Always Reforming

It seems like almost daily I see a meme on Facebook complaining that the American education system is teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic instead of life skills.  As our nation becomes more aware of the broken promises of higher academia, social media is being inundated with a flood of articles promoting a focus on trades and home economics in lieu of Algebra and ancient literature.  Millennials are especially vocal as they remind everyone that their failures are not their fault because they were never taught how to budget, to pay taxes, etc. Well, guys, I have some news for you. Uncle Sam ain't yer daddy!  Betsy Ross ain't yer momma! The government, whether federal, state, or local, does not have the responsibility to teach you life skills.  "School" was not intended to teach you how to live your life, nor was it designed to make you successful.  An "education" is not meant to teach you everything you need to know.  It is meant to equip you wit...

Millennials.  We're the worst, aren't we? People are always ragging on us.  We're lazy.  We're stupid.  We're spoiled.  We're the scum of the earth and everything that ever happens is our fault. While we can laugh off many of these complaints as the bitter ravings of old people who don't know where else to aim their vitriol, it would do us well to consider their criticism and examine our hearts. One area that is a major weakness for our generation is our obsession with entertainment.  This is certainly not a universal issue, nor is it one upon which our generation has a monopoly.  We are our parents' children. Generally speaking though, we live for entertainment. We worship entertainment.  Even when we worship, we want entertainment. We have more free time than most people in the history of the world, so we exhaust it by entertaining ourselves. We have more money than most people in the history of the world, so we finance multibillion ...

Remember when people used to stay together for the kids?  Yeah, no one does that anymore. Marriages continue to fall apart as often as they stay together.  Commitment seems to be an issue especially for Millennials.  While the divorce rate is actually down for that age group, that's probably because they are waiting longer to get married or are simply not getting married at all.  You don't need scientific studies to realize that there's an issue with marriages these days.  We've probably all seen it: a couple gets married and everything seems great, but, before the couple celebrates their fifth anniversary (or even their first), one spouse tells the other that marriage just isn't for them.  It's depressing to see how many of my friends/acquaintances have gotten married and then separated very soon afterwards.  Sometimes it's the husband.  Sometimes it's the wife.  Sometimes it's mutual. Let me begin by saying that I have personally known ...

Millennials aren't nearly as bad as people make them out to be.  Allow me to rephrase that. Millennials aren't as uniquely bad as people make them out to be.  They are materialistic.  They are shallow.  They are morally relative and don't know how to use a broom or a mop (trust me...I see it all the time).  They use language in a barbaric and annoying manner.  These things are not, however, unique to this generation.  I'm pretty sure the boomers were saying these same things about the Generation X'ers.  The boomers, in turn, we largely decried by the "greatest" generation, the World War 2 generation that worked their butts off for everything they had. The one awful thing that I have found about Millennials, however, is our priorities.  Let's face it, our priorities are pretty questionable.  We spend way, way too much time on he internet (irony noted).  We do things like texting while driving.  We spend an inordinate amount o...

   My generation gets a bad rap from preceding generations.  We are lazy, fat, stupid, and selfish, or so they say.  Some of these may be exaggerations, while others are simply projections of insecurities upon us by our parents' generation, but there is one area in which I am sure we are guilty. We, my peers, are a proud generation.  We know best.  We will not listen to anyone.  We are all experts.  We are all linguists, chemists, biologists, historians, political scientists, and doctors.  We have no need to be taught and don't know how to shut up.  Our opinion is valid as valid as anyone else's.     I've struggled to find an answer to why this is the case.  Is it the moral relativity that has been taught in public schools?  Is it the entitlement mentality that has be ingrained into our social consciousness?  Is it all that positive reinforcement we were given as children?  Is it the carefree, entertainm...