[General Battuta]

I think he has a condition we should be tolerant of. Just a guess.

[Mars]

Calm down people, punch a few kittens or something - there's nothing to be gained by personal attacks

[Liberator]

On topic:
I didn't know iamzack was a girl.
I just am going to echo a few things that High Max said.  We argue(a kinder man would say "discuss") about stuff, but I never really get hot over it, but some of the people on the other side from me seem to lose it when I/we suggest something that conflicts with your world view.

That said, my remote observation of my opposite number ideologically suggests that they would gnaw out your guts while you try to shake they're hands.

*INSERT MEANINGLESS TROLL HERE BECAUSE I AM KINDA LOOPY FROM ALLERGY PILLS*
I am strangely addicted to watching this over and over
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYRvmAAAzqU&feature=recommended

[Wobble73]

I would just like to point out that iamzack is from the USA, not the UK! 

[Flipside]

Frankly, I see both sides giving as good as they get.

There are no martyrs in this conversation, no matter who would like to believe so.

[peterv]

A question to those of us who believes that younger people are rotten etc. (this is not my opinion)
Who is responsible for that?

[Dilmah G]

Stereotypes + The media. Those are the most obvious ones, and the unsettling attitude groups of teenagers send across to people who walk by them, it's not usually intentional but it happens nonetheless since those groups are associated with bashings/robberies etc. In reality from my point of view, don't do anything to piss them off and exhibit some confidence and you'll be fine. However the minority (less than 20% over here... I've got to find the website I read that on) of teenagers who engage in substance/narcotics abuse and consume alcohol on a regular basis are quite prone to spontaneous violence etc, in fact a friend/associate of mine was a victim of it last week, but by exercising judgment and discretion you can usually tell who those people are and avoid them for good reason. But my point was it's the MINORITY, the MAJORITY of teenagers do the right thing. But as usual the minority is blown out of proportion. 

[The E]

And since there are way more channels by which information about said minority can reach the normal people, the impression that the minority is the majority can be reached easily.

[Dilmah G]

Exactly

[TrashMan]

No, it's because it's more reported.  The world is a lot smaller than it was even fifty years ago.

What has that got to do with anything? All I need for a conclusion is what is happening here, where I live.
What's happening in Canada or Japan is nice additional information, but that's not the point of my statement, altough I do hear similar things from people all over.

What I KNOW is that when I was a kid, mouthing off to a adult, swearing, drinking and smoking was pretty much unthinkable. It was an exception, rather than the norm.
These days it's the other way around.

You're grasping at straws and throwing out desperate declarations of "ARGHHHHH THOSE DAMNED KIDS WON'T PULL UP THEIR PANTS, SO I SHOULD BE ABLE TO BEAT THEM WITH A TIRE IRON UNTIL THEY FIGURE OUT WHAT'S GOOD FOR THEM!"

Have you anything to add other than baseless blabbering and misconstructions?

Ahh...note that that isn't what I said.
They speak of the general qualities of young people - like being rash, inexcperienced, full of themselves, energetic, etc...

Those are not complaints directed at their upbringing or lack of proper behavior.

But those are the exact qualities which lead to youth behaving inappropriately! 

You fail.
I was a kid once. And so were my friends. And so were others before them. We all had the drive, the energy and innexperience.
Yet we didn't act like morons.

Unless you're trying to say that being young automaticly means that you HAVE to be irresponsible and ill-behaved?

 

[The E]

What has that got to do with anything? All I need for a conclusion is what is happening here, where I live.
What's happening in Canada or Japan is nice additional information, but that's not the point of my statement, altough I do hear similar things from people all over.

What I KNOW is that when I was a kid, mouthing off to a adult, swearing, drinking and smoking was pretty much unthinkable. It was an exception, rather than the norm.
These days it's the other way around.

Dude, confirmation bias much? We are both approximately the same age, yet my experience (i. e. what I KNOW) is that nothing much has changed in that regard. Children/young adults pretty much behave the same, the only difference is that WE are now viewing that same behaviour from the outside, from the adults perspective.
Naturally, our opinions about this behaviour have shifted due to our changing conceptions of acceptable behaviour.

You fail.
I was a kid once. And so were my friends. And so were others before them. We all had the drive, the energy and innexperience.
Yet we didn't act like morons.

I wonder, can you speak for EVERYONE in your age group? Are you absolutely, positively certain, that NOT ONE of them ever was as unruly as the kids today? As we said, what you are whining about is the behaviour of a minority being reported prominently. Remember, you are seeing these incidents because they stick out, not because there's more of them.

Unless you're trying to say that being young automaticly means that you HAVE to be irresponsible and ill-behaved?

