Well yeah, that's one reason why student debt has been deliberately increased, but this arugment loses some of it force when the comparison is with students not saddled with huge debts, but likely to be shot if they protest. Can't help but feel the latter is a greater deterrent...
Fear of being shot vs. fear of being slowly suffocated by debt are going to cause wildly different decision making processes. I don't know what causes someone to risk getting shot, but I believe that massive debt would make people unwilling to step out of line.
There is really a sense of "I owe my soul to the company store" amongst graduates, except they can't put their finger on the company store.
I like this line.
This article reminds me of an event I went to where women of various ages were discussing what happened to activism (feminist activism, but general, too), and a younger woman, early 20's, gave an elegant little speech about how her mother didn't march in protests of the Vietnam War, and showed little actual interest in politics, but she was so proud of her anyway because her "feminist power" was staying in school, not getting arrested, and living to have children and raise them right, not like those ridiculous pointless hippies.
In response to this, yes, I think a lot of it is true. But I also think parents deserve more blame, frankly. What I see in my students is an absolutely bottomless terror of parental disapproval. They sure don't have any problem being terrible students in my classes--they'll cheat, lie, fail, whatever, and it won't make them bat an eye until they remember that their mother might find out. Then, suddenly, they're begging me to forgive them and care about their future (far more than they ever had!)--in effect, to love them unconditionally in ways they don't expect even, or especially, from their own parents. It freaks me out how afraid they are. I grew up with genuinely abusive parents who sucked in a lot of ways and blamed me for everything, making me afraid of messing up even a tiny tiny bit, but I somehow still managed to have a fuck-authority attitude, even as early as elementary school.
How exactly are these parents treating their kids such that they're so terrified of losing their approval? In the case of my students, we're not talking rich people, or all immigrants, or whatever. My mom has asked me several times what she could have done to hobble me emotionally, more thoroughly, so I would never have left home like the kids of her friends. It's a little joke we have. But seriously, what are they doing?
I keep trying to write comments about diffuse responsibility and internalizing failure, but they all end up sounding like "It's the system, man.".
5. That's because it's the system, man.
They sure don't have any problem being terrible students in my classes--they'll cheat, lie, fail, whatever, and it won't make them bat an eye until they remember that their mother might find out.
When I was a student, I had 100% confidence that I was on my own. If anyone had ever mentioned my parents, I would have scoffed "How would you get their phone number?" There were a lot of things that I sure as hell wouldn't have wanted them to know about, but I was utterly certain that I was no longer in their domain.
I don't think there is an increased fear of surveillance, #6.
Well there is certainly a large increase in well-founded fears of "surveillance" broadly interpreted. In fact I think this is at least as germane as college debt in setting the tone for young folks.
If the fear were there, it would be well-founded.
In my experience of the young people just entering the workforce with some baseline level of ambition but not enough social capital to bull their way in through the connections the "fear" (actually I'd characterize more "acute awareness") is palpable and ever present. It is completely internalized. Maybe not evident when they're tearing up the joint at Heebie U.
Maybe so.
I was just thinking about how disconnected I was from my family and hometown friends, when I went to college. It didn't bother me at the time, but things like a cellphone and high-speed internet make it much, much more likely that I'll stay in touch with someone. So if I'd gone to college today, I probably would have kept my parents in a much tighter loop.
(Or maybe not, because they were completely obnoxiously hounding me about going to med school in every single conversation, and I hung up on them out of sheer frustration on more than one conversation. And avoided talking to them much.)
But it does go hand-in-hand with the debt thing and the indoctrination you describe so aptly in your final paragraph.
I think the "debt" diagnosis is missing a step.
I went to school ca 1970, and we figured it cost $3000 a year. 500 tuition per semester + 6-700 campus housing + incidentals. Say total 12000 for four years, maybe 15k for masters.
I can't find the deflator online, but $3000 was the price of a decent car. $25k a nice condo or old house. So multiply by ten = 120k-150k. And I think that's about right.
