Grim times for Graduates--where have the hopes and dreams gone?

[Liberty Belle]

Yesterday was my daughter's high school graduation.

The valedictorian spoke about how the world has changed in the 4 years these kids have been in high school -- and nothing was for the better. Here are some of the traumas she mentioned, along with a few more I've added.

My kids' high school years were scarred by the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, 9-11 investigations, global warming, global terrorism, destruction of our constitutional rights, soaring college tuitions and drying up of college aid, the Virginia Tech shootings (on the heels of the Santana and Granite Hills high school massacres, both in our school district), and the Cedar Fire (worst wildfire in California history, which forced temporary closure of schools in our district and left many students and teachers homeless).

No wonder teens today are so filled with cynicism. How do we offer hope to high schoolers coming of age amid so much gloom and doom?

[rockymountaindem]

1. When I think back to when Bush came to office my sophomore year of HS

and how the formative years of my young life have been dominated by news of his administration, I feel kind of shortchanged. OTOH, at least I never had to consider nuclear annihilation during a duck-and-cover drill.

[Liberty Belle]

3. My high school years were in the 1970s.

For me, the rise of the environmental movement was inspiring and life changing; I majored in environmental studies.

Even under a Nixon presidency, we saw the EPA established, Earth Day begun and major environmental protection bills passed. It was also an era of consumerism -Ralph Nader in his heydey, before he became a pariah by running as a third-party spoiler. The Viet Nam War ended, US relations with China were opened up, women seemed on the verge of seeing an equal rights amendment passed, and the world seemed a far more peaceful, hopeful place. In the prior decade, American had passed the Civil Rights Act and landed the first man on the moon. All things seemed possible!

Watergate was disillusioning in some ways, yet the Nixon resignation showed that our system of checks and balances worked as it should -- pressing a leader caught in wrongdoing into resigning rather than face the certain stain of impeachment.

+

[The Straight Story]

2. Bill Gates just got his college degree:

http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=53868

:)

[Eurobabe]

8. It's bogus, Gates didn't sweat his balls off

in classes like most normal people do. When Bill Gates can work full-time, attend classes and raise two kids as a single mom, then he might impress me. His wealth doesn't impress me at all, although I think his philanthropic efforts are admirable.

Don't let "honorary degree" fool you. It's as worthless as the paper it is printed on.

[Deja Q]

14. Agreed. Bill saw a need made by a lazy company (IBM), said he had a product,

and then bought a product from somebody else and licensed it to IBM.

And, yes, lazy. IBM didn't want to make the OS for their new PC product back in 1980. IBM also made the PC knowing their name would sell, and knowing by making a low powered box from off-the-shelf garbage, they could keep their mainframe monopoly. Unfortunately, Compaq cloned the PC and won a lawsuit because it was all off the shelf stuff. And that's how PCs proliferated and became dominant. Not due to Microsoft. But a clone of an expensive, underpowered piece of garbage that never became remotely formidable until the advent of the 'Pentium' processor (in 1995, some 15 years later)...

Business sense doesn't require ethics or morality, but it requires a certain type of intelligence. Now ask how the "party of family values" sides with the corporate sect that clearly hates families.

His philanthropic efforts are aimed SOLELY at the countries he's offshoring to. Look at the man and his company's history. What he does is rarely for true philanthropy. It's about "return on investment". Nothing more.

Indeed, his first product (a compiler for the Altair computer) was made... on an Altair emulator. (which is usually a haphazard thing to do, but I digress...)

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

4. They still have their hopes and dreams; they are young

They have little to compare from the past. Their hope has not been eroded because it has barely been tested. They have the youthful confidence in their own immortality to buoy them.

I attended a high school graduation yesterday. So many of the graduates were first and second generation citizens whose parents chose to bring them to a country that they believe holds more promise than their own. Some of their first names: Patherese, Iqra, Olabode, Zeenat, Hassan, Safina, Mohamed, Lizma, Nikolay, Diem, Nejra, Sumaira, Vorrapatra, Thahani, Chirag, Vibol, Xiutong. The assembled families looked like a UN delegation.

