Teaching Tip #158

Teacherscribe’s Teaching Tip #158

One of the books from my summer reading list a few years ago was Generation iY Tim Elmore.

The problems, Elmore notes, for the digital generation, though, is that a lot of their characteristics both help . . . and hinder them.

For example – they want to start and be part of a strong, healthy family unit.  Yet, they are delaying adulthood later and later. Someone said the 38 is the new 28.  Really? When exactly is middle age then?

Because children are growing up quicker than ever (there is little doubt that children are physically maturing much faster than previous generations) they are ready (at least physically) for adulthood, but the world we have created for them (where we have enabled and coddled them and given them the message that many of them need to go to college for degrees that are more expensive than ever before in order to get jobs that may (but probably won’t) be there when they graduate) a world that they simply aren’t ready for in terms of maturity and responsibility.

This just seems cruel to me.  And it is a problem that needs to be addresses.  If it isn’t addressed at home, how an we address it in school?