"Pay a ticket. I don't got it. I hafta call my dad, sumthin. I got a license plate. (insert plate #) Like 35? So like, after I pay dis, it goes away? Cain't get my car registered."
"Well, yes. I see one ticket on your license plate number and it is 35 dollars. Once this ticket is paid, it takes the Department of Transportation seven to ten days to update their system."
"So you like gon gimme a receipt case somebody be pullin me over?"
"Yes, I will give you a receipt that shows record of this payment. My advice is to keep it with you whenever you're driving."
"'kay."
That was a painfully unintelligent conversation I was just forced to have. If only I could insert vocal inflection. It would be worse for you all.
A Letter to Parents,
What your children turn into is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY! It's not the fault of TV or video games. Video games, under the right circumstances, can actually do a bit of good. My best friend was not allowed to have a Playstation when he was younger. That is, until he came across two broken ones at two different garage sales, took them apart, figured out what was wrong, and built one functional system.
It pains me to see people of my generation that are so impersonal, rude, and unintelligent. The iGeneration. That's what we are. And whether I like it or not, these people are all going to be in charge of the world when I'm older.
"The Berlin Wall fell and out we came, the post-Cold War kids laid claim to AIM.
LOL, OMG, yo, BRB. Space, colon, dash, closed parenthesis." (MC Lars) iGeneration Lyrics
Here's what happens:
Parents have babies. Parents teach those babies. What they teach those babies can be either good or bad, or somewhere in between, I suppose. Then, those babies grow up and they have babies. They, then, impart the intelligence, work ethic, manners, etc. of the prior generation. Then their babies have babies and they do the same thing. Now, if the "first" generation lets their children think that there is no value in intelligence, nothing important about respect, and that using grammar is for losers, then what do you think those children will teach their children? And so on.
This is how I ended my last post; it accidentally worked for this one as well:
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.
Kurt Vonnegut
So, I will leave you with more thoughts. Italics added for emphasis.
-Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself.
John Dewey
-Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
-It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.
Robert Green Ingersoll
-Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.
John W. Gardner
Finally...
-Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude.
Ralph Marston
