Has my Generation and successive ones lost the concept of modesty?
Without seeking to excommunicate myself from my own Generation X social group, I will go out on a limb here and state that I firmly believe that my Generation has lost the ability to display modesty and even understand the definition of it.
In our I-Pod, I-Phone, and Internet era, we have instantaneous and accurate information available to us 24/7. But if, as the saying goes, ‘getting there is half the battle’, than my Generation has lost something very valuable that other Generations never took for granted. That being, of course, hard work.
When I attended university and had to write a report for a class, using internet sources as part of your bibliography and sourcing them was limited to an allowable three sources. This was done it was argued, to curb the chances of having the person write a less than acceptable report and to force the student to do library research – much like the Generations of students beforehand.
These days, of course, students can purchase ready-made essays on the internet for hand in to their professors that are chocked full of errors, plagiarism and that is not even to say wrong in its entirety. I once had a retired high school teacher friend of mine tell me that university professors have actually had to lower their standards of grading due to the lacklustre students that are currently being pumped out of our high schools. Many are ill prepared to study at the university or even college level.
So what is transpiring here? Are our students suffering in their writing skills due to unqualified teachers? Or is it a more convenient excuse that in our internet era of instantaneous information, one can simply type an acronym LOL or LMFAO to get one’s point across to save time without articulating something more eloquent or complex? Or is the reason even more simple than what we let on? Could it be that in our fast food world of convenience we have forgotten individual responsibility and hard work?
One thing is for certain. If I text someone, I still try to convey my thought patterns in a more coherent fashion, less the acronyms.
All the best,
Cory
The increase in tuition fees , due to rise to up to £9,000 at many universities from this year, was widely expected to be a game changer for higher education – a prediction borne out by independent analysis of the coalition’s controversial reform, published last week. The report – carried out by the Independent Commission on Fees chaired by Will Hutton, principal of Hertford College, Oxford – showed a drop in the number of university applicants in England of 8.8% this year – representing some 15,000 “lost” students , who might otherwise have been expected to apply for a place on a degree course.
If this piece weren’t so full of irony, I might be LMAO.
Nice use of the conditional there Soc.
The day is coming that if anyone spoke more clearly, literaly they would be the ones less understood.