Children of the Great Depression vs. Children of Vanilla Ice

I am an important person.  I believe this about myself.  However, I’ve hit rock bottom a couple of times.  Every time I did, I asked myself, “am I really an important person?”  Do I have something the world can use?  After some soul searching and a lot of pizza, I usually come to the answer.  I am an important person.

Now I try to figure out how I can be an important person to people.  I no longer believe the world revolves around me, but that I am an integral part of the world.  But it isn’t fair to compare teenagers today versus teenagers who lived in the greatest time period in American history. Our society was coming off the greatest war in history and the Great Depression.  Both periods in American history that stressed collectivism in society.

Today we value individualism, and dependence on self, but the problem is as stated in the article, we don’t really know ourselves.  How can we make a difference if you don’t have an identity?  I don’t believe that technology has affected this shift, but probably it is related to cultural and political shifts.  We value individuals who are independent, whereas after the 1940s, society valued the societal effort.

So I do believe that further studies are needed before we place the blame on technology.

Prompt week 25th

1.       The shift in MMPI indicates that young people are feeling better about themselves.  This change has occurred in part to the focus on positive reinforcement versus negative.  It can take just one word to cut someone down but it takes one hundred to build self-esteem.    It has taken the country a long time to realize the damage that can be done with a few negative words and how long it takes to repair that damage.  Teenagers are fragile and they are always looking for acceptance so once programs where created to focus on positive self-feelings things improved.  Technology can be a double edged sword where you can easily praise or torment others.  I think young people share too much of their personal lives on social media allowing them to become easy targets for tormentors.  It allows people a way to share daily information but it also provides no escape from harassment.  It is important for young people to find their own self-worth and while acceptance by others is important it is not the end of the world.

Prompt week of 11/18

1.       I believe it is important to provide the best education possible to all students with or without disabilities.  If the government regulations state that they will provide appropriate education for disabled children they need to make sure that appropriate funding and educators are available to meet this commitment.  The regulation should state that every child disabled or otherwise would receive the best appropriate education.

Mainstreaming is beneficial to both the disabled and non-disabled student.  It allows children to learn how to interact with one another regardless of disabilities and teaches children acceptance of others.  Autistic children have the ability to develop better social skills if their disability is discovered early and it is important to keep them socially interactive so they do not close themselves off to the entire world.  They may create some distractions within a classroom but if they have appropriate assistance they are no more disruptive than other students.  It can cause stress on teachers and other students but if the child’s aid is working closely with them it should be a minor inconvenience.    The key to success for all students is appropriate assistance and motivation.  Evan though an autistic child avoids eye contact it does not mean they are not listening and absorbing the information being presented.

Negativity

I think the implications are relatively plain within our society.  We have individuals within our society that have little to no education, or the education was ineffective, and are completely happy about that fact and seem to embrace their ignorance.  In my experience they tend to be strongly opinionated yet have no actual knowledge of the given topics are are completely uninterested in learning about the topic.  I feel that this trend towards self-worth instead of actually educating those individuals and letting them realize that failure is a part of life we're doing them and everyone that is ever forced to interact with them a disservice.  If someone fails yet we praise them for trying hard we're teaching them that trying is more important than succeeding.  And they don't even necessarily try hard!!  They just make a token effort to appease whomever is around them and call it good.  I do not support that behavior and will not support that behavior.  Failing is failing.  While I might appreciate their effort and attempt, I cannot condone blanket praise for all attempts.  Sometimes you suck at something and just have to deal with that fact, not sugar coat it and make excuses.
As far as technology playing a role, I'm forced to agree.  It seems that the outlets for people to post meaningless items, "I'm eating lunch and it's vegetarian", has enabled folks to gain attention for the most mundane of activities.  The attention fuels more inanity and the cycle is perpetuated again and again.  Tying that into the above paragraph when something that is perceived as bad occurs; breakup, failing an exam, etc, they are given sympathy instead of being asked if they studied or what prompted the breakup.  Thus removing the negative component and any perceived failing on their part.  Obviously it must be someone else that is screwing them, not their own lack of effort.

Prompt for November 20th & 24th (Answer both by 11-30)

Prompt One:
Federal regulations state that children with developmental disabilities will have free, public, and appropriate education, but what are the practical implications of this practice?  Does the student benefit from being "mainstreamed?"  Do their peers gain insight or empathy?  Do we enrich classrooms, or make teachers' lives more difficult?  Consider either a learning disorder or an autism spectrum disorder in your discussion.  This site has a more detailed description of autism, and autism spectrum disorders.

Prompt Two:
We will be talking a lot about teens within their peer group, but one interesting recent finding relates to how they may view themselves.  Take a look at this short article (found here) related to a common question on the MMPI (a test we talked about Intro Psych).  What do you think are the implications of this shift?  Do you think researchers may be right about technology?   What do you think?

Response 11/12

I believe, from personal experiences, a little of every thing stated in the questions occur.  In my elementary school I remember one particular student that had autism and how he affected the whole class everyday.  There were many uplifting moments for him and the classmates while he was in the class especially on a social level.  I watched him go from not wanting absolutely anything to do with the other classmates to gradually become more social with them.  On the classmates aspect I observed some that where annoyed and wanted him out of the class.  On the other hand there were several that were open to helping him and the teacher in any way they could with him, like me.  Yet there were moments like him getting so frustrated with everything that he would throw a fit and at some points would start, literally, banging his head off the desk or even storming around in a crying fit.  It was at these points in time that it became disruptive to all including him.  As the years went on into to high school and I would see him around, it seemed that those experiences for him and my other peers turned out to be for the good.  He seemed to have less stress from a regular classroom setting with other peers and he did not get frustrated.