So what is happening? Well, everybody says college costs are running faster than CPI, but CPI has added hedonics, and the fact is that wages have not been inflating for umpteen years.
Obviously we had more inflation, especially wage inflation in the 60s and 70s.
So people are going to college that weren't in the 60s, because there were good jobs for HS degrees.
And parents and families are much less able to help out all those who want to go to college than they were, because middle class standards of living have dropped and budget stresses have increased.
The problem is not that college costs have increased, but that middle class incomes have decreased
The lack of privacy / surveillance state also leads to a lack of interest in taking risks because of the fear of having any sort of criminal record. It's not possible to move somewhere else and have a fresh start. There's no discretion. No matter how you ended up getting arrested, who knows what could happen, you could be in jail so long you lose your job, you could have a bad credit report for the rest of your life, 25 consecutive job interviews can end up with a discovery that they never hire anyone who has a criminal record, who knows. All we know is that there's a lot of information about us out there that corporations have access to as soon as they know who we are.
What I mean to say is there's no concept of having "paid one's debt to society". Sure, I did something wrong and I was in prison for 18 months. I've paid my debt to society. No, you've revealed that you're the sort of person who could conceivably do something wrong. Go make a living in some subculture somewhere that contains a lot of people like you.
But I also think parents deserve more blame, frankly.
You know, I don't think I fully stopped blaming my parents for things that went wrong for me until I had kids myself.
These days I really disinclined to blame parents in all but the most extreme circumstances.
What I mean to say is there's no concept of having "paid one's debt to society". Sure, I did something wrong and I was in prison for 18 months. I've paid my debt to society. No, you've revealed that you're the sort of person who could conceivably do something wrong.
Sometimes I imagine a very formal, rigid caste system developing in America based on parole status.
17. This sounds like the wisdom of someone who has never seen what truly dysfunctional parents can do to people. If as AWB seems to be suggesting, dysfunctional parenting is becoming mainstreamed, rather than something the rest of us can support the survivors in getting through, there is a world of trouble in store.
Every time I change jobs in NYC, I have to have an interview about my "problem" and whether I have it under control. In 2003 I got a ticket for an open container--more precisely, for telling a cop to fuck himself when he approached me to inquire about an open container. I also made fun of his vehicle.
Yelling at cops was sort of SOP where I came from. I didn't know NYC cops were so sensitive.
I sort of owe this point to Bave (who may or may not want to be associated with it) but one thing missing from the article that goes along with the debt argument is health insurance. Bave was talking about how, in a country where you have health insurance, you have more options for how you live your life--like, get a part-time job and make art, for instance.
Or: get a part- or full-time job, whichever, and take a few risks such as are mentioned in the article because if the worst consequence--since we don't currently live in a country where you're likely to be shot for these things--is that you might lose your job, it's bad, but doesn't mean you can no longer go to a hospital.
In my role as defender of Yglesias, I'll say that increased psychological dependence on parents is all about car-centric regional planning.
Not really (after all, that doesn't explain AWB's city kids), and really, I mean tight labor markets more. But it seems to be getting harder and harder for teenagers to work and to get around on their own. Fast food and grocery store jobs are going to twenty-somethings, not fifteen-year-olds. So a middle-class kid my age or older went to college with some beginning idea of what it would be like to be capable of being responsible for their own life. Now, they're really coming out of the womb at eighteen.
14
I went to school ca 1970, and we figured it cost $3000 a year. 500 tuition per semester + 6-700 campus housing + incidentals. Say total 12000 for four years, maybe 15k for masters.
Note only a third of the cost was tuition.
22 seems about right to me. Hysteria about child abduction is another contributing factor.
I encountered the health insurance thing many times during our tedious national nightmare the healthcare "debate," and it is appealing, I guess, but do people in, say, France or Germany live materially more footloose, insouciant, creative lives than Americans?
We're more footloose, but only because we can't afford to get them tightened.
