©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Our columnist knows just what’s ruining kids today
by JEN NAGEL

As a result of contemplating my recently completed first year of teaching and the immense amount of time I spent with adolescents and their younger brothers and sisters, I have compiled a list of the things that are ruining kids. It’s not parents; it’s not the media; it’s a slew of different things. I’d like to chalk it all up, as an English teacher, to the lack of motivation to sit down and read a book, but I know there is so much more than that. I have to give any kid credit just for being a kid right now. I don’t know if I would have made it out alive.

••••Little girl rhinestone jewelry stores. I don’t want to call any by name, but they’re at every mall, and they’re useful for several purposes: prom jewelry, because no one wants to shell out real cash for real jewelry for one night where they inevitably get groped by an overzealous prom date and would really rather not have nice jewelry around to remind them. However, the clientele during the other 10 months of the year consists of little girls who go in there to buy dangly earrings like J.Lo’s and gigantic cuff bracelets so that they can be just like Britney or Shakira or whomever it is that little girls like these days. As a result, when I walk into a fifth grade class to cover for a colleague, I am bombarded by bling on the wrists, ears and necks of girls who bought their “ice” with their 10-dollar allowance from last week. This evil, along with my other culprits, is at the root of plummeting self-esteem and self-worth all over pubescent America.

••••Little girl grown-up clothing stores. Imagine the clothing many women in the business of pleasure wear tumble-dry and shrink down to fit tiny girls. Glitter, sequins, short skirts and t-shirts with suggestive sayings that are funny but give me the overwhelming feeling that I shouldn’t laugh because it’s creepy to laugh at things like that. So, once the little girls of America get their big dangly earrings and their big honkin’ necklaces that read, in little rhinestone letters “Princess” or “Flirt,” they can don their short skirts and tiny tees and slide on a pair of miniature high heels and go to the mall. (Note to self: might have been easier to simply say “Malls are evil.”)

••••Fast food restaurants. Here’s an anecdote from my past. When I was about four, my grandparents would take me to a famed fast food restaurant for dinner once a week. I amassed a wealth of little plastic toys themed appropriately with whatever movie happened to be big at the moment. As is customary at such restaurants, you order, you pay, you take your food. My earliest memory of going out to eat at a real restaurant with waiters and waitresses and tablecloths and the like is of ordering from the menu, watching the waitress walk away and asking my grandfather, “So is this dinner free? We didn’t pay!” Fast food is why Americans learn as children you can show up, you don’t even have to get out of your car, you can eat food that, for the most part, has no nutritional benefit, and you can get it all in under three minutes. No wonder people get pushy when things take too long or don’t go as expected. Fast food makes us demanding and spoiled.

••••OnDemand. This is a terrifically convenient and useful tool. I used it last night to watch an old Twin Peaks movie. (Geek status officially confirmed now, right?) But what happened to the days when, if you wanted to watch The Sopranos, you had to be home when it was on or you had to program your VCR? There is something to be said for my mad dashes home at 10 on Wednesdays to catch Law and Order (which includes commercials that I have to sit through), and growing up that way forced me to learn patience, time management, forethought, planning. All kinds of excellent life skills that kids don’t pick up anymore. I tell my class, “This assignment is due tomorrow.” I see the vacant expressions on some faces telling me that my message was sent and would probably be received around 8:05 the next morning when they report to homeroom. As a student, I knew that on any given night, I needed to set aside a little time for homework, a little time to go outside and play and a little time for Doogie Howser, M.D. or The Wonder Years. There was no time to do it in homeroom. So in short, yes, television taught me planning. What is OnDemand teaching? Nothing. It’s teaching them that if they play Madden 2007 until 11 p.m., and they’ve missed some show they probably shouldn’t have been watching anyway, they can watch it the next night. And now their homework is two days late.

••••Madden. While I’m on the subject, and I am a loyal Eagles fan and the proud owner of several versions of Madden’s game, Madden is the reason I sent failure warnings home in October. I had students reporting to me every morning, “Oh man, Miss Nagel, I know you love Brian Dawkins, but he got tore up last night when I played him against the Colts. It was third down and four in the third quarter and the Colts were down…” And if it wasn’t Madden, it was some other form of football, baseball, hockey, basketball or shoot-em-up game that took their attention away from my very important English assignment. Does anyone else see something wrong with the fact that kids have no problem playing football, baseball, hockey and basketball indoors on a couch with a controller in their hands, but if you ask them to participate in gym class, field day, class excursions to fun and exciting locations, they sit on the curb by the basketball court and tell me what we’re doing is “gay.” In their minds, they are quarterbacks, wide receivers, the best linemen in the universe. But in actual occasions requiring physical activity … nothing. Amazing.

••••The word “gay.” It’s a sensitive subject and I don’t want to delve into it too deeply, but it boggles my mind to think that some day, the kid who told me that state standards tests were “gay” will be working in some sort of professional capacity at some job that will require him to interact with people. And among those people may be many who are gay. I made it my mission to erase the word as a generic adjective from their heads, at least in my classroom, but I can’t erase it from everywhere. I feel like Holden Caulfield. “It means nothing!” I tell them, and I encourage them to exchange words like “lame” or “beat” or even “stupid” and use them instead. No dice. It’s a generational trademark: I was chastised in school for saying “cool” and “duh.”

Now I am chastising. But I did grow out of it eventually. Maybe they will, too.