Some opening thoughts on Generation X
One of my favorite movie quotes comes from the 1981 film, My Dinner with Andre. At the beginning of the movie, Wallace Shawn has an interior monologue where he states, "When I was 10 years old, I was an aristocrat. I rode around in taxis, and all I thought about was art and music. Now, I'm 36, and all I think about is money."
I don't think we're all like this. Some of us are pragmatists from the start. But for many of my own late baby-boomer generation, we started out in life with idealism and a passion for the beautiful and then, after years of being stepped on and having the creative breath sucked from us, we've become practical, resigned ...dead. We've fallen in step with the gray millions who trudge to and from work each day, abandoning their higher hopes and dreams.
But this new generation of adults, Generation X, doesn't seem quite the same. They seem to be born and bred for the trudging. Even the name, "Generation X," says a lot. Before we had the hippies, the beats, the lost generation. Now we have Xs and Ys.
And the voices... other generations had their voices: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Coltrane, Lennon & McCartney. Who is the voice of Generation X? Jessica Simpson or Snoop Doggy Dog?
Perhaps I'm being a bit unfair. Or I’m not seeing the whole picture. Or maybe I'm just getting old. Perhaps future retrospect will provide the answer.
I define Generation X as people born between the years 1965 and 1980, making Generation X-ers now mostly between their mid-twenties and late thirties.
When I taught high school in the 90s, these people were my students. Even then I noted the difference in values they had from those of my own generation.
For the most part, they showed little interest in the humanities. Literature, history, art & music (in the classical sense), all had very little bearing on them.
There was a time not long ago when any 14 year-old school boy could tell you the plot of Oedipus, Hamlet, or Faust. Nowadays, these things don't matter at all.
In the late 1980s E.D. Hirsch published his ideas about cultural literacy, in essence, stating that part of what distinguishes us as a culture is our connection with the continuum of experience that has brought us to the present ...a knowledge of our stories, both real and created, our art, our music. To illustrate, he created a list of what we, as Americans, should know.
Hirsch was decried by many as a racist and a luddite for his ideas. But even though he may have been a bit extreme, I think he was definitely on to something in his observations.
More later...
I don't think we're all like this. Some of us are pragmatists from the start. But for many of my own late baby-boomer generation, we started out in life with idealism and a passion for the beautiful and then, after years of being stepped on and having the creative breath sucked from us, we've become practical, resigned ...dead. We've fallen in step with the gray millions who trudge to and from work each day, abandoning their higher hopes and dreams.
But this new generation of adults, Generation X, doesn't seem quite the same. They seem to be born and bred for the trudging. Even the name, "Generation X," says a lot. Before we had the hippies, the beats, the lost generation. Now we have Xs and Ys.
And the voices... other generations had their voices: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Coltrane, Lennon & McCartney. Who is the voice of Generation X? Jessica Simpson or Snoop Doggy Dog?
Perhaps I'm being a bit unfair. Or I’m not seeing the whole picture. Or maybe I'm just getting old. Perhaps future retrospect will provide the answer.
I define Generation X as people born between the years 1965 and 1980, making Generation X-ers now mostly between their mid-twenties and late thirties.
When I taught high school in the 90s, these people were my students. Even then I noted the difference in values they had from those of my own generation.
For the most part, they showed little interest in the humanities. Literature, history, art & music (in the classical sense), all had very little bearing on them.
There was a time not long ago when any 14 year-old school boy could tell you the plot of Oedipus, Hamlet, or Faust. Nowadays, these things don't matter at all.
In the late 1980s E.D. Hirsch published his ideas about cultural literacy, in essence, stating that part of what distinguishes us as a culture is our connection with the continuum of experience that has brought us to the present ...a knowledge of our stories, both real and created, our art, our music. To illustrate, he created a list of what we, as Americans, should know.
Hirsch was decried by many as a racist and a luddite for his ideas. But even though he may have been a bit extreme, I think he was definitely on to something in his observations.
More later...
posted by Q at 3:06 PM
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