Sunday, March 11, 2012

Generation Why Not

When I pause to reflect upon the collective difference(s)which characterize human generations and thus distinguish one from another, I have a feeling in my osteo-penalized bones that this year's batch of sixth graders at the middle school where I teach (or present the illusion of teaching) is both qualitatively and quantitatively unlike the current crop of seventh graders, or for that matter, markedly dissimilar from any generation of homo sapiens with whom I am even remotely familiar, going back as far as the pleistocene era. Indeed. If the most pre-recent generation of human beings has been dubbed "generation why," replete with its reputation for computer savviness and "wired in" status, I would assert the cut-off point for "generation why" would be approximately the birth year of 2001. Thereafter, I would call those individuals who are born in subsequent years to the present and not yet thirteen years of age, or for that matter even near teen mentality, rather than "generation why", "generation why not." This batch of humanity seems clueless.
That said, it is March. We have been in school since late August. A Gifted and Talented sixth grade student raised his hand this past week after completing a drill and asked, "Do we need to put our names on our papers?" I should have said, "No, not at all. When I bring your papers home tonight, provided there is a full moon, I will stand at the top of the stairs with all three sixth-grade Gifted and Talented class sets. I will chant aloud in runes. I will count to three, and I will then throw all of the papers up in the air. The ones that land on the top step will earn 'A's,' the ones below them will earn 'B's,' and so on, until the ones at the bottom earn 'E's.' " Both the knowledge that the student(s) likely would not fully grasp this remark's cynicism despite the students' purported Gifted and Talented status coupled with the knowledge that lawsuits are very costly preempted me from making any such comment.
Recently, one of my colleagues who teaches science was preparing her sixth graders for a lab. She reminded them that they would need to measure three yards along the/a school hallway floor prior to conducting the actual experiment. One student raised his hand. "Yes?" she responded. "How can we measure three yards when we only have one yardstick?" the student asked. (I ask you to suspend your disbelief. This really happened. "Really?") Another student piped up, eager to help, "Yeah, we'll need two more yardsticks."
On a separate occasion a couple of months ago, I took the healthy risk of having sixth grade students score one anothers' vocabulary matching activities. The purpose of this activity was to give students an opportunity to experience both the newer words' definitions and the same testing format which would be used during an exam one week later. I then told students to take these papers home to study along with their flashcards and so forth for their upcoming vocabulary exam. The activity seemed to go without a hitch; students scored each others' papers, and everything would have been on the up and up, until at the end of scoring one student raised his hand and asserted, "I can't study someone else's paper." I paused, looked at him quizzically, and with the deliberate lack of emotion worthy of a janitor, jailor, or subway announcer, intoned, "You give the papers back."
Perhaps "generation why not's" cumulative cluelessness is an indirect result of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9-11, surmising that the tacit but clear directive, "shut thinking/feeling off, because it/they hurt(s)" has been psycologically infused within the members of this most recent generation vis-a-vis mother's milk. Maybe their tribal mindlessness is a direct manifestation of the numb fallout of having parents and extended family members stationed overseas, coupled with a national divorce rate that for the first time in American history significantly exceeds the national marital rate. This hereby marks the singular time that I echo the selfsame tune that seems the mantra of "generation why not:" "I don't know." Of course, one need remember that I am seeing "generation why not" through the lens of the daily school English teacher, which may or may not have some bearing on my proclivity to be appalled by the continual, erosive, and atavistic behavioral absurdity which I witness all too often in my classroom among my sixth graders. Nota bene: rarely, if at all, among my seventh graders, many of whom I also taught as sixth graders last year, do I ever see such cognitive discontinuity, such that I have a modicum of comparability between said generations. In other words, I'm onto something.
Post script, March 24rd. I have been absent two weeks from school due to surgery on my sinuses. In that time I have received several communiques from various sources at school including colleagues, parents, and seventh grade students. While I have been gone many of my seventh graders, especially the boys, have been testing my substitute teacher with heedless abandon. While these aberrent youth shall suffer the inglorious indignation of having lunch detention with me yet among their peers in the cafeteria upon my return (perhaps one should have the worst two behavioral cases hold my hands on the walk down to the cafe, set the table, provide flowers, and wait upon the well and appropriately behaved), provocative behaviors of substitute teachers are certainly, while inappropriate and unacceptable, relatively normal ways that middle school students channel their anxiety and need for attention in the wake of the absence of someone (we hope) who plays at least some role of merit in their lives. Meanwhile, not to be outdone but relatively normal in their own ways, the seventh grade girls have expressed concern about spring fashion, who's "going out" with whom and "getting the guy" (which I find to be a stitch because none of these children even drive yet--and it's a good thing) neon colored feathers for their hair, and sadly, but of course, not gaining or losing weight. During my two-week lapse, what have those on the apparent dawn of a new era, the twenty-first century entrants, the sixth graders been doing? Per confidential memo from the school nurse, swallowing buckeyballs ("makth me look lik I have a pierthed tongue"). At this point I feel that I have made a grievous error conferring this planetary litter of offspring with the name "Generation Why Not." In light of this most recent development in which whole groups of prepubescent individuals swallow little magnetic lead balls and then proceed via ambulance in the majority of cases to the emergency room for the surgical removal of little magnetic lead balls (or in the minority of cases to a dentist because said little magnetic lead balls have knocked out one or more of their pearly whites), I must rescind this title, instead deeming this brood simply, "Generation Not."