Many children today are greatly to be pitied because too much is done for them and dictated to them and they are deprived of the learning processes. We seem to have dropped into an age of entertaining, a breathless going from one sensation to another, whether it be mechanical toys for the five-year-old or moving-picture plays for the sixteen-year-old. It not only destroys their power to think, but also makes happiness, contentment, and resourcefulness impossible. At seventeen, life is spoken of as “so dull” if there is not “something doing” every waking hour.
That’s a quote passed along by Prof. Mark Liberman (Language Log), from Gail Harrison, Modern Psychology in its Relation to Discipline, 53 Journal of Proceedings and Lectures 658 (1915). Prof. Liberman gives more samples as well.
rbj says:
See what happens when you outlaw child labor. I think there was a similar quote around the time of Socrates.
March 11, 2010, 1:12 pmNow if you’ll excuse me, I have to go yell at the damn kids to get off the lawn again.
corneille1640 says:
What I find interesting about this quotation is not necessarily the thought behind it, but that something written for an academic journal in 1915 should read so easily in 2010.
March 11, 2010, 1:13 pmDotar Sojat says:
Last summer, after the dads and boys finished setting up the tents for our Cub Scout camp out, the boys wandered up to the dads and said that they were bored (no electronic devices were allowed). One of the dads pointed to the woods surronding the campsite and said “See that? Those are woods. Go out there and don’t come back for two hours. If you come back before then, you have to go out for another hour. And don’t come back clean.” After three hours, we had to go looking for them, and drag them back for the evening meal. If you make kids use their minds and sense of adventure, they will do it, and be pleasantly surprised with themselves. “Gee, Dad, that was actually fun.” The next week, I bought my son The Dangerous Book For Boys.
March 11, 2010, 1:17 pmStrict says:
Yet there are still so many children [see foster system, orphanages] who are underdeveloped due to understimulation.
March 11, 2010, 1:25 pmIchthyophagous says:
One problem is that the parents spend a lot of effort on supposed preparation of the kids for life, but a lot of what the parents think they know turns out either wrong or of no value.
March 11, 2010, 1:36 pmSoronel Haetir says:
Is it beyond argument that this author turned out to be wrong? I would certainly say the forces the author wrote of have been detrimental, perhaps it just took a higher dose for that to be true than the author anticipated.
March 11, 2010, 1:36 pmanomdebus says:
Does that mean that things do not change much or that the rate of change does not change much?
March 11, 2010, 1:38 pmDarel Finkbeiner says:
“Kids is lazy and stupid!” has been a complaint forever and ever.
From 1274 -
“The world is passing through troubled times. The young people of
today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for
parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as
if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is
foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest
and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress.”
Plato/Socrates -
March 11, 2010, 1:48 pm“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for
authority, they show disrespect to their elders…. They no longer
rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their
legs, and are tyrants over their teachers.”
anomdebus says:
So maybe a little from column A, a little from column B..
March 11, 2010, 2:02 pmSome things don’t have much room for change: respect for elders, for example. There is only so bad it can get without resorting to cannibalism.
On the other hand things like self reliance and attention span aren’t binary and could degrade over time. The elders of a time when the kids are ok in those areas just pick on other deficiencies.
mischief says:
Four quotations showing that people complained of children at four different times hardly establishes “forever and ever.” It only shows that it’s not unique.
March 11, 2010, 2:11 pmRoscoe says:
Yes, isn’t it possible that these guys are making valid complaints about particularly bad generations? Things did go to hell in Athens around the time of Socrates’ death. And didn’t the kids growing up in 1915 mismanage the economy into the great depression?
March 11, 2010, 2:32 pmGuest Again says:
Five:
March 11, 2010, 2:32 pm“affluent parents have become role models for luxury and licentiousness, and have moved far away from caring about whether their children develop habits of discipline and self-restraint. As a result, young people are increasingly impudent and have a total disregard of the respect they owe to themselves and others.”
Tacitus 75 AD.
Malvolio says:
It isn’t just children who are getting worse:
“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”
— Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC)
My questions are, how far away is Hell and how much longer are we going to be in this hand-basket?
March 11, 2010, 2:40 pmGov98 says:
Ecclesiastes 7:10:
“Do not say, “Why is it that the former days were better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this.”