New Zealanders seem to. When I was in the Peace Corps, in '93-'94, I was hanging around with a number of Kiwis who were formal or informal volunteers, and they were much less afraid of falling off the career track than Americans, and more likely to spend a couple of years backpacking, or working in a developing country, or being artists, or just slacking. I formed the 'maybe it's about the health care' theory on my own from that experience before I ever heard it from anyone else.
But 22 would have applied perfectly well to me. The same number of kids got cars when they turned 16 as they do now, and I got around somewhat ok on my bike before then.
25: I was wondering the same thing while I typed what I typed. Bave's point remains valid--one actually knows people in Canadia who take advantage of the freedom afforded by not having to worry, at all costs, about getting a job with health benefits. But my corollary coöpting of it toward the argument in the article is maybe a bit fanciful.
Is there any evidence that parenting styles overall have become more dysfunctional. It seems to me that complaining about "parents today" is second only to complaining about "kids today" in terms of perennial, anecdotal tales of social decline.
A big complementary thing he leaves out: job prospects. Not only in the sixties, but also through the seventies, job growth was mammoth by present standards, amazingly managing to accommodate the baby boom glut adequately. The horrible consequences of not looking ahead to after college were not in the back of everyone's mind.
I think http://xkcd.com/137/ is a great example of how all this gets internalized.
Also in the mix according to my parents: expectation of imminent nuclear annihilation.
Fear of being shot vs. fear of being slowly suffocated by debt are going to cause wildly different decision making processes.
If you borrowed from me, the two fears are so similar that this isn't an important distinction.
[O]ne actually knows people in Canadia who take advantage of the freedom afforded by not having to worry, at all costs, about getting a job with health benefits.
Must resist making joke that universal healthcare is progressives' Canadian girlfriend.
I'd say that fear of being shot kicks in when you're at a later stage of affiliation with a political movement. Fear of debt keeps you from going to the meetings in the first place. But by the time there's any direct prospect of being shot, you're already engaged in the movement, IYSWIM.
31: I hate xkcd and that godawful sloganeering-in-the-cause-of-youth-and-love-and-truth-and-beauty-and-imagination-and-commenting-on-the-Internet-without-inventing-an-imaginative-slogan-in-place-of-preciousness-while-using-big-boy-words-to-sound-tough tendency is a large portion of the reasons why. The remainder is the bacon thing that we've discussed before, quite some time ago.
I think parents today are less physically abusive and conformist than ever, which is why it confuses me that my students are so fucking cowardly about their relationships with their parents. Their terror of their parents seems to cause totally psychotic behavior. When I ask them what they think about something, they tell me what their parents say. When I ask if they disagree with their parents, they say it hadn't occurred to them to think about it. They want me to be willing to risk my job cheating on their behalf rather than their parents finding out they stopped attending the class.
Administrators are the ones who have to deal with these psychos, thank God, but I get it second-hand. The Dean calls me every few months about how so-and-so's mother has been calling every five minutes to insist that her daughter's grade be changed because she is GOING to be a DOCTOR goddamn it.
22: Also drivers licensing policy changed significantly through most of the country in the late 90s. Teenagers can't legally drive with other teenagers in the car anymore. So to get anywhere requires parents.
You think the tight job market might have something to do with it? Like, they've literally never had money to spend that didn't come from their parents? I think that'll do a lot to make you cringy.
36: Are you sure you don't know a weird bunch of kids, even for the college student set?
37: Has that change had a significant effect on the rate at which teenagers kill themselves and others with tons of steel that they aren't mature enough to worry about controlling?
39, haven't you read any threads here? Everyone AWB knows is weirder than anyone anyone else knows.
Also in the mix according to my parents: expectation of imminent nuclear annihilation.
I wonder what part of me now can be traced back to this. It certainly played an enormous role in my inner life from the age of eleven to maybe fifteen. My cousin thought we should watch The Day After and I spent the next few years looking out the window every time an airplane went over to see if it was DEATH. (I'm not sure how I would have been able to tell but it seemed worth looking.)
The remainder is the bacon thing that we've discussed before, quite some time ago.
Link or appropriate search string? Would "bacon" and "xkcd" do it? Because I can't help but be curious.