I don't remember what cynical remark about politics that I said to the graduate I came to cheer, but she replied half-jokingly, "You make me feel bad about being optimistic." Startled, I apologized and told her she had every right to be optimistic. Even though her father assured me that it is a running joke between the two of them, I was ashamed. She knows the state of the world but she still has hope, resiliency and belief in her ability to change things for the better. The best way we can offer these young people hope is to not quash what hope they have.

[Deja Q]

17. One doesn't need to be young to have hopes and dreams.

But knowing everything can be offshored by one's own countrymen... maybe somebody should be asking why enlistment figures are so low... I'd love to know what people are thinking.

[Eurobabe]

5. Tell them not to worry, the end of an error is fast approaching

I honestly think it will never be as horrible as the (almost) past eight years have been.

[Liberty Belle]

6. I hope that you are right.

[rockymountaindem]

25. I think our odds of recovery from this disaster are 50/50

The financial and trade situation we're in now is *really* bad.

[Double T]

7. We certainly can not allow the current status quo to continue.........

on its path to total destruction. Here are a few ideas and actions that might help lead this nation in the opposite direction of its destiny to the grave.

1) Elect a competent President/Vice President and Congress that believes and makes our entire nation and its citizens the
priority, instead of selling out to the corrupt corporations, the wall street traitors and their enabling investors.
2) Eliminate the tax cuts to the rich; those that earn $200,000.00 or more per year.
3) Eliminate the cap on Social Security contributions.
4) Reduce our dependency of foreign energy by accelerating mandatory higher mileage vehicle requirements and introduce
heavy regulations on all energy producing/utility monopolies.
5) Create and promote national employee owned corporations and companies that are required to operate within the USA and
employ American citizens with funding provided with guaranteed loans from financial institutions.
6) Drastically reduce the Pentagon Operations and budget.
7) Provide national health care for all Americans and eliminate the wall street powered HMOs.
8) Install heavy regulations on the financial institutions and lenders of mortgages, credit cards, personal loans etc.
9) Require all able bodied adult Americans to work in some capacity, even those without a steady job or those that have lost
their job.
10)Make affordable higher education, and funding for the same, available to all American citizens.
11)Drastically reduce the H-1B visa program, American citizens can do these jobs.
12)Secure our borders, then deport all illegal aliens. Provide foreign worker visas as necessary; American citizens come
first.
13)Drastically reduce legal immigration until this nation has itself back on solid financial footing.
14)Install a high American content requirement law for manufacturing, wholesale and retail.
15)Install heavy regulations on lobbyists and lobbying
16)Reduce Congressional jobs to ACTUAL part time status with part time pay.
17)Install term limits on all federal, state, local elected official positions.
18)Install term limits on all judicial positions.
19)Install worker's rights laws
20)Reinstitute checks and balances to all levels of government

........and so on.

[Deja Q]

16. If America has ANY value to anybody, I agree.

Though we'll need #7. Look at all the vitriol aimed against America these days. We need a wise defense and competent military.

And with all the offshoring done, I think the Indians and Chinese are self-sufficient by now. OTOH, people bitch and gripe about product quality so maybe both countries still need more help? I sure as hell won't buy a Dell or use anyone's "helpdesk" service again. Americans who know the inherent workings of a product lose their jobs to people who merely read cue cards in an accent so thick it's nearly impossible to understand...

