It's more about being disciplined and forced to come to terms with the fact that just thinking you're something doesn't make it so, you're not always right, etc. If somebody is raised right then of course it doesn't matter if they come from money or not.

What I'm pointing out though is that the reason people are how the OP is saying they are these days is nothing recent and it's not even recent for people to be this way. They've been like this for a long, long time. It's just made more obvious these days and it's presented itself in different forms.

 

says the boy living in the basement....speaking from your own personal experience there, Bawl Baby?

 

:-?

Agreed. It doesn't really matter how much money your parents have if they don't just hand everything to you. There's spoiled children everywhere, whether you're in a rough part of the inner city or in a rich community. Honestly, I met more spoiled brats going to public school with a bunch of lower-middle kids than I EVER did once I moved out to the wealthier side of town with my fiance.

 

Yes but working class kids don't get sheltered from any of that. They learn quickly that saying certain things or thinking them doesn't make them true and more often than not will lead to consequences. They don't grow up not having to do anything or being able to be that lazy. They grow up with the reality of their place in life.

That's why a lot of times, where you're from comes into play.

 

Yes, and that I agree with as well. I think this massive entitlement epidemic is a cause for a lot of the world's woes now.

 

Well, if you'll concede that it's a matter of parenting, then I don't think you can really say that people who have had 'easy' lives are 'never' interesting.

 

You should come to Britain some time. Here, many of those below the middle-classes are stagnatory and lazier than anyone, because they can live at others' expense.

The most interesting people here are those from lower middle, because they tend to have parents who are sufficiently well off to be able to afford to foster both the curousity of themselves and of their children, as well as being more likely to be better educated and therefore able to better instruct the child in the ways of satiating curiousity or moving to unexplored pastures.

 

It's that way in quite a few areas over here, frankly. If you're raised with nothing and raised to believe that you can't do shit with your life then you're like to get lazy and live at the expense of others.

All in all it just depends upon the individual.

 

Exactly. It doesn't help that kids aren't forced to actually accept faults or shortcomings anymore or god forbid the reality that they have to work for something.

It's not a matter of parenting though. Parenting is just one way for it to be righted. Another way is the reality of the life you grow up living and the environment in which you do. You don't grow up thinking you're tough just because in a neighborhood where that toughness is tested, nor do you grow up thinking you're a superstar athlete in a neighborhood or school where things like that are tested, etc.

I did say rarely. I've never met a genuinely interesting person whose had an easy life.

 

That paragraph was sounding might gay.:?

 

True. Why even try when you can become a dealer or go on welfare or some other easy way out? Too many people don't give a shit about anything except themselves.

 

The two attributes you focus on - 'toughness' and 'athletic ability' - are interesting in the extreme. Neither of these are particularly useful in creating what I would regard as interesting people, though athleticims has more of a chance, I suppose.

To use your reasoning, you indicate that being challenged is a good way to appraise how one fits into one's environment. I agree. How do you respond, then, when I point out that most schools in working class or deprived areas are below average, significantly or otherwise, in terms of teaching competence the resulting achievements of their pupils?

How are these working class children to assess where they lie in the world intellectually when they cannot be challenged by a schooling system that is not up to scratch? It is your own admission that challenge is essential and that schooling in these areas is lacking (from another thread that I seem to recall), and those two factors would result in the conclusion that the working class/deprived children have fewer avenues and opportunities to explore the world around them. Coupled with that is the fact that working class and deprived children are socially closer and more exposed to the fast-results, high-paying world of crime, which is surely tempting to them, and I put it to you that the atttributes that are attained by these children do not make them the sort of interesting person that can hold their own in topical polite conversation.

Lastly, you did amend it with rarely, it's true. But you shouldn't use your own singular viewpoint to make mass generalistions ona global scale; someone is bound to prove you wrong.

 

You need to focus on the point, not the categories I chose to use. The point is that it is living in reality, in some way, shape, or form, that makes a person interesting. Kids who have every opportunity are rarely interesting because they start off from a point of delusion and never have it challenged. Believe me, those kids know all about how intelligent or unintelligent they really are. For a lot of people, they need to get a scholarship to even attend a good college.

