January 14

It is four days before classes start. They sent us an email with homework. This homework was two readings. The shorter one, listed second, contradicted the longer one, written first. While it was amusing to read about how some guy thought a 600 person sample from one high school told him about an entire generation of teenagers in the US, these readings were not worth my time. I get the feeling this will be a common theme.


The longer reading was by Howe, Neil and Reena Nadler. "Yes We Can: The Emergence of Millenials as a Political Generation." The paper itself is 23 pages long. There are 9 pages of notes that the end. Because it's so long, I'll just give you some highlights.


After the introduction, the authors almost immediately defend that their paper has a reason for existing. "The notion that Millennials constitute a new and different political generation seems novel and daring to some. But from the very foundation of the United States, if not earlier, many have observed a generational rhythm underlying the ebb and flow of American political life." Oh, well. If some people who were around when America was founded thought this was legit, it must be absolutely true with no questions asked.
"And finally, each new generation appears as a surprise. Its political attitudes and aspirations are never an extension of those of the previous generation, but rather represent a complete break, a turning of corners, an entirely different perspective." This is always true if you count each new generation as the group of people that throws off the expectations of them group before them.


There's probably more to pick at in the introduction, but let's move on to the meat of the paper.
"Howe and Strauss made major predictions in that book about how Millennials would transform the behaviors and attitudes of teens and young adults over the next five, ten, and fifteen years. Nearly all of them have turned out to be correct." It seems bad form to cite yourself in an essay that you write later. Then again, maybe no one else had written anything that would help them. Also, I wonder if they would have cited themselves if they had been wrong in their book.

"Critics may object that these trends do not apply equally to every Millennial subgroup, and therefore do not really constitute generational trends." Critics may also tell you that the 600 or so teenagers used for the statistics in this essay all go to the same high school in Virginia. These critics are clearly missing the big picture.

Then the authors of this essay decide to give us 7 core traits of “Millennials”. I'm sorry if those quotation marks seem unnecessary, but I'm not sure I can bring myself to type that word any other way. In the interest of saving space, time and my sanity in reading this again, I'll just give you one sentence that accompanies each trait. The traits are these:
Special-"From the precious-baby movies of the mid- 1980s to the media glare surrounding the high school Class of 2000, older generations have inculcated in Millennials the sense that they are, collectively, vital to the nation and to adults’ sense of purpose." If my parents hadn't had children, I know they still would have a sense of purpose. I and my siblings not the whole of my parents' lives, unlike this suggests.

Sheltered-"Helicopter parents figure these special kids will always require special care." Whenever I make generalizations about a large group of people, I always use the crazy ones.

Confident-"The Millennials have a new sunny outlook, confidence that they can achieve great things, and faith that America’s big problems really can be solved." Um... What? Have you spoken with people in this generation? Oh yeah, 600 of them in Virginia and nowhere else. That's right.

Team-oriented-"High school students now regard team skills (along with technology) as the most valuable for their careers." I tend to think that being able to do the job is the most important skill for my career. Then again, what do I know? People outside of the generation will always be able to tell you more about it than people in it.

Conventional-"Millennials trade advice easily with their parents and even share their parents’ taste in music and clothes." No, really. Have you talked with a teenager recently? Also, I'm not sure how the recent trend in gay rights and the kascrillion gay-support groups (on my college campus, at least) fit in with teenagers being conventional. Maybe the conventionality harkens back to a time when subjects were mad at an English king not for being gay, but for using their tax money to shower his boyfriends with presents. Somehow, I don't think the authors are using that as a framework for conventionality.

Pressured-"There is a new youth assumption that long-term success demands near-term organization and achievement—that what a high school junior does this week determines where she’ll be five and ten years from now." OK, I'll stop asking if you've talked with teenagers, because obviously you haven't, but really? I don't think that what I do this week will affect where I'll be five and ten years from now and I'm in college. Also, when I was a junior, I didn't worry about my activities on a weekly basis for affecting my future, unless they were potentially fatal activities.

Achieving-"Most students today support standardized testing and higher standards, and believe that the best cure for rampant classroom boredom is tougher curriculum." That's interesting, because I believe the best cure for classroom boredom, rampant or not, is not tougher curriculum. You see, there are these things called advanced classes for nerds like me. If people are bored in class, they might need more difficult classwork, or they might need a better teacher, or the student could be bored because s/he doesn't want to be in school and nothing a teacher does will change that. Sorry, that must have been my “sunny outlook” intruding.

