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RV sales topped 500,000 in 2017
#11
(02-11-2018, 10:49 AM)TrainChaser Wrote: Expedition vehicles are just expensive toys.  People who can afford a big house AND an expensive rig aren't going to live in the rigs full-time, or even half-time.

Most young people don't know how to do anything but turn their electronics on and off.  Many of them can't change a tire or replace a battery, they have no idea how to wash dishes without a dishwashter, and they waste a lot of stuff (like water) because they think it's free.  I know a young guy (about 26 now), who was handed cash for anything he wanted for his entire upbringing.  He can't hold a job for very long because his employers want him to actually work, instead of texting.  His parents finally kicked him out, so he went to his adoring grandmother, and she let him live at her place (rent-free, of course).  When she didn't pay her bills ($4,500 monthly income), the bank forclosed on the house, and the young guy was forced out (by police).  Since then, I've heard from the neighbors that he has been living with a series of friends,  but he refuses to pay them rent, so they say goodbye.  If he shows up on NF land (no BLM land in W. WA), it will be in a cheap tent.

Bullshit. 

The word MOST is not accurate in any way. One example is not a reality.

For example, my youngest daughter knows someone her age that can solve four rubix cubes at a time. One with each hand and one with each foot. 

 I spent many years in and around academia. There are not many parents that will ruin a child like that. A few, but not that many.
Compared to parenting, Cat herding is less complicated
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#12
(02-11-2018, 10:49 AM)TrainChaser Wrote: Most young people don't know how to do anything but turn their electronics on and off.  Many of them can't change a tire or replace a battery, they have no idea how to wash dishes without a dishwashter, and they waste a lot of stuff (like water) because they think it's free.

My fiance and I wash all our dishes by hand and do all our laundry by hand (yes, he learned how to do laundry - he WANTED to.) I don't yet know how to change a tire (plus my van cannot carry a spare unless it's inside with me), because I was too busy learning how to repair punctures, putting together my kit for it and then putting that into practice over the course of 5 different punctures (+helping a friend). I don't yet know how to change my battery, because I was too busy learning how to jump it (with my house battery in the back), care for my house battery and how to change my own oil. Both my fiance and I regularly create complex, tasty, nutritious meals from scratch with whatever ingredients we happen to have on hand from the food bank, or free from my workplace or from my local Buy Nothing group.

We also rescued the dog my parents have been neglecting for a decade, who were considering putting down due to poor health and then abandoned at a shelter. We nursed him back to a healthy weight, give him daily exercise (totally new experience for him but he loves it!) and carefully rehabilitated him to be able to socialize functionally with other dogs for the first time in his life. People are shocked to learn he's almost 13 years old because he acts so young now, it's as if he has reverse-aged under our care.

We live debt-free. We have carefully scrimped savings. We both have disabilities that significantly impact our lives, but I am finally off government handouts (been a goal ever since I got on it 8ish years ago!) and we both work our butts off to make ends meet.

My fiance is almost 25, I'm almost 29. There are undoubtedly things that we will not know how to do because we haven't learned yet - that's always going to be the case regarding young people. You have had much more time to learn things than we have. But your habit of bashing young people just because of the picture you have in your head is very tiresome to encounter, and I hope you will consider looking at more snapshots of how young people actually live to get a better view.
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#13
GotSmart, I didn't say 'all', I said 'most'. And that is what I see around here. Maybe WA is different from the rest of the country. But since I moved here, I've really had to dumb down my language from regular 1990s high school.

But... how long have you been removed from being " in and around academia"? Nowadays, high school students punch their teachers. Quite a few professors are quitting because their students are a poor combination of ignorant and aggressive.

Almost everywhere I go, I see young people 'at work', checking their cell phones.

I've walked into a business with a little gum-chewer on the phone with her friend, describing a hot date; she turns and looks at me, then continues talking on the phone, and ignored me for 15 minutes. It probably would have lasted longer, but I heard man down the hall saying goodbye to someone, and no one came out, so I assumed he had been on the phone. I walked in and set my resume on his desk, saying that girlie couldn't be bothered to see why I was there.

Overall, they seem to have about a 100-word vocabulary. If I use a word with more than two syllables, there's a good chance they will look puzzled. Expedient. Disenfranchised. Accoutrements. Clockwise. Articulated. Equanimity. Idiosyncracy. Nullification. Parsimonious.

