"We had a way harder life than you!"

[unstabLized]

Life never gets any easier. The only thing that changes is our definition of a challenge. Sure, our problems may seem mundane to parents that dealt with different things when they were growing up, but we treat our difficulties the same way.

That's the conclusion we reached in my family, anyway...of course, it has also been decided that that's not a valid excuse, either.

At least I wish my family understood part of that. Yeah,their old problems might be gone, but we have our own.

Have you ever heard this from your parents when you were growing up? Maybe when you did bad at something, like school, and you tell them that you tried your best, but they come up with some snappy response like "You ONLY studied for 5 hours for ONE test. I had to memorize the entire textbook, and they were twice as thick back then!"

Is the statement really true though? Is "Our current life" easier than what it was back then? Or is it actually harder, and they're just trying to push us? Sure, we have way more/better technology than back then, but is that really a positive point? Or does it just make things more complex?

What do you guys think? Did we have it better back then, or do we have it better now, even though there are way more options in our life?

Well I mean in general terms they probably did have it harder. But I'm calling bullshit on their school work being harder. The only reason it would have been harder was because in math n stuff they wouldn't have had calculators so they had to learn to do everything by hand. Technology just alleviated all that mindless busy work so that you could actually learn the things that matter. Additionally a lot of theories would be more developed and ideas would be much more concise in modern times.

Hell, my year 12 Chemistry teacher (who has a PhD) has no problem admitting that the school work we do these days is much harder than it was 20 years ago. Technology just got rid of the irrelevant crap.

I agree. My parents keep talking trash about my marks or whatever. So badly, that it was actually surprising that I heard my dad say "It's okay, you tried your best, and your best is all you can do". Usually it's "What happened to the amount of percentage you lost? 96% is NOT BAD, but you could've done better." I gotta keep up with that bs everytime i show him marks. -_-

Have you ever heard this from your parents when you were growing up? Maybe when you did bad at something, like school, and you tell them that you tried your best, but they come up with some snappy response like "You ONLY studied for 5 hours for ONE test. I had to memorize the entire textbook, and they were twice as thick back then!"

Is the statement really true though? Is "Our current life" easier than what it was back then? Or is it actually harder, and they're just trying to push us? Sure, we have way more/better technology than back then, but is that really a positive point? Or does it just make things more complex?

What do you guys think? Did we have it better back then, or do we have it better now, even though there are way more options in our life?

We have much more than better technology. We have less discrimination, less racism, less prejudice, less conflict in the world. It's generally better.

You can always tell them that the reason why the current textbooks are thinner is because we got rid of all the useless crap that no one ever used outside of school
You can also tell them that today, the job market is way more competitive than back in their days and that you're more pressured to do good because you KNOW that not all the students in your class/school will get employment in the future.
You can add that the amount of knowledge that humanity possesses is much bigger than a generation ago and that you have to know a lot more things from a lot more areas than your parents. Often, you have to get that knowledge on your own because many schools can't keep up with the rapid progress of society and the world in general.

Yeah I agree with you. We have a lot more "Options" then they did back then. Making decisions was easier anyway. Right now I'm almost done high school and I keep wondering where I'm going to end up. Hopefully not in a box on the side of the street.

 

[Polarity27]

My parents had to look through card catelogs and didn't have near instant communication with their professors and other inputs and sources of information.

Damn straight. I'm slightly too young to be your parent, but I'm old enough to remember when I had to use card catalogs. Want a book?



When you eventually found the card for the book you wanted, was it on the shelf? Hah! WHO KNEW? Have fun trudging through the stacks to figure out what was actually shelved and what was checked out or on loan to another library.

Leaving aside books for a minute...did you want to find an article from a magazine or a journal? YOU POOR BASTARD. Say hello to your new best friend:


This was it. There was no automated searching. I didn't see a computer with a searchable article database until 1988 at the earliest. You had to sit with this ungainly fucker at a table and manually look up articles for your subject year by year.

Then, once you've located the article you want, pray that the library a.) carries that periodical, and b.) has holdings for the year you need. Then, if you're very lucky, you'll be able to get the actual issue of the magazine or journal and pay an ungodly amount in photocopying fees to get the article. If you're unlucky, you'll get to use the microfiche or (sweet zombie Jesus help you) microfilm readers.

Academic research is so much easier now, you can't even imagine.