So, moving right along with this ridiculously long reading assignment...

"More than any other age bracket, Millennial teens favor reducing the restrictions on government surveillance of citizens to prevent terrorism and are willing to let government protect the community even at the cost of civil liberties. A right to privacy does not rank high in Millennial priorities." Personally, I strongly believe in my right to privacy. If I wrote a diary, I wouldn't let people read it. I know they're talking about other methods of finding terrorists, such as reading emails that might reveal several personal/painful details, but it's the same principle.

"Millennial children, by contrast, have been protectively raised in a society whose adults have been steadily weakening—or disobeying— these norms and rules." Wait. Didn't we have a bunch of rules a couple pages ago? Is it just me or is it getting contradictory in here?

"More than half of young workers would prefer that employers mandate a minimum standard for initial contribution rates, automatically increase contribution levels, and place them in default investment options." I would rather handle where my money goes, thank you very much.

"Millennials also support policies that allow government to assume benevolent direction over people’s life choices, particularly for those whom courts or psychiatrists have decreed cannot direct themselves." Woah. No. I disagree and the random friend I polled said that she'd never though about it. As it turns out, taking a sample from a variety of people who fit in your category will help you make better generalizations. Then again, trying to generalize about teenagers seems like an impossible feat to me. Even something like, “They all like to eat,” doesn't really work. There are plenty of people who try not to eat because they're concerned about their body image. A couple of my friends, that I know about, went through times when they didn't want to eat.

"Millennials rarely resist uniform dress codes, locker searches, see-through backpacks, urine checks, or cell phone GPS once they understand that these policies enhance their safety. Surveys show that today’s teens are comfortable with “zero tolerance” for even minor infractions in schools, are somewhat more inclined than prior generations to report such infractions, and are more likely to say that enforcement does not go far enough." I'm sorry, when did high school become totalitarian? It must have been when I wasn't looking. At my high school, getting students to dress for gym was enough of a hassle. My high school could never have had uniforms. Also, urine checks? As far as I know, that never happened in my high school.

"As already noted, this generation is smoking less, drinking less, and getting pregnant less in their teen years." So... those stories about parties full of booze and all of the students' children in my high school daycare are a decrease from previous generations? Wow. I am impressed. It's a wonder the previous generation didn't all die from smoking and drinking all the time. Wait... is the “smoking” in the article just cigarettes or does it also include pot? I'm not sure there was a day at my high school when someone didn't come to school high.

"Three-quarters of all teens agree that there is nothing embarrassing about saying you are a virgin—to the amazement of older Americans, who imagine that only a much smaller share of teens would agree." Ha! Hah! Oh. That was a good joke.


This is getting too long. I'll just skip ahead about five pages...
"By the late 1990s, the majority of high school students said they had detailed five- and ten-year plans." Granted, I was a high school student in the late 2000s, but still... Detailed five and ten year plans? This seems outrageous and/or made up.

"Through the 2010s, Millennials will be marrying, starting families, and giving birth in large numbers, returning to college for their fifth-year and tenth-year reunions—and swarming into business and the professions, no longer as apprentices. Already in the 2010s, some will enter state houses and the U.S. Congress. In the early 2020s, they will elect their first U.S. Senator—and perhaps in the early 2030s, their first U.S. President." This is a pretty generic group of predictions. However, they will all be wrong if the world ends in 2012.

"The prospect of an ideal match between the collective personality of the rising generation and the mood of the coming era may seem fortuitous, but it is nothing new. In fact, this happens repeatedly throughout American history. Consider how well prepared the rising Silent Generation was for the caution and conformity of the 1950s, or how well prepared Boomers were the passion and idealism of the 1970s, or how well prepared Gen- Xers were for the free agency and carnival culture of the 1990s. This recurring match may not be a coincidence." It's almost as if the people who are the “current generation” are raising the future generation in their world. It's strange how these things work out.

"Yet by thinking generationally, by understanding who the Millennials are and how they are spurring nonlinear social and political changes, certain themes in this drama can be anticipated and their implications made clear." It's the final sentence and the authors didn't even take their own advice.


By the way, the second article was “The Millennial Muddle: How stereotyping students became a thriving industry and a bundle of contradictions” by Eric Hoover. This is the article where I found out about how terrible Howe and co. were at getting statistics.