What's the U.S. Constitution about? Blank look. History, same thing.

Understanding cause-and-effect? Not much.

Putting three facts together and coming up with a conclusion? Uh...... huh?

One young woman was excited to be going to visit a family member in Alaska, where she hoped she could see some penguins.

Please don't tell me that parents don't ruin their children -- being a good parent requires work, and lots of them are just too lazy; give them cash and electronics and they're covered, they think. There's a helicopter child next door... with three children of her own. Her mama solves all of her problems except where to get laid (I'm assuming). There are some kids down the street who are roaming the street on their bikes in the middle of the night. When I had to wait for RR crews in train yards, there were kids 10 and 12 roaming the tracks and climbing on the parked trains at 2 a.m.
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#14
Yes, I get tired of always hearing about how awful today's kids are. I was just discussing this with
Hubby. He retired as a inner city 93% minority high school math teacher several years ago. For many of his regular kids, he says, school was their social outlet and learning was in the way of their friend interactions. Some were Incredibly lazy.

Every year, for 10 years, out of personal curiosity, he gave his incoming students a survey on all kinds of things, favourite/worst subjects, hobbies, aspirations, do you work? If so, how many hours? Parents occupations? Numbers of languages spoken? He found the most telling about the kids was the answer to this question: "If you could trade places with anyone in the world, who would you be?" The biggest answer, by far, was that they were happy being themselves.

On the other hand, students tried, worked hard and were very successful. Most were creative, handy, inquisitive, determined, ambitious conscientious, good souls, good kids. They worked towards their aspirations. They were not blaming others for their failures, but many were pissed on the mess that they are being handed, especially about the environment. Where he taught, out of 1000 students, he had maybe 20 helicopter parents.

He also taught ESL, "The kids were wonderful, respectful, even those that weren't very interested in their studies". Interestingly enough, on a couple of parent-teacher nights, I went to translate for the parents who only spoke Spanish. The first question that these parents all had was: "How is my child behaving?"

But, he, as a teacher, and me as a mother of four do lament that academic standards are greatly reduced since we were in school. And it's a sad fact that in order to maintain its competitive edge, at this point we in America need the H-B1 visa holders. The problem is that the schools are not willing to flunk kids-and the kids know it.

Hubby taught in the International Baccalaureate program for six years. The program is as rigorous as any educational program 50 years ago. These kids are special-in a good way. Probably 90% went on to college, including many Ivy League schools. And this is in a minority school, where many of the kids would qualify for DACA.

Through the millennia, adults have always bemoaned the pitiful state of the current young generation. The kids are fine. The so-called adults are the problem.
Ted
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#15
(02-11-2018, 04:57 PM)TrainChaser Wrote: Almost everywhere I go, I see young people 'at work', checking their cell phones.  


Overall, they seem to have about a 100-word vocabulary.  If I use a word with more than two syllables, there's a good chance they will look puzzled.  Expedient.  Disenfranchised.  Accoutrements.  Clockwise.  Articulated.  Equanimity.  Idiosyncracy.  Nullification.  Parsimonious.

I could say so much, but I'll just reply to these two things.

If you were to stay as a guest where I work, you might well encounter me checking my cell phone. That's because both my boss and some guests who stay there prefer to communicate with me via cell phone. My boss might be telling me to check if anything else needs restocking because she decided to grab groceries while she's out. A guest might be asking if I can fit in doing a load of laundry for them that day, or special instructions regarding their room. Moreover, my job can also require research, like when a guest asks if a nearby local attraction is wheelchair accessible or how difficult a local hike is. (I once called my mom for information, as she was well familiar with it, and I was then able to help the guests out with the info they needed.)

Consider reading this post, about an image that went viral: a group of young people seemingly all distracted by their phones in front of Rembrandt's most famous painting. "A perfect metaphor for our age", some said. Except, it turns out those young people were actually completing the school assignment their teacher had just given them, using the museum's smartphone app to learn more information about the painting they had just been admiring moments earlier.

Regarding your claim about vocabulary: I just read those words out loud to my fiance. He knew all of them except the last one (EDIT: which he knew once I pronounced it correctly, ha). And that despite English being his second language and growing up in the ghetto. I grew up reading voraciously, which is where my vocabulary comes from.