37: ah, yes, I remember that leading to one of the regular WTF? outbreaks from cisatlantic commenters here. It's a widespread thing then?
Also drivers licensing policy changed significantly through most of the country in the late 90s. Teenagers can't legally drive with other teenagers in the car anymore. So to get anywhere requires parents.
I never heard about that. Which states? What constitutes a "teenager"? Is this just at certain times of day, like the middle of hte night?
21: Good point. The health insurance stuff* is another controlling factor. At some point I realized that my standard for whether a young adult has a "good job" is whether it has health insurance benefits or not.
*But then again some of this is a change in our societal perception risks; I certainly had a decent period of time without health insurance in my young adulthood in the '70s.
37 Teenagers can't legally drive with other teenagers in the car anymore.
Wait, really? Crazy.
Huh.
I find that reading my old comments feels strange.
47, 37: "True" only with many, many caveats and as ajay alludes to already discussed so thoroughly in glorious and infuriating Unfogged fashion that this avenue should not to be explored further. The Archives await anyone with perverse curiosity.
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.
45: Click around here: http://www.iihs.org/laws/default.aspx
Lots of states have passenger limits for licensed young drivers (seems to mostly be 1 passenger, not 0). Lots of states now require you to have a permit for 6 months before you're eligible for a license, and require you to do a certain number of hours of driving before your eligible.
48: That comment's a classic, though. You should be especially proud of "the insistent rhetoric of someone trying to find a non-cliché way of saying clichéed things." Although I'd argue that that and "this special feeling within me and YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND" are more distinguishable, hence xkd's offense is worse, than your comment implies.
When I was a teenager, my driving with passengers was limited after one of them spilled schnapps. If you want to watch your kids, don't get a car with leather seats.
Lots of states now require you to have a permit for 6 months before you're eligible for a license, and require you to do a certain number of hours of driving before your eligible.
The System is really getting unreasonable. William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin drove from Tangier to Sausalito when they were fetuses, man!
For example, in Michigan you have to have a permit for 9 months before you can get a license (so your parents have to be in the car), and then for the next 5 months you cannot have anyone under 18 (other than family members) as passengers.
I don't actually disagree with making licensing harder, it's just that it needs to be balanced by making public transportation or bicycling more practical so that people without licenses can still live full lives.
"this special feeling within me and YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND"
In New Jersey you need 6 months of permit, to be at least 17, and still you are only allowed one passenger even counting family members! (With an exception for your dependents.) Massachussets is 6 months permit, 40 hours driving time, and then no passengers under 18 for the next six months. Anyway, that's enough examples for people who don't want to click through.
58: He did this in real life, if boingBoing can be trusted. When I was a child, I something something for Christ's sake grow up, hipsters something something.
The first state to do graduated licensing was Florida in 1996, and 22 states joined them by 2001. So I was right to think that this was a late 90's phenomenon (and not just late 90s in Pennsylvania).
60: I'm not sure anything about that counts as hip.
4: Partially pwned by everybody, but I think these days kids don't get away from their parents, except in structured ways where they're turned over to other authority figures like teachers and coaches.
48 and 53: Hating on xkcd is just another way for highbrow wannabes (or in AWB's case, genuine highbrows) to mock those of us whose brows are less lofty.
I stand by my response to AWB in that thread, though Ginger Yellow expressed it a little better here.
I mean I understand why someone would hate XKCD, but I agree with 65 that there's just no "you don't understand" undercurrent to XKCD. The point is that the reader is supposed to understand.
65, 66: There's not much daylight between "you don't understand" and "someone doesn't understand you, but I do; now, take off your pants donate via PayPal/say hi at Comic-Con."
Maybe I'm just falling into the trap of projecting my own youth onto others, but can things really have changed that dramatically w/r/t parental involvement in older teens lives in 20 years? Parental control just wasn't a big deal in college, or in high school either, and there's no way that I'm willing to believe that teenagers are meekly submitting to parental authority across the board and not figuring out ways to get around driving restrictions or whatever.
