A fundamental newsflash is in order here:
Every generation of teenagers rebel against the old ways of their ancestors
The 20's had Flappers
The 30's had Bootleggers (who were adults, mostly!)
I can't remember the 40's rebels
The 50's had Beatniks
The 60's had Hippies
The 70's had Hippies with kids and Disco Fever types... whose kids would become teenagers and find new ways of pissing off the fuddy-duddies.
It's funny how our ancestors grew into responsible adults (for the most part) in a time where there were none of these places.
Here's an interesting fact for you:
AA has a 5% success rate
Alcoholics who quit on their own have a 5% success rate.
Who's more successful?
It was some of those free-spirit parents who were beatniks and hippies, who fell in with the burguoisese of the eighties, who farmed their kid(s) off to the Program Du Jour in order to keep up appearances in the neighborhood.
"Oh my God! The
neighbors will think I'm a bad parent!" So, off goes the kid, the neighbors shower the parents with "Support" (a form of Munchausen's, as far as I'm concerned, but that's another topic), and the kid learns how to "behave" in a way that's expected in a world of gated communities and cookie cutter houses.
It's not about the kids, it's about the parents.
Never in the history of any nation has an education system been so on the point of disintegration and decay as the education system in this country...We know that education in this country is as bad as it can be. We know that it is old-fashioned, irrelevant, and not meaningful.
--U.S. Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff, 1970
