Far from being penalized, this generation may be the most privileged ever. Every generation lives through challenges. Our grandparents or great-grandparents lived in a society of gross social inequality and endured a world war that consumed 35 million lives. Their children came of age in the Great Depression, followed by six years of war in which another 60 million died. Their own children, the Baby Boomers, were without question a pampered generation, yet even they lived through long stretches of high unemployment and deep economic uncertainty. The oil shock of the 1970s ushered in a decade of stagflation — high inflation accompanied by stagnant growth and high unemployment — that made decent jobs no easier to nail down than they are today. The 20 years since the end of the 1980s has been a cycle of boom and bust that has seen millions of people lose homes, careers and life savings they spent decades building, often watching them vanish overnight through circumstances far beyond their control.
The notion that there was a time when anyone could coast through high school and land a nice secure career with minimal effort is sheer fantasy. Yes, a university degree carried more weight, because there were fewer of them, but that same scarcity limited the advantage to a relatively small group. The majority scratched out positions in competition with one another just as they do today. There was never, in my recollection, a bull market in sociologists, psych specialists or arts majors. A BA didn’t help you sell anything, build anything or invent anything. Entrepreneurs and self-starters never needed a university degree, and they don’t now.
[. . .]
If the 1960s and 1970s was a golden age of easy work and high pay, I missed it. If people skipped from school directly into secure jobs, happy families and a home of their own, it’s news to me. The challenges faced by youth are daunting, but no more daunting than they ever were. If Montreal’s graduates have been deprived of anything, it would appear to be lessons in history. Because they seem to have no clue how much tougher they’d have had it in almost any earlier generation they would care to choose.
Kelly McParland, “Quebec students are big on delusion, short on history”, National Post, 2012-05-31
June 1, 2012
QotD: Debunking the notion that today’s students face “unprecedented” challenges
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