

I hate lumping "trophies for all" with the other things that fill the void for the kids. There are good reasons to give awards to kids for participating in things, even if they don't win. Sportsmanship awards, "most improved" awards-these are things that can encourage a kid who struggles with a challenge to persevere and not give up too soon.


But I do agree that the general dumbing down of our society, both the general culture and many of the schools, is leading to serious problems for the current generation of youth. My SIL was told me over X-mas that their oldest child, who attends a college-prep type school within a large city school district, does not read novels (or poetry/ plays) in her English classes. Instead of reading Dickens, Hemingway, Shakespeare and the works of the Lake poets, they are reading manuals of various types. The math and science classes she takes are beyond any I took in school, but we read major novels in my high school lit classes, and in my AP class my senior year, we read both volumes of the Norton anthology of British literature (it included the unabridged Cantebury Tales, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Henry V), and a similar one volume book of American literature. We also spent two weeks on Death of A Salesman and had to do oral presentations on a novel we chose from a list (I chose Tess of The D'Ubervilles).
The American lit part also included memorizing the Gettysburg Address, reading the essays of James Baldwin and listening to recorded speeches by JFK and MLK. All of the reading assignments had written assignments connected to them, whether a short essay or a long paper. This was in a public high school in 1978-82.

One of my college friends, who should have been kicked out of school at various times for her academic problems (but never was because she is black), was amazed when I told her if I was a high school lit teacher I'd assign the kids to 1. read Hamlet, 2. watch two different movies versions of the play, and 3. compare and contrast the movies to the script in a paper, noting things the director deleted or moved around. She thought that was expecting too much of high school students. I told her that's the problem, nobody expects anything from high school students anymore.

[Moby]

I am so sad to say my son falls into this group.
I raised him conservative. College undid all I taught him.
He did nothing but get stoned at Texas Tech and now feels
I should still support him at 21 years old after spending $50K
for two years at school only for him to get booted out.

I cut off all money to him, he's a landscaper now.
He hates me. He feels he should roll through life
getting buzzed anytime he wants. He lives in Washington state now.
He's very excited they legalized pot.
I'm very sad over it all.

[Rockntractor]

I am so sad to say my son falls into this group.
I raised him conservative. College undid all I taught him.
He did nothing but get stoned at Texas Tech and now feels
I should still support him at 21 years old after spending $50K
for two years at school only for him to get booted out.

I cut off all money to him, he's a landscaper now.
He hates me. He feels he should roll through life
getting buzzed anytime he wants. He lives in Washington state now.
He's very excited they legalized pot.
I'm very sad over it all.

I can only begin to understand how you feel, hopefully he will remember the foundation you gave him later in life when he fails, and returns to it.

[Starbuck]

Wow. Welcome aboard, Moby. A lot of us have grown children - or at least they should be grown, judging by their birth date - and sympathize with you. It's not like you did anything wrong, though. In fact, you did a lot right. I'm betting the day will come when he will wake up.

There are an awful lot of good comments in this thread. Lots of interest, it seems.

[linda22003]

One of my college friends, who should have been kicked out of school at various times for her academic problems (but never was because she is black), was amazed when I told her if I was a high school lit teacher I'd assign the kids to 1. read Hamlet, 2. watch two different movies versions of the play, and 3. compare and contrast the movies to the script in a paper, noting things the director deleted or moved around. She thought that was expecting too much of high school students. I told her that's the problem, nobody expects anything from high school students anymore.

When I was in high school, we would have considered that a vacation from homework, and would have loved such an easy, entertaining assignment. :)

[noonwitch]

I am so sad to say my son falls into this group.
I raised him conservative. College undid all I taught him.
He did nothing but get stoned at Texas Tech and now feels
I should still support him at 21 years old after spending $50K
for two years at school only for him to get booted out.

I cut off all money to him, he's a landscaper now.
He hates me. He feels he should roll through life
getting buzzed anytime he wants. He lives in Washington state now.
He's very excited they legalized pot.
I'm very sad over it all.

It's too bad he hates you for doing the right thing. If he's a landscaper, he probably can roll through life getting stoned whenever he wants. He just won't make as much money as he would if he completed college successfully. We all have to decide what is most important to us in life, and he chose weed, at least for now.


Other than your son acting like a dick in general to you, I am most sympathetic because you already spent the money for 2 years of college before he decided it wasn't for him.

This is your solace: some day, your kid will be a father. At some point after that, he is going to want to dump the kid with you for weekends here and there, and during vacations. That is your chance to get even-take the kid to church/Sunday school, fill his head full of conservative ideas in subtle and loving way. Your son will want the free and safe childcare more than he will care about the ideology you share with your grandchild.

[Novaheart]

I am so sad to say my son falls into this group.
I raised him conservative. College undid all I taught him.
He did nothing but get stoned at Texas Tech and now feels
I should still support him at 21 years old after spending $50K
for two years at school only for him to get booted out.

I cut off all money to him, he's a landscaper now.
He hates me. He feels he should roll through life
getting buzzed anytime he wants. He lives in Washington state now.
He's very excited they legalized pot.
I'm very sad over it all.

Some people screw off a year or three. San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland are full of them. Eventually they realize that the price of poverty and hipness is too high. I was waiting tables (two jobs) and paying $1275 a month rent in 1984. I suddenly realized that San Francisco was not where I wanted to be.

[Starbuck]

*BUMP*

More, on the same subject, by the same author. For those of you who do not know, a popular college football player announced that his grandmother and his girlfriend both died. It turned out that his girlfriend never existed, but he thought she did!
It's interesting. And sad.

Does Manti Te'o suffer from the 'delusional disease'?

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/0...#ixzz2IM1ZoJJ1

Now, America knows that Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o never had a girlfriend named Lennay Kekua.

Despite the fact that Notre Dame—and the national college football community as a whole—swooned over tidbits of Te’o’s tragic three-year romance, including Kekua having surviving a car accident only to, later, succumb to leukemia, his girlfriend was a fake. She never even existed. All she ever was were contrived messages on Twitter and elsewhere. Her pretty photograph had been stolen off the Facebook account of another woman.

Te’o insists he was duped by someone who wanted him to fall in love with an imposter, with a ghost created by today’s technology—a phenomenon known as “catfishing.” Yet, many inconsistencies in Te’o’s own story of the couple’s supposed romance raise the question of whether he was part of the scheme. If so, some theorize his motivation may have been to create a mythical, magical story to help propel him to the Heisman trophy.

Either way, Te’o needs psychological help. One version of the story paints him vulnerable enough and naďve enough to declare his love and devotion publicly for someone he had never even met, nor Skyped with, let alone kissed. That version has him grieving her death like a devoted husband—despite never having laid eyes on her, nor touched her. The other version of the story paints him as a co-conspirator in fraud and deception, willing to manipulate the feelings of millions of people for his own pleasure or advancement—a younger, even sicker version of Lance Armstrong.

And either way, Te’o is the poster boy for a phenomenon I have been writing about for years, and which threatens our culture in a dramatic way: The erosion of reality and embrace of fiction via social networking, “reality” TV and technology.

Call it The Delusion Disease.

The same forces that have fueled the creation of a generation of deluded narcissists, with more on the way, are hijacking our attention and emotions and making us devote them to false people and false stories. The tale of Te’o is a close relative to that of Balloon Boy—the fake story of a boy who was supposedly adrift inside a capsule beneath a homemade air balloon (when he was actually at home the whole time).

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/0...#ixzz2IM2HMLaj