[Journeyman]

9. Grim times when I graduated, too. . .

let's see, when I graduated high school, in the early '70s, I'd dealt with the murders of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King; saw a localized war in Vietnam explode into a regional conflagration with tens of thousands of American soldiers dead and countless Vietnamese, maybe a million or more, slaughtered; witnessed fellow citizens shot down in the streets for daring to protest the increasingly reckless and illegal actions of an out-of-control President; huddled beneath school desks in mock anticipation of nuclear annihilation; witnessed a police riot in Chicago, and the disintegration of the social bonds in my hometown (Los Angeles), as well as countless other flashpoints for riots across the land -- Newark, Baltimore, Chicago, Louisville, and more; saw and participated in a raft of protests against the war, against social conditions, prison conditions, the grinding poverty that is life for too many millions in America; gasped in horror when Charles Whitman climbed the Texas U tower, reeled in shock when the Manson Family preyed together; sputtered in near impotent rage when the government refused to heed Rachel Carson's warning how we are poisoning ourselves and endured instead a corporate media blitz about the dangers of littering; debated the inanity of television and the dumbing of America; worried and complained that the media didn't cover the proper issues, that it too often gave only the government line and excluded alternative voices; worried about wars, and rumors of wars, and the relentless stockpiling of nuclear weaponry; sat in shocked disbelief as Munich unfolded; watched as a plethora of terrorist groups highjacked planes and used them as weapons against their "oppressors," flying them to Cuba & elsewheres, threatening to kill the passengers; wondered at the long-term effect of the OPEC embargo as the realization of oil's end became all too real . . . and these are just what I remember off the top, quickly typing in the wee hours of the morning.

My schooling was bracketed by a death in Dallas and wanton killings in Kent. The dream -- the national fantasy inculcated into so many after the War -- died with JFK. But the hope . . . the hope spawned by Jefferson, reaffirmed by Lincoln, restored by Franklin Roosevelt . . . the hope remained, and beats as strong today as it did when I received my first diploma. From that hope we generate anew the dreams that will carry us into the future, a future that grows increasingly bright . . .

[Sadie4629]

22. Great post

My mom and dad graduated during the Great Depression, and Dad ended up spending four years fighting WWII, and getting wounded. Can you imagine a more gloomy future than they thought they must have faced? In spite of not taking advantage of many of the benefits offered to Dad as a veteran, they ended up achieving their personal goals.

I graduated just a few months before Nixon resigned. I think we all thought things were as bad as they could get: Corrupt politicians, inflation, recession, etc., etc., etc.

But, because we were young we had hope, and most of us went on to live happy and successful lives. We (especially women) had opportunities that previous generations had not ever had, and many of us made the most of them.

Now, in spite of all this doom and gloom, young people still have hope. My son's g.f. is working on a Master's in accounting and got a job offer a couple of months ago (and she won't even finish her degree until August) for a VERY good starting salary.

For bright, ambitious, optimistic young people, there will always be endless possibilities.

[Yukari Yakumo]

10. Where have the hopes and dreams gone? To India and Mexico {nt}

[DFW]

11. My youngest was class of 2003

She sweated it out trying to get accepted at a decent university in the USA, and then
again when she tried to get into Law School this past year. Despite the fact that she
is German by birth and upbringing, she also has US citizenship and therefore is not
a minority, so it was tough. A classmate of hers declared herself Native American (one
great-grandparent was half) and got in everywhere, with the same (or worse) grades
and CV. I told my daughter she should have listed herself as a minority under "other,"
and then filled in the blank (where they asked which minority) with "Goth."

Even with a law degree, there are no guarantees. Maybe her tri-lingual background
will help out. She got a part-time job while she was an undergrad, working for a
law firm in D.C. They couldn't find someone fluent in both English and German who
was actually literate in both languages to translate legal documents, and they loved
her. She made $25 an hour working for this place. I just hope that she finds a job
that pays a law school grad at least as much!!

While I am totally for rescinding the Bush tax cuts, even with $200K, it can be tight.
I refuse to ask for financial aid with a $200K income, so with my 2 girls in school
in the USA, I'm saddled with about $100K a year in college tuitions plus primitive
living expenses, leaving me with about $30,000 left over after taxes, of which over
half is spent on my living while overseas, which, with the effective 55% devaluation
of the dollar against the Euro, is about $15K a year U.S. buying power. It doesn't go
very far. With a little luck, my daughters' educations will be done before my savings
are, but the guys that burn me up are the ones who get $100 million severance packages
from corporations they did poorly for, and then end up paying no taxes at all on them.
If the news from sources such as the WSJ are to be believed, there aren't just two or
three of them, but hundreds. We're talking mucho dinero. Maybe I need to move my residence
from Texas to Dubai or something, and ask Halliburton to lend me their accountant around tax time?

