Words can hardly contain my feelings of shock and repulsion by reports of the movement that resulted in the publication of "new" editions of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" in which the offensive racial epithets "injun" and the "n-word" are now replaced by "Indian" and "slave" respectively. Gotta love butchering classic literature of its purpose because the words and their context are unattractive.
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. The dehumanizing of slaves in "Huck Finn" and the father figure relationship between Huck and Jim is what exposes racism at its core. We might as well start teaching this generation "The Cat in the Hat" and "Green Eggs and Ham" while asking them to write their essays in crayon because this will be the first generation since the birth of Western Civilization to actually be less educated than its predecessor.
I watch my niece and nephew use their computers, and I talk to my middle schoolers about what they do on their computers and what they're reading in their spare time. Whereas much of our generation spends time looking up useless information that increases our continuing thirst for knowledge, they're playing "Poke the Penguin," a game where all you do is touch the mouse on the penguin and it literally just pokes it. No joke. You don't have to answer a math question or pass a trivia quiz to earn the right to poke this frumpy little psuedobird. You just poke, laugh and continue to be distracted from the reality of the real world.
They play this thing for hours, then watch brainless Disney channel shows like "Hannah Montana," listen to canned "musicians" like Justin Bieber, or venture into fantasy as video gaming avatars. Education has gone from a learning experience to a contest of who can come up with the most exciting way to implement knowledge, subliminally at best and humiliating without a doubt. The minute the idea of watching a documentary, or reading a piece of literature (not of the vampire fiction catalog) is mentioned, stares of pain, resistance and disgust flush over their faces as if someone told them "The Hills" is scripted and Edward never loved Bella. If there aren't any explosions, bells and whistles or superficial rewards, they don't want a thing to do with it.
And forget internal rewards of learning. This generation just doesn't want to get better. Improvement is tuned out, by design, because they're learned from the best -- us.
Their parents don't care because our generation, Generation Y, has become the most narcissistic parental guides in history. We have spawned these modern SpongeBob'd younglings. Our generation would rather ignore the needs of our own children, play video games ourselves, watch reality TV, tune out, distract ourselves from the burden of reality and responsibility while placing our own priorities ahead of our children's. It's literally an inconvenience for many parents to simply sit at the dinner table and spend time explaining, educating and working with them to help foster growth as higher level thinkers.
Tired from work? Too bad. Accepting the burden of parenthood is the responsibility the generations that preceded us also had to do. It's slowly slipping down a dangerous path.
"Generation Y" is literally still sitting at the kids table, and our children are paying the price. You wonder how a government with sinister motives could ever garner the trust and faith of the masses in this day and age? I see a generation ripe with rubes ready and waiting for 'big brother' to command and control them into bondage...the ingredients are there and all that is needed is an insidious group willing to take the reigns of control like the Pied Piper.
We sit at a dangerous precipice. Our future dangles in the hands of a generation ill-prepared to protect and defend free civilization...the less educated, the easier one is manipulated into control. As it stands now, this next generation will be the first to take that step backwards towards a history we've so quickly forgotten and are damning ourselves to repeat.
Somehow, some way, our generation needs to firmly plant their foot in defiance and answer the call. If not, we fail our society, our children and ourselves in one fell swoop.
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