I'm not using any viewpoint or making mass generalizations.

Furthermore, it seems your definition of interesting and my own are two different definitions. I don't consider people who can "hold their own in topical polite conversation" to be all that interesting. I find the people who cause that conversation by their actions, words, etc to be interesting.

 

People who can hold their own in polite coversation require certain abilities: the ability to react to people, the ability to put their point across succintly, the ability to extemporise, the ability to react quickly and think of their feet, and the ability to keep their emotions in check when required. They must also be well read and knowledgeable of the world around them, and able to draw comparisons between the topic being discussed and similar lines of thought that move the conversation on. All these things require that someone be reasonably intelligent and curious.

I am confused that you think that some people don't live in reality. The people on the social strata above you may seem trite and lacking in the depth that your social strata values, but they live in their constraints as well. They are different, but not necessarily less of a hindrance.

I'm not sure that these kids - at least judging by my experiences here in the UK - do know how unintelligent they are. How can they, when they are simply not exposed to the benchmarks? How can they, if parents and peers do not encourage betterment? They don't know the intricacies of the world around them and, from where I'm standing, few of them seem interested in putting in the work to try.

Here in Glasgow, I've gone both to the University - internationally recognised as being high-quality - and also to one of the colleges that serves the working class, teaching the trades. It's the former college of building and printing, but expanded to include various other disciplines. Studying there, I rub shoulders with those who have had very little growing up, and I see time and time again that when the going gets tough they simply leave, happy to collect their cheque at the benefits office. The drop-out rate is frightening, and it's not the teachers' faults - these kids have grown up with little bar the glittering boxes of TV and internet - and they don't want to change. They're secure.

 

Not necessarily.

It's not what I think. You don't live here. You don't know how it is. Out of sight, out of mind, reality never comes knocking on their door because they're sheltered from it and brought up in a world of bullshit and delusion.

Again, it is a completely different situation here. A lot of the people I go to school with take it seriously and work hard. It's often the kids who don't need to work hard or "make it out of" anywhere that are the laziest, least serious, most immature, etc.

And it seems you think that people in the working class and other lower class areas are sheltered from the outside world but that is flat out inaccurate. They live in the real world, every second of every day,

Now don't get me wrong. There are plenty of people who aren't like that. There are plenty of kids who have been told they are something special because of the lack of standards present in certain communities, but they are the minority.

 

In your case Rupert, people say "You're too late fella"

 

That applies to the location of my experiences as regards you as much as it does the other way round. Don't forget that - I'm going on my experiences in, in the UK, with UK people and UK political and social mechanisms. How it is for you is not how it is for me.

 

Yes but I understand how it is there because we have plenty of welfare leeches and people who don't seek to better themselves or work hard over here. I went to school with a welfare leech and with plenty of kids who didn't seek to better themselves or work at all.

Due to the much better opportunities and much cheaper schooling over there, that minority over here just so happens to be the majority over there.

 

Different people. Different cultural mindset. Different society.

You do not know what it's like. You are not here. End of story.

 

Glad to see that so many did not really read the line "This of course is a general statement, there are many notable exceptions,.....", in my post.

But then many picked up on the theme and carried it forward.

Baller, you are so badly out of touch, I am beginning to believe those who think that you are a cellar dweller. Come out into the light and look around.

Children from the "workers class" are the most pampered of all, usually the parent is working (or in the case of a few both parents) and the kids are indulged with whatever keeps them occupied. It doesn't take long for the newness of the latest toy to ear off and a new toy is introduced. Children of poor families are not exempted, you will rarely see a teen from the inner city, that doesn't have the latest clothing fad plainly on display.

Perhaps the only group that is not included is the kids of working farms, from necessity they are put to work at an early age.

What happened to: Paper boys; lawn mower kids; snow shovelers; lawn rakers; bag boys/girls; babysitters; stock clerks, etc? Today you mostly see migrant lawn care; motor newspaper carriers; gramma and gramps babysitters and bag boys; middle aged shelf stockers; etc.

Even Mickey D's has older workers, the local Baskin Robbins is manned by geriatric refugee's.

Kids are bored because they are not challenged and as I said before, it started with my generation.