[LiberalEsto]

12. To take out student loans

and hope they can someday find jobs that pay enough to make it possible tp pay off those loans. Buying a house some day is only a dream for them, because it will take years to pay off tens of thousands of dollars in college loans, while house prices will continue to rise above their reach.

I'm mother of a 23-year-old and a 20-year-old.

[DFW]

15. My girls are 22 and 24

Pretty much in the same boat

[LiberalEsto]

20. I had it much easier than my kids

In-state college tuition was affordable - $200 a semester at Rutgers - and although it took me six years, skipping semesters when I didn't have enough money, I managed to graduate without any debt. And there were plenty of jobs available for English majors.

As a two-income, no kids, couple, my first husband and I managed to save enough to buy a fixer-upper house in metro New Jersey in 1979 for $47,000, and sell it five years later for $115,000. This was possible even though we both had low-paying journalism jobs. My second husband, the father of our kids, and I traded up houses a couple more times, even though we always bought far less expensive ones than we could afford. Today, however, we couldn't afford to buy our own modest house.

Short of a miracle, our kids wouldn't be able to afford any type of homes in our area, where the least expensive new houses cost over $650,000 and the crummiest townhouses sell for more than $300,000. They know there's little hope of becoming homeowners.

It's no wonder to me that they have difficulty planning their futures. What's the point? They've seen my husband's friends in the computer field laid off and their jobs outsourced or given to H1-B visa workers from overseas. They've seen my newspaper reporting opportunities vanish with downsizing and mergers. Three of the five papers I've worked for no longer exist.

So my older one works as an apprentice social worker and doesn't know where she's heading next. The younger one flunked out of college and works as a waitress and basically lives at home in a day-to-day existence. She wants to start community college this fall, but has no idea what to major in. She doesn't have much faith in the future.

I wish there was some way to give my kids, your kids and others like them a sense of hope and opportunity again. And if this is true for white middle-class kids, what must it be like for minority kids, poor kids, third-world kids, kids in strife-torn countries like Iraq? We need leaders here in the U.S. and around the world who will give people hope.

Right now, I don't see much hope of anything anywhere that things will get better. I don't see the war stopping, I don't see anyone getting impeached even though they deserve it, I don't see CEOs giving up a penny of their obscene salaries and perks. I don't see any way to check the unrestrained greed of corporations. I don't see much hope of stopping global warming. Back in the late 1960s, I had hope that things would get better. Hope is a rare commodity these days.

[Sadie4629]

24. And I'm the mom of a 23-y.o. and a 21-y.o.

And I see a lot of hope for their future. My oldest is in grad school right now and has a stipend, and his g.f. just got a job offer. They are living in Boston right now, til he finishes his PhD, and they are actually saving $$. They believe they will be able to pay cash for a house within a few years.

I don't see things as being all that bad.

[DFW]

26. Under certain circumstances, things aren't bad at all

IF you have a decent job offer, and IF it looks like that job will
be there for a few decades if you want it, then, sure, things look good.
A lot of that depends of where you live, and what kind of field your
specialty is.

Both my daughters are dual citizens (Germany-USA) and can therefore
work in the European Union or the USA. They are both bi-lingual in
English and German, and the little one speaks good French, too. The
job prospects for the younger one are probably good if she does well
in law school, and the elder one will have trouble (fashion design/
business), but will get by from family connections if nothing else,
plus she is good at what she does, and knows how to stretch a dollar.

