A comment I heartily agree with, in response to a MSNBC piece on how students want their college loans to just “go away.”
Our “Johnny can’t read but he’s wonderful” education philosophy has produced a generation of entitled brats who think everything should be given to them for free. To a large extent, I blame us (the parents) for tying our own success to how much we could give our kids. Even in our little town, the most successful parents have to advertise their own success by giving their precious children expensive cars on their 16th birthday or hiring the biggest limos on prom night. For each of my daughter’s volleyball and basketball games (high school) the parents are expected to provide a meal for the team to eat before they leave the school. Even the post prom decorations are all expected to be handled by parents, who work their butts off to give junior the “perfect prom” experience. Parents are expected to work at the concession stands during varsity games to raise money for the athletic department, and those in charge would NEVER think of asking the kids to work there. When I was in school, we went home and ate something on our own before the game, and we decorated for our own proms. We would never have expected our parents to do all the things that parents take on today for their kids. So now here we are. These same kids expect free food, housing, and education. They expect to go to college and study philosophy or greek art and have Uncle Sam foot the bill for their self discovery. I honestly think there are a lot of them that don’t want jobs, because a lot of them really don’t want to work. And if they did work, they would find that the work world actually expects things of them and isn’t afraid to tell them the truth about their performance (or lack thereof). Yes, the top 1% may control too much of the world’s wealth. But the protesters on Wall Street don’t represent the “99%” as they like to say. They represent the 10% who don’t want to work and just want to live off of other people’s work so they can live whatever lifestyle they choose.
