dimanche 29 avril 2012


Some of the 97%


Who said that today’s youngsters are wild, unruly and mostly delinquents?  Granted, 3% of them are.  Today I wish to feature a few of the 97% that we never hear about.
Thursday last, the wife and I attended a spaghetti dinner held for the benefit of a Haitian school being rebuilt after that horrible earthquake.  That school, for the last 17 years has been supported by The Haiti-Laurentides Committee of l’École Secondaire Augustin-Norbert-Morin, in Ste-Adèle, about 60 kilometers North-West of Montreal in the Laurentian mountains.

Students helped by a dedicated teacher are the Committee members, volunteers and organizers.  That evening, about 80 of them were the ticket vendors, waiters, bus boys, etc.  They were without adult supervision since the school board has cut the job of the person supervising after school activities.  Everything went very smoothly and we enjoyed very good spaghetti and a splendid evening.

In Montreal where college and university students are on strike to protest a decreed tuition hike, they have been marching most days and evenings.  Their marches were infiltrated with that despicable group called the Blackbloc, vandals dressed in black and wearing masks who highjack any kind of street manifestation, save for religious processions, and wreak havoc.

At first, most student demonstrators walked away when violence began.  For the last three days they have been opposing the Blackblocers and even helping the police to catch and arrest them.

We may not agree with the student strike and its cause, but we have to acknowledge that, in an orderly way, our young ones are standing for their rights, or perceived rights, and are rejecting the scums that pretend to sympathise with them but are only doing a disservice to their cause.

Look around attentively and you will see that our young ones do not deserve the reputation that sensationalist media are foisting upon them.

12 commentaires:

  1. I believe it's been pointed out that one of the earliest recorded rants about the decline of the younger generation dates from the time of Plato.

    I was doing a massage for a lady about my own age this weekend and listened tolerantly as she decried the laziness of the twenty somethings in her office. We all learn how to work over time, and probably ought to remember the eagerness of young adulthood to experience everything -- not just goal-directed activity.

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  2. Right you are, Sled. And yes Plato did voice the same complaints we hear about opur own youth. I guess most of us have lost memories of our own youths and of our own vagaries.

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  3. The young have a way of holding up a mirror to us. "Do you remember who you were?" they ask. Is there justice that goes beyond laws?

    C'est très important. N'oubliez pas.

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  4. That Rob, is what I'm trying to do and remind to others. They may be off the mark but they are trying very hard to do their best.

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  5. My only real concern about adolescents these days is how dependent they are on social media. I meet quite a few socially awkward kids who have no idea how to communicate well in person.

    This month's edition of The Atlantic has an excellent article titled, "Is Facebook Making us Lonely"

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  6. I agree with you ,Cheri. I learn more about what is going on in my son's family through their Facebook page than when we meet face to face every Sunday.
    However my 16 years old grandson says almost nothing on his page and lets his friends do the talking...so to speak.

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  7. like cheri i am concerned about how social media affects the young people of this world - they have grown up with it and don't know life without it. i saw the article in the atlantic about facebook and look forward to reading it.

    i believe it is the nature of youth to rebel as that is how they learn about life, through mistakes and successes - there will always be the well behaved protestors and then the blackblocers of the world - and the media will always focus on those making the most noise.

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  8. Unfortunately, Amanda, you are right about the media focusing more on the trouble makers than the others. But then, violence and blood sell, cheery news and good behaviour don't.

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  9. It's the nature of the beast looking for news. Yes, they might report a good act now and then; usually, they are only hungry for the sensational, the sordid, the "dramatic".

    In our work we ran into troublemakers. Their parents too were troublemakers, usually in denial, living at the edge of society. They didn't know much about building a society. Unfortunately, nobody wants to hear about this generational problem. We all want quick fixes.

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  10. And quick fixes are not efficient nor effective and prevention is costly and can not be quantified, as far as results are concerned, for years to come. So we do not invest in it.

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