But how many parents can make THAT claim? I know that there is probably
a good 30%-35% of the 20-30 year olds out there that will breeze through.
That still leaves the 65%-70% that won't, and they are out there, too.
A gated community would feel like a jail to me, but if 70% of a population
has nothing and nothing left to lose, then they are going to come get it from
those that have something. A society can either decide to improve things so
that gated communities are not needed, or it can let things go so that not
only are they needed, but with armed guards at every gate as well. That is,
as I see it, the fundamental difference between Democratic and Republican
philosophy. A Democrat wants to live well, but hates the thought of the gate
to keep others out. A Republican not only wants to live behind the gate, but
likes the idea of the armed guards, and wants the chance to think they are
better than those outside the gate.

[Sadie4629]

27. I hear you

I think about the manufacturing jobs that have disappeared. It used to be that you could go to work at "the plant" where your father, grandfather, and all your uncles spent their lives, and know that you would have health insurance, steady raised, and a pension when you retire. Those jobs don't exist anymore, but I think that many in our society didn't adjust to the new reality. All grads need some kind of post-high school education, whether college or a tech school.

I think if my kids hadn't been college-bound, I would have encouraged them to go into plumbing, or electrician work, or mechanical work. There will always be a need for those fields, probably moreso in the future than in the past, when people generally knew how to fix their own home and car repair problems!

I don't know about the percentages you quoted. You are probably right about 20% breezing through life--which is a pretty good percentage, when you think about it--but I doubt if a full 70% will have nothing and nothing to lose. There will be some, and maybe more than there are now, but most will just be trying to figure out a _legal_ way to get by, and not turn to crime to support themselves.

Just my opinion.

[Deja Q]

13. India and China, obviously. BTW: What's their immigration policies like?

Do they have H1B programs and corporate sponsors who'll bring people there, train them for little, then ship 'em back?

[WinkyDink]

18. Heh. TIME magazine COVER story, May, 1971 (my college graduation year):

http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19710524,00.html

[Berry Cool]

19. Just about everybody comes of age amid gloom and doom.

I graduated from high school during the era of Jimmy Carter's Malaise. I graduated from college at a time of 10.4% unemployment in my state. My mother did not see these as reasons to be discouraged. She graduated from high school in 1944, when many of her male classmates were preparing to ship out and try to save the world before Hitler could take over. And she never had a chance at even having a college graduation day. Money for tuition in her circumstances? That's a laugh.

That's how I'd offer hope. I'd say "You know, most graduates graduate into a world of crap. Their assignment is to take their youth and their enthusiasm and their idealism and work to find a place for themselves in that world and a way to make it better. Sure, a lot of that idealism may be shattered in the consequence, but you develop a real sense of what you're up against and how to fight it. Despair is not the solution. Take courage from the fact that others like you have graduated into a world of crap and found a way to make it better. And you will too."

[porphyrian]

21. We've dropped the ball. But we shouldn't just sit here and cry about it. Let's fix it.

What do we do now? Let's go.

[MedleyMisty]

23. I graduated in 1999

Things were pretty cool then and we were just like "Lalalalala."

That didn't last very long.

The tuition and aid thing is why I get upset when people on here focus so much on college educations and think that people without degrees are worthless pieces of dung. A degree isn't going to do that much for you anymore. I couldn't find a job with mine. My mother graduated the year after me and couldn't find a job with hers. Hardly anyone who graduated with us has since found a job that uses their education. We all went to school, got a degree, and then got jobs that were the same or worse than the ones we had before college.

As for hope - I think it's overrated, personally. I've seen some major flame wars on political boards about it but I didn't get them. I don't have that much hope for the future of the species but my personal life is happy and I get up every morning and have fun and enjoy life. I live for now, not for the future.

[Berry Cool]

28. No one guarantees you anything in this life. Sad but true.

I didn't get a job straight out of college either. When I finally did, it paid what were poverty-level wages even then. But I didn't give up. And I realized that one thing the repo man can never take away is your education. Especially if you continue it all your life.

So you think hope is overrated. How do you feel about despair? Is that more useful? If you're even getting up in the morning, you're living for the future as much as for now. It goes without saying. Whether you realize it or not.