I do not think we are as different from each other as you appear to believe.
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#16
Most is more than half. 

I still say BS

Have you ever volunteered in a school?  I worked many events and substituted in many different classes. What you are talking about is a extremely small minority. 

MOST  kids are scared shitless because the cards are stacked against them. They want to succeed. 

BTW, if you are unable to get a little receptionist to pay attention to you, perhaps the problem is how you present yourself. 

Start watching how body language is used. Head up. Eyes steady and focused on their eyes. Mouth steady. Voice calm and firm. 

It is not only what you say, but how. Speak less, but command the conversation useing the pause. Lowering the voice has the power to force the listener into paying attention to what you are saying.
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#17
the baby boomers-

the millennials-

gen x-
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#18
I'm speaking about what I SEE (and hear). Most young people today want it all, and they want it NOW, but mostly, they want it handed to them, preferably delivered, to where they're playing video games.

If the kids you know are so educated why are such a high percentage of American functionally or completely illiterate?

When **I** was in school, school was the most boring thing in existence. My mom taught me to read before I entered first grade, and when I got my books each year, I read them all in about the first month, and for the rest of the year listened to MOST of the rest of the class stumbling through Dick and Jane. Do you think it's gotten any better? Only at dumbing down the kids and giving them 'self-esteem'.... educating them, well, no.

Even in the same school, there didn't seem to be any coordinated effort to transfer the learning program from one grade to the next -- every year was a whole new ballgame, where each new teacher 'assumed' what we had learned the previous year. No cohesiveness whatsoever.

When a kid actually gains skills, it's most likely they had a parent who cared. But that's not really what I see here in this Pit of Despair. It's so bad that most of the businesses around here hire older people, like 50+. When I comment on not seeing a certain young person, the response is almost always the same: "They just didn't want to work".

And they're really big on 'short cuts'. I hired a kid to pull up a patch of weeds when I hurt my back. I gave him the tools, instructions, and let him get to work. When I looked across the yard about an hour later, he was almost finished. But it looked... odd. So I walked out there and took a look. The tools I had left there seemed to be in exactly the same place I had left them. He had spent the hour carefully pulling all the tops of the weeds off at ground level.
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#19
As of 2013, 14% of Americans were illiterate. The same number as 2003. 

Down from about 18% in 1992. 

If that is what you are seeing and hearing, you need to find new friends. 

I worked in a home for abused children, and the rate was about that. 3 out of 20 needed the remedial classes.  These are the brain damaged alcohol and drug babies. 

Just because you are not seeing the intelligent kids where you are hanging out might mean that you are not going to the places that they are hanging out.

You are relying on the word “MOST” when you have no facts. The reality is completely different.
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#20
(02-12-2018, 03:29 PM)TrainChaser Wrote: I'm speaking about what I SEE (and hear).  Most young people today want it all, and they want it NOW, but mostly, they want it handed to them, preferably delivered, to where they're playing video games.

When a kid actually gains skills, it's most likely they had a parent who cared.  But that's not really what I see here in this Pit of Despair.  It's so bad that most of the businesses around here hire older people, like 50+.  When I comment on not seeing a certain young person, the response is almost always the same:  "They just didn't want to work".

I understand you live in Washington state. So do I.

My boss hired millennials. Actually, I don't think she discriminates on age either way, which is awesome. When I first started working there, I was basically the weekend housekeeper. The primary housekeeper was a relatively young grandmother. And....when I started working there was when I started noticing that the other housekeeper wasn't actually doing most of the work she claimed she was doing. This eventually became clear to my boss based on my reports, and she soon was having me double check the other housekeeper's work.

When that housekeeper quit (and how I wish I could say more about how that went down) my boss hired another person, who happens to also be a millennial, and had me train him. We bonded over our enjoyment of attention to detail, and my boss loves how it all worked out. Like me, he often stays later to finish up a task even though he doesn't have to, because he takes pride in a job completed well. Like me, he works multiple other gigs to make ends meet. In fact, my boss, who owns the B&B, even works 4 days/week herself in order to give us decent pay and a reliable schedule. We're all in the same boat, though my boss is a different generation.

We don't see different generations when we interact with each other. We just see individuals working hard to make life happen.
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