Anthem for Doomed Youth

I've just been incensed by something I read in my local newspaper (the Wakefield Express). One of the cheap methods of filling the paper these days is to have a burning debate going on-line and then capture juicy snippets from this debate and print it in the paper.

Anyway the debate this week was about the latest GCSE scandal. However it was when people went off topic and started having a rant about the state of the youth today that I started getting annoyed. Apparently the young people these days don't know they are born with everything on a plate for them. 

Yes I know things are different to when we were kids but I don't really think the kids have it better now they just have it different. I don't think I'd want to be growing up these days. Yes I'm sure I could get a fistful of GCSEs and A levels and go to uni still. But with no grant and no job prospects once you've graduated I'm not sure it would be much fun. 

I haven't got any kids of my own but that's not to say I don't have a stake in the current generation. I have five nephews and five nieces ranging in age from 9 months to 16 years old. In fact my oldest nephew has just taken his GCSEs so he has my sympathies.

People forget that kids don't have much say in their destinies. They get all the latest fads tried out on them (my nephew has been tested at school practically since he started with all the various SATs and other things) and they have to inherit whatever we leave them. 

Thing is that this intergenerational thing has always been going on. My parents are retired and have a pension income that people of my age can only dream of when we retire. But on the other hand they were born during the second world war into a time of deprivation that I can't even imagine. Even when the war finished Britain was broke and it wasn't until the fifties that rationing ended. 

But their parents (our grandparents) were probably even worse off. They lived through the thirties and had to fight the Second World War. When the war was over they kicked out the Tories (not permanently unfortunately) and gave Labour the mandate for the modern Welfare State. They did this because they wanted better for their kids (my parents). 

So similarily our parents tried to ensure we had a better upbringing than the one they experienced and this carries on with my generation and their kids.  

Perhaps  we are all wrong to mollycoddle the younger generation but I think its a natural reaction and as I say I think these things balance out. We may have had a more privileged childhood than our parents and grandparents could imagine but perhaps our future will be more uncertain. 

So what I'm trying to say is this. Its simple to make sweeping generalisations that are untrue. Its also easy to criticise previous and future generations without looking at our own faults and shortcomings.