No, but it is a common sideeffect. 

[General Battuta]

On topic:
I didn't know iamzack was a girl.
I just am going to echo a few things that High Max said.  We argue(a kinder man would say "discuss") about stuff, but I never really get hot over it, but some of the people on the other side from me seem to lose it when I/we suggest something that conflicts with your world view.

That said, my remote observation of my opposite number ideologically suggests that they would gnaw out your guts while you try to shake they're hands.

*INSERT MEANINGLESS TROLL HERE BECAUSE I AM KINDA LOOPY FROM ALLERGY PILLS*
I am strangely addicted to watching this over and over
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYRvmAAAzqU&feature=recommended

Please be careful of the dispositional bias. You're apparently unaware how hateful and vicious you can seem sometimes. It's easy to attribute that to character (disposition), when, in fact, it's generally an artifact of point of view and situation.

[Blue Lion]

What the hell are you guys arguing now? 

[General Battuta]

I, uh, don't know. 

[Dilmah G]

What the hell are you guys arguing now? 

The quote stacks alone put me off reading half of it anyway

[TrashMan]

Dude, confirmation bias much? We are both approximately the same age, yet my experience (i. e. what I KNOW) is that nothing much has changed in that regard. Children/young adults pretty much behave the same, the only difference is that WE are now viewing that same behaviour from the outside, from the adults perspective.
Naturally, our opinions about this behaviour have shifted due to our changing conceptions of acceptable behaviour.

The point is there is no same behaviour. I friggin know what I did.

I wonder, can you speak for EVERYONE in your age group? Are you absolutely, positively certain, that NOT ONE of them ever was as unruly as the kids today? As we said, what you are whining about is the behaviour of a minority being reported prominently. Remember, you are seeing these incidents because they stick out, not because there's more of them. [/qutoe]

No, there's more of em. I can count.

[The E]

The point is there is no same behaviour. I friggin know what I did.

YOU know what YOU did. You also know what the people around you did. But that is not a valid sample size to make general observations about EVERYONE.

No, there's more of em. I can count.

I do not doubt your mathematical abilities. I do question your interpretation, though. I also question the way you gathered that data. As i said, if you're only counting what you can observe, or what you hear about, your data will be biased by your own expectations.
In other words, you expect to see bad behaviour, as a result all cases of bad behaviour will stick out more than the opposite.

[TrashMan]

I will conciede that the situation is probably not as bad as I make it seem. But that's it's not happening it pure dillusion.

Doubt me as much as you want, it is irrelevant in the end. Time will tell.

[Scotty]

Ummm, at my school, we have an entire set of courses for people who consitantly swear directly in teacher's faces, engage in fights at school, have been caught doing drugs on school property, or are just general violent disruptions to the class.  As of last week, 74 out of 704 students were in that particular set of courses.

There is a school nearby, about ten minutes away, where aggravated assault averages two counts a week.  Last week was one of the outliers, with six.

Also, honestly, how often did you people who are now out of school see a student tell a teacher to "f*ck off" right to his face?  There were two suspensions today because of that.  As far as I can see, kids actually are getting worse.  I am constantly disgusted by my peers' actions.

But that is not a valid sample size to make general observations about EVERYONE.

What would you call a valid sample size?  The two schools, the one I go to, and the other, combined have nearly 1800 students.  I don't have exact statistics for both, but 10% still seems to be awfully high.

[General Battuta]

Ummm, at my school, we have an entire set of courses for people who consitantly swear directly in teacher's faces, engage in fights at school, have been caught doing drugs on school property, or are just general violent disruptions to the class.  As of last week, 74 out of 704 students were in that particular set of courses.

There is a school nearby, about ten minutes away, where aggravated assault averages two counts a week.  Last week was one of the outliers, with six.

Also, honestly, how often did you people who are now out of school see a student tell a teacher to "f*ck off" right to his face?  There were two suspensions today because of that.  As far as I can see, kids actually are getting worse.  I am constantly disgusted by my peers' actions.

But that is not a valid sample size to make general observations about EVERYONE.

What would you call a valid sample size?  The two schools, the one I go to, and the other, combined have nearly 1800 students.  I don't have exact statistics for both, but 10% still seems to be awfully high.

OH SWEET LORD THE STATISTICS FAIL

To draw conclusions about a population (all the youths in the world/America), you must have a representative sample.

Your sample is actually a population, representative only of schoolgoing youths in your area, in the same general socioeconomic racial class, in the same general culture, all members of the same general social network.

If you want to draw conclusions, get a random sampling of all the youth in America by the means of a complete list and a random number generator. Fortunately for you, such databases are available, and a lot of research on the trends has already been done.

*sigh*