Kids These Days

I remember people constantly complaining about my generation and getting annoyed at it. There were these sweeping generalizations about how people my age act, all we seemed to be interested in, and, more often than not, how much harder the people of the previous generations had it and how much better it made them. I didn't feel like such statements were true or helpful, so I am going to try to not succumb to the temptation of doing the same thing.

With that said, I must mention the students that I teach. For the most part, they are normal, middle-class, but run the gamut of overly exposed to popular culture to not exposed at all. I have never seen so many students who were once home schooled, and now I know why. Earlier today, I had a student approach me about a speech I had recommended to her to memorize for theater. (I had cherry-picked it because she 'didn't feel comfortable' doing a soliloquy that was not meant for a girl.) She told me that she didn't like the language. Knowing that this was Titania's speech from A Midsummer's Night's Dream, I was worried that perhaps I missed a 'jackass' or something about Bottom, the man named Bottom who was turned into a jackass - the animal, not the 'bad word.' But, no. There was no mention of him. I asked her to please point out what she was seeing.

"'But she, being mortal, of that boy did die; / And for her sake do I rear up her boy.'"

"What was inappropriate?"

She then points to the word 'rear'.

Are you kidding me? Have kids these days warped their minds so much that "rear" no longer means "to raise"? What in the world did she think Titania was doing to the child anyway? The worst part is that I know this kid was not doing as some kids do (including me at that age,) by making something gross/inappropriate using word association. She genuinely did not want to say that because she thought she was saying something 'bad'. Most of the time at her age I was looking for opportunities to say inappropriate things. What does that make me?

It goes without saying that she is an exception to the rule - not the general rule, and that she is the product of being so overly-sheltered that it is affecting her ability to exist in the free world. It shows us what happens when someone doesn't have the mind to question (in her case) a religious doctrine that says something vaguely, which is in itself not a bad idea, but when applied to the world at large and taken to an extreme, can be worse than damaging. It also goes without saying that this is a forewarning of troubles to come. I told a lady in the office about this and she looked at me like I was crazy.
"What are they doing to kids these days?" she asked.
I often wonder.