If there’s one thing that clearly demarcates the generations, it is standards. More specifically, what people often bemoan as the lack of them.
One of my sons is currently a bank manager with TD. He says there is a line up for a good part of every Sunday, indicating there is a public desire for such service, and yet this corporate decision is not popular with everyone. For some, Sunday is sacrosanct and is meant to be a day of rest. When I opened my first bank account years ago, one had to figure out how to pay a visit Monday through Friday from 9:00 until 3:00. It wasn’t easy. Maybe there was a tendency to spend less.
I remember when stores started opening on Sundays. What seemed sad to me at the time was Sunday was the one time when you could count on getting together with 90% of your friends or family. Now everyone works at the strangest of times. Now we have a Thriftys opened 24 hours a day, something that occurred in California thirty years ago.
Now we find that Generation Y is stirring up trouble on Canadian university campuses. A Times Colonist article suggests they’re not demonstrating against war, fighting for equal rights or trying to reform university administration. Rather, they’re demanding better marks than they deserve, slighting professors and reading junk.
That’s the view of two professors who have written a book called Campus Confidential: 100 startling things you don’t know about Canadian universities. (James Lorimer & Co., 245 pages).
“Every generation claims that the next one has been coddled and spoiled, but it really may be true this time,” writes Ken S. Coates, arts dean at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, and Bill Morrison, history professor emeritus at the University of Northern B.C. in Prince George. “Something new and nasty is going on with university students these days, and there’s more trouble in store.”
The authors blame societal permissiveness, child-centred educational and parenting styles, overwhelming materialism, video games, sexualized media and the guilt of two-income families. It’s not all bad, the authors write, because these new students are also more assertive and more confident than previous generations and not intimidated by professors or any adults.
Society has changed a lot in recent years and the pace does not appear to be slowing down. What is interesting is that when change occurs there is always a backlash, and yet five or ten years down the road many of the changes that take place seem commonsense. Seatbelts, drunk driving, organic foods, automobile fuel efficiency and non-smoking zones come to mind.
Not all change is good but change will change. Striking a balance between “coddled and spoiled” and “assertive and confident” is always fascinating to watch.