Gen Whatev, Empowered To Be Enfeebled

America, you have enfeebled your children. By doing everything for them, giving them everything they ask for, by “protecting” them from all possible harm, by organizing all their activities, by listening to what they think they want, by trying to be their friend before they are adults, by feeding them a diet of physical mush that degrades their bodies and their minds because you think they won’t eat anything else: You have gutted their ambition, weakened their energy, sown paralyzing or apathetic confusion, and addled their minds and bodies. You’ve made idle threats with undelivered consequences and given them endless second and third chances, disempowering their ability to become well-functioning adults. You’ve wanted to boost their self-esteem and make them feel like they accomplished something notable because they just showed up, but now the results of all you have done are coming home in overwhelming cascade.

I heard a keynote speaker at a recent education convention talk at length about how we the elders, the teachers, the parents, are going to HAVE to adapt to what our "customers," the children and students, want and how they want it. I have heard this theme endless times. “If only we can find out how they WANT to learn, we can adapt ourselves to them and their preferences, and so we will achieve success.”

The problem with that is that it is at most only partially so. Yes, we don’t need to be Neo-Luddites, with no adapting to new things of real possibility. But we also don’t need to be chasing shifting targets that don’t really much know where they’re going or how they can get there.

Parents and educators would do better to listen to people like John Rosemond and the authors of “Positive Discipline for Teenagers ,“ if they want to discern what really works from what is just more gnat-brained wasted time. The children and students who are the adults of tomorrow are yearning for our co-piloting, not our blind control or suppliant accommodation (neither of which work).