Holy shit, takes me back! This was the first couple of years of college, for me. Automated searching was just coming in when I was a junior. I remember praying "please be fiche, please don't be film, please not more film" because the microfiche readers were so very much less fiddly and temperamental than the film readers.

I also remember typing my papers on a typewriter. And, during finals week, going absolutely berserk crazy because the campus store ran out of the exact kind of correcting tape your typewriter used. My freshman roommate stole correction tape from me, it was that dire. Computer clusters were up by the latter half of my sophomore year, though, the great glory of WordPerfect for DOS!

OT: I'm probably old enough to be your parent, and I can only say in some ways easier, in some ways much harder. I'd have given anything for the internet when I was a kid, now bullied rural kids have some kind of outlet. But not for anything in the world would I like the kind of work you have to do in high school nowadays. Or the six-figure college debt-- I thought coming out of school 21k in arrears was outrageous.

 

[Guardian of Nekops]

"You ONLY studied for 5 hours for ONE test. I had to memorize the entire textbook, and they were twice as thick back then!"

The things we need to know nowadays are of a different quality than what people needed to know back in the day. Used to be that, if you needed to know a scientific, grammatical, or historical fact, you had better have it in your head or have a few hours to kill and access to a library.

These days, however, all the information in the world is at our fingertips if we only have a computer and access to the internet. Now, if there's something I need to know, it's much more useful for me to be able to tell which sources are credible and where to find the information than it is to actually know something about the subject, because in ten minutes I can have more information about it than I ever could have memorized. Similarly, a very basic understanding of the relevant mathematics (enough to understand, for example, whether I am looking for a very large number or a very small number) and a graphing calculator (or computer and internet connection, as they have those online now) will serve me just as well as more knowledge and some scrap paper.

The point is, our education system needs to change. Instead of memorizing lots of stuff we don't need, we need to be trained to make use of all the wonderful technological marvels available to us... including knowing when to question the results they give us.

Edit: Oh, and one more thing... we need to know what information we need to keep in our heads. Given those filtering skills I mentioned earlier and internet access, and time, we can learn almost anything that's been discovered, for free and in a fraction of the time it would have taken someone to track it down during the days of paper and libraries and waiting for someone to ship the books you need. Way back in the day, people used to scrounge for any scrap of knowledge they could, regardless of relevance... they didn't have much opportunity to learn, so when the chance came they took it. Now, however? We have all this knowledge we could gain, but our brains haven't gotten any bigger, particularly.

Well, for instance. I could easily memorize a large chunk of pi if I wanted to, and I might really buckle down and do so if you told me what it was and that I'd have to go find a math book in the library if I ever needed to look it up again... but as it is? I know that pi is about 3.14159, and that's really more than I need. With my calculator, "A bit more than 3" would be good enough... just good enough to know when my calculator hands me back a number that doesn't make any sense.

Some people might call that being spoiled, but really, it's all relative. I'm sure the guys who rubbed sticks together all day to start a fire would look down on the newfangled kids and their fancy "flint and steel," but what it boils down to is that you have to adapt to the age in which you're born.

 

[White Lightning]

Well my parents never said this to me, then again I never acted like a spoiled brat. But do I think that life was harder back then? Well it obviously was. It was because their lives were harder that they worked to make things easier for the next generation, although alot of people take the things we have now for granted.

 

[Broady Brio]

Yea and he didn't get paid shit what 2 dollars an hour. Tried to tell my dad, yes prices go up but the average pay goes up too so that it balances out. That's how inflation works. He called me a dumbass who grew up too spoiled.

He called you a dumbass? That doesn't even make sense. And the fact that he raised you and has the nerve to call you the dumbass, is horrible. I'm sorry, but when parents insult their own children, that's just out of line.

 

[Al-Bundy-da-G]

Yea and he didn't get paid shit what 2 dollars an hour. Tried to tell my dad, yes prices go up but the average pay goes up too so that it balances out. That's how inflation works. He called me a dumbass who grew up too spoiled.

He called you a dumbass? That doesn't even make sense. And the fact that he raised you and has the nerve to call you the dumbass, is horrible. I'm sorry, but when parents insult their own children, that's just out of line.

Not really we do that kind of thing all the time. I call him an old bastard, he calls me a little shit, then we laugh and go fishing. Know what your right that is kinda messed up.

 

[backinthepresentfuture]

well, i'd tell them that life is shit now and it was shit then, so shut up and die.