One of my (many) unsupported pet theories is that NYC kids are way more sheltered than those from the rest of America, except for a few who turn out insanely, bizarrely wild. Maybe that's what AWB is encountering.
I just can't get that worked up about it. Some of them are funny and insightful (somebody is wrong on the internet!), and lots of them are pretty meh.
65 -- no, some of us just hate math nerds.
68.last is nutty. Kids in New York have the subway.
66: The YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, I would argue, is not directed at the actual reader of xkcd, but at an imagined other reader. This is an issue in rhetoric that I've been working on for the past decade, so I'm a bit hypersensitive to it. The text of the strip seems to imagine some imaginary other person who doesn't get it for the actual reader and the author to bond in opposition against. That person is unemotional, sexist, ignorant, incurious, or just not sufficiently wowed by the universe. I don't like that imaginary person either, but xkcd seems really obsessed with the idea of that person, and how fantastic it is not to be that person.
Right. I'm saying your theory about driving is wrong. Just based on observational experience, mostly from about 20 years ago. Just because you can walk around doesn't mean it's easy to escape from your parents.
One of my (many) unsupported pet theories is that NYC kids are way more sheltered than those from the rest of America, except for a few who turn out insanely, bizarrely wild.
Some ways yes, some ways no. Less sheltered in terms of (obviously) feeling comfortable traveling alone through a big city. More sheltered in terms of not having privacy to get up to stuff -- getting time to be literally unobserved is difficult.
One of my (many) unsupported pet theories is that NYC kids are way more sheltered than those from the rest of America, except for a few who turn out insanely, bizarrely wild.
That fits my experience.
Wait, this thread has turned into the one hundredth iteration of Unfogged XKCD bashing? I hate you all. You keep returning to this topic because of your dark, withered souls.
Like, I'm sure I've said this before, but when I went to college twenty years ago, I found that suburban kids assumed I was much more sophisticated and experienced in the sex/drugs/rock&roll sense than they were. And they told stories about driving six hours to Ann Arbor with the oldest kid in the car being fourteen with a learners permit to score heroin that curled my hair. The naughtiest thing I'd done at that age was drink gin and make out in the stairwell of a brownstone in Brooklyn.
One of my (many) unsupported pet theories is that NYC kids are way more sheltered than those from the rest of America, except for a few who turn out insanely, bizarrely wild.
My few NYer friends who are actually from there do not support this theory at all. (One from a very privileged background, the other not.) They both had pretty much the run of the city (Manhattan), and very much took advantage of it.
The question is, what does sheltered mean? If we're talking about the opportunity to make homemade explosives, NYC kids are way more sheltered than rural kids -- there's just no way to get away with that kind of shenanigans. If we're talking about the opportunity to drink martinis in nice bars while trying to pass as thirty, or hang out in Indian restaurants, or go to the occasional Young Communists League meeting with friends, or travel to work and sports practices and friends' houses without adult help, then rural kids are more sheltered.
75: From 16 or so*, we were without any supervision for long stretches of time. And by "without supervision" I mean no one could see us, hear us (if we were shooting, they could probably hear us but nobody ever came to look), or come to our help should we need it. I once froze all the skin from my ear when four of us got stuck in a blizzard. They knew we were in trouble and someone set out to reach us, but it wasn't possible for a couple of hours.
*Much younger than that for some.
72: I'm trying to work out if Blume's link in 58 argues for or against your thesis here. It's possible that the cartoon works against it, but the mouseover supports it.
You grew up in the Ingalls family?
In case it wasn't clear, I was referring to XKCD as anthropological illustration only.
83: That blizzard-surprise thing happens to everybody on the plains.
How's this for a distinction: City kids are freer to participate in society without adult authority or intermediaries. So they're still bound by the same rules of normal behavior that adults are bound by in public, but within those rules they have autonomy. Rural kids have more freedom to act outside of society, by doing things that literally no adult is going to find out about ever. But if they want to participate in society, they're likelier to be dependent on a parent or another adult to act for them.