March 11, 2010, 3:15 pmrmd says:
Seems more likely that the parents of those children (the ones doing the complaining) would have been the ones who mismanaged the economy into the Great Depression. Unless you’d associate with the phrase “captains of industry” with twenty-somethings. However, those kids would have been the ones who won World War II, a.k.a The Greatest Generation.
March 11, 2010, 3:21 pmMenshevik says:
Did anyone else notice that the article following the one by Gail Harrison was written by Maria Montessori?
March 11, 2010, 4:55 pmPatrick says:
I was halfway through before I was saying to myself “every generation says this.” The citation was a nice surprise.
March 11, 2010, 5:11 pmA. Criminal says:
And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.
March 11, 2010, 5:13 pmerp says:
It’s too bad that no matter the neighborhood, it’s no longer safe for kids to just go out and play and when babysitting my grandchildren, I keep them in sight outdoors, but so much is lost. They need a helmet when riding a tricycle, knee pads when roller skating, sun screen to cross the driveway in the sun, etc. I think they’ve lost the spirit of adventure and become fearful and I wonder if we’ve sacrificed too much of their childhood in the name of safety.
March 11, 2010, 5:28 pmjcm says:
Evil in various shapes _Old Age _surrounds;
March 11, 2010, 5:42 pmRiches his aim, in riches he abounds;
Yet what he fear’d to gain, he dreads to lose;
And what he sought as useful, dares not use.
Timid and cold in all he undertakes,
His hand from doubt, as well as weakness, shakes;
Hope makes him tedious, fond of dull delay;
Dup’d by to-morrow, tho’ he dies to-day;
DTH says:
An editorial in the Fort Lauderdale Sentinel, April 7, 1916:
March 11, 2010, 5:57 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Hm.
I read about brain development when my daughter was an infant, with the result that I discouraged her from watching TV as she was growing up, and eschewed fancy toys in favor of art supplies. Maybe girls are easier than boys in this respect: I could pick up some construction paper and glue, scissors, crayons, markers, glitter, beads, string, yarn, styrofoam balls (which you can sculpt with a butter knife), watercolors and brushes, and so forth and put them aside, and pull out a few things whenever she seemed at loose ends, and she was happy. Plus she had a bunch of beanie baby knockoffs, and they suffered through hurricanes, volcanos, tornados, earthquakes, and floods, and had tents made for them with the couch cushions, and had cookouts of some kind on the living room floor. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard her utter the words “I’m bored” in her whole life.
There definitely is scientific backing to the idea that active play is much better than passive for kids growing up. Here is an excellent resource that I would recommend to anyone.
March 11, 2010, 7:12 pmSean O'Hara says:
Can those offering quotations please provide exact citations, not merely the names of the alleged authors. I know the quote attributed to Cicero is bogus — it’s been floating around the Net forever, and no one’s ever found a source in Cicero’s extant works or a contemporaneous author quoting Cicero. The Tacitus quote seems likewise dubious — the date of AD 75 would make Tacitus only 19 or 20, and he didn’t begin his literary career until a quarter century later.
March 11, 2010, 10:29 pmRoger the Shrubber says:
Because you’re massively overreacting. Children are perfectly safe just “going out and playing” in most neighborhoods.
March 12, 2010, 12:07 amJMA says:
All this is too complicated. I’m pretty sure the biggest problem with kids these days is they don’t get smacked around enough. Or, at least, that they don’t seem to have any fear of it.
Back in my day, I remember when…
Actually, I wonder if Big Coach Bond is still seventeen feet tall, with an eight foot long paddle.
March 12, 2010, 2:20 pm? says:
Depends on the ages of the kids. They may be perfectly safe going out and playing, but you’re not perfectly safe letting them do that because of overactive child welfare authorities. Remember that journalist who got hell for letting her nine-year-old ride the subway himself? And the lawyer who was banned from contact with her kids for a short time because she kicked a whiny pre-teen out of the car a mile or two from home?
March 14, 2010, 1:38 amSteynian 407rd « Free Canuckistan! says:
[...] RUINING THE KIDS– “Many children today are greatly to be pitied because too much is done for them and [...]
March 17, 2010, 7:23 pm