85: When I was thirteen, me and three friends walked around our suburb all day in a snowstorm where the wind-chill was something like negative 30. Snow was sticking to our faces. We were walking on a golf course at one point and walked off the tee area without realizing that there was a drop-off. Suddenly we were up to our chests in snow.
Only one of us had our parents call the cops, and the rest of us thought that was weird. I don't think my parents were concerned at all that I had wandered off in a snowstorm. There were no injuries.
[T]he one hundredth iteration of Unfogged XKCD bashing? ... [Y]our dark, withered souls.
It's not our fault. It's glandular.
I mean it's true that city kids are less likely to do things like 87, but so are *adults*.
And they told stories about driving six hours to Ann Arbor with the oldest kid in the car being fourteen with a learners permit to score heroin that curled my hair.
The beauty of being a 14 year old in NYC is that you don't have to drive 6 hours in order to score heroin.
I suppose that's true -- if I'd had the inclination I would have had to walk about ten blocks (lived in a very calm, pleasant, middle class housing project just north of Alphabet City).
86: Or we had our own society, admittedly a subsidiary one, and someone had to make an appeal to get outside assistance (in most cases - people got arrested and the like) and there were norms against that. However, I doubt anything we did would have been a huge surprise to most of the adults raised there.
It's how I was saved from complacency and student loans.
I grew up in a small city and have no idea where I could have scored heroin. I knew where one could buy guns, though. In bulk!
On the other hand, if anybody did see you, they didn't have to physically catch you or anything. They knew who you were. It's why we spent so much time in fields.
I meant "sheltered" in the sense of being closely under parental control, inclined to stick with familiar surroundings, etc. Less adventurous in that particular teenage/college way, except for the super wild minority. The most confident kids always seemed to be the ones from pleasant small towns or college towns (not giant suburban megopolises) where they could bike around and hang out on their own and generally rule the world.
As I say, this is both impressionistic and out of date.
My parents were wildly overprotective, but by the time I was 15 I was driving 75 miles or more by myself to other towns without telling anyone where I was. My friends and I went downtown all the time to hang out in the cooler parts of town. I didn't feel like anything was off-limits to me other than the 21+ clubs. I had my first real job by the time I was 14, though I'd been making my own little money since I was 10 giving basic piano and diving lessons.
I get the feeling that NYC kids don't feel welcome almost anywhere. No one is happy to see them or get their business. No one wants to hire them. My outer-borough students basically never go to Manhattan. I talked to some of them about coming to midtown to see some materials relevant to their research, they got all weird about how their parents wouldn't want them wandering around 34th St. I was pretty shocked. Like they might accidentally go to Macy's or get Pinkberry?
Huh. Wouldn't have thought that. Although, there was a streak of what I thought of as stupid lack of caution among the pleasant small-town kids, that might be what you're talking about: I'm remembering a lovely young All-American boy from upstate NY, Eagle Scout, volunteer fire fighter, all sorts of great stuff, who decided to steal some rolls of sod that were left out in a park at night. The cops showed up, he ran, got caught, and spent the night in jail. And I don't think a city kid would have been either as likely to steal the sod as a prank, or that a city kid would have run from the cops rather than surrendering instantly -- I thought he was a moron (in that instance. Otherwise, I thought the world of him) who was lucky he hadn't gotten shot.
Sort of a sense that "None of this is serious, so nothing importantly bad can possibly really happen to me." But I don't know if that's really enough to generalize from.
No one is happy to see them or get their business.
Not my experience as a kid or now, watching people reacting to my kids.
No one wants to hire them.
This, certainly. I didn't have any trouble working as a teen in the city back in the eighties, but I think it's much harder now. Is it easier for kids to find work in rural areas these days? It doesn't seem to be for my nieces, but the Southern Tier of NY is pretty depressed and was throughout their teen years.
my kids
Your kids are white. Most of my students aren't.
I've never stolen sod, but I'm 2 for 2 on running from the cops (except once I was a passenger).
But of course, so are you and your small town friends. The difference between my experience and and that of your students may be explained by my white privilege, but that doesn't say much about whether your minority students would have been freer and more respected in a small town.
Being sheltered/cautious or free/reckless is a matter of the temperament of the kid, of the parent, and their chemistry. There's no way that being in the city or country or suburb has much of an effect. All the location does is give specifics to the underlying inclination.
Yeah, I really think the home-trainin' is not very explanatory.
so are you and your small town friends
I am, but a lot my friends in high school were black, hispanic, and south asian. I also grew up in a "small town" of 2 million.
Okay, so your big city experience growing up sounds pretty much like mine, except that you drove more. (You're from Kansas, right? I don't remember the city.)
Where does the stereotype of Kansas City as a whites-only farm town come from, I wonder?
How many cities of two million are there in Kansas?
And what you seem to be arguing now is that where you were from, teenagers were free and respected regardless of ethnicity, whereas NY may be tolerable for white kids but is very hard on minority kids. And you know, maybe? I haven't lived in your home town, while you've lived in mine. But it sounds unlikely.
105: More employment for young people is a real difference, I think. Also, lower costs for housing mean it's entirely possible for young people to move out of the house between the ages of 16 and 18. New York can be kind of infantilizing in these ways, is all I'm saying. It's a bigger bar to getting on your own feet and feeling independent.
Where does the stereotype of Kansas City as a whites-only farm town come from, I wonder?
I'll hazard a guess: from the fact that it has Kansas in its name, which I think has been associated with white farmers at least since the Wizard of Oz.
Where does the stereotype of Kansas City as a whites-only farm town come from, I wonder?
Mostly, that I knew you were from Kansas, and had the impression that you didn't grow up in a city. I was wrong about where you grew up, rather than about Kansas City. (Also, while KC isn't lily-white, it does have a significantly higher white percentage of the population than NYC.)
109: Higher housing costs certainly make it hard to live alone in NYC, and unemployment certainly is higher for everyone in NY than in Kansas.
Kids in Kansas City are more adventurous because they have protein-filled beef and delicious barbecue running through their system. Though this doesn't really explain AWB.
Aren't AWB's students mostly immigrants from poorer countries than the US (or at least kids of immigrants from poorer countries)? That seems to me to be a more relevant distinction than white vs. non-white. Certainly the stereotype of many immigrant communities is that kids have less autonomy from their parents (regardless of race, cf. Jews and Greeks).
Kansas City and New York metro seem to have nearly identical unemployment rates of 8.5/8.6.
Also, Kansas City is a city of 2 million in the same sense that Chicago is a city of 9.5m or NYC one of 25m; which is to say, a rather misleading sense. You can make a stronger argument for, say, Boston, given how tightly drawn the borders of the city are re: the surrounding suburbs, but I don't recall KC being like this from my summers there. Then again, I didn't have a car.
There's a link in that comment that I'll go fix.
Seriously people, Kansas City is in Missouri! I can't find metro level unemployment rates, but unemployment is higher in Missouri than it is in New York state (which in turn is higher than Kansas).
I find I'm still cranky, so just to make it clear what made me cranky:
I get the feeling that NYC kids don't feel welcome almost anywhere. No one is happy to see them or get their business. No one wants to hire them.
Which is very far from my experiences as a kid in NYC and raising kids in NYC, although possibly true of AWB's students. And is pretty far from:
More employment for young people is a real difference, I think. Also, lower costs for housing mean it's entirely possible for young people to move out of the house between the ages of 16 and 18. New York can be kind of infantilizing in these ways, is all I'm saying.
118: And in Kansas, no? I thought it straddled the border.
Wow, the link in 115 really brings home how fucked the Central Valley and my favorite incredibly awful place, El Centro, are.
No, Kansas City is in both--certainly if someone's using it in an expansive "city of 2m" sense
But most of the people are in Missouri.
36: Maybe physically abusive parenting fosters independent thinking? Or, which is the same thing, you can exert much more effective control over your kids once they've left home if you used soft power rather than beatings.
I'm thinking about the studies that have shown that people who do something out of fear of punishment or hope of reward are much less likely to internalize and retain the behavior, than those who received mere moral admonitions. (e.g. the kids who were told "don't play with the toy or you'll be punished" vs. the ones who were told "it's wrong to play with the toy").
Yes, I did just reread Cialdini's book.
My point is mostly moot anyway, as we now have metro level unemployment data. I just thought that using Kansas's low level of unemployment as a proxy for KC was obviously wrong and the Missouri was obviously better. And indeed 8.5 is much closer to 8.8 than it is to 6.6.
I just thought that using Kansas's low level of unemployment as a proxy for KC was obviously wrong
Yeah, I didn't think to look for city-level data.
In 2003 I got a ticket for an open container--more precisely, for telling a cop to fuck himself when he approached me to inquire about an open container...Yelling at cops was sort of SOP where I came from. I didn't know NYC cops were so sensitive.
Wait, back home SOP is telling a cop to go fuck himself when he asks about your law breaking? And the odds of you getting a ticket don't take a drastic jump?
They should call it Missouri City. At least the Missouri part, anyway.
Let's go back up the thread a little.
I think parents today are less physically abusive and conformist than ever, which is why it confuses me that my students are so fucking cowardly about their relationships with their parents. Their terror of their parents seems to cause totally psychotic behavior. When I ask them what they think about something, they tell me what their parents say. When I ask if they disagree with their parents, they say it hadn't occurred to them to think about it. They want me to be willing to risk my job cheating on their behalf rather than their parents finding out they stopped attending the class.
Are your students' parents representative of US "parents today"? Aren't your students' parents mostly immigrants? How physically abusive and conformist are these particular parents?
California really is mopping up the sad end of the unemployment chart. I didn't realize it was so extreme there, compared to the rest of the county.
Or they could call the Kansas part Missouri City, for sort of a contrasty effect.
It's true that I might be completely insane and confused about why I felt the right to make choices for myself and eat the consequences of my own decisions, and why I have so many friends who made really strange and interesting choices for themselves, while my students, both rich and poor, immigrant and NYC-born, religious and not, seem to be terrified of being seen as "not normal" or pissing off their parents in any way. I'm just trying to make guesses here, just like everyone. But it's not because everyone I grew up knowing are white frontier people. I've assumed maybe it was the employment/housing thing, but it's also possible that it's the specific culture of the high school I went to. Who knows? It could all be generational, and if I went back now I'd find that all the kids coming out of my high school have become drones.
I also expect that AWB is seeing a "people who go to college too close to home" affect. I'd bet the students in the college in the small city I grew up in aren't so different.
Possibly it's not regional at all, but something about the schools where you've taught? I don't know what it would be, but it seems likelier that there's a common factor among the students at a particular school or small group of schools than that urban life in KC is that much more generally supportive of a free, adult lifestyle for teenagers than urban life in NYC.
Pwned by Unfoggetarian. The schools you've taught in are mostly commuter students, right? That's a demographic that could explain a lot of being under a parent's thumb.
127: Yup! We yelled at cops. It was wrong, officer; I'm sorry. No, I have never been arrested or even ticketed for anything west of the Hudson River.
About the Kansas City thing: Seriously, the experience of living there is living in a very big city. You aren't driving along and hit State Line Road and say "Oh crap, I am now in a totally different city!" It's all pretty much one place, of course with the narcissism of small differences that goes along with a place like that. The stereotypes are that suburban Kansans are rich, downtown KCKians are poor, downtown KCMOans are rich, and suburban KCMOans are poor.
I've taught at five colleges in NYC, not all commuter students. Maybe a little over half, possibly as many as 2/3, are commuters.
I've never stolen sod, but I'm 2 for 2 on running from the cops (except once I was a passenger).
Ha, I was pretty good at getting away as well and my exception was also when I was a passenger in some dork's car. Conversely I now have a good record of catching people who run. But what hell is going on in NY that LB thought running from a sod stealing prank was a good way to get shot?
Certainly commuter students in cities with high rent have significantly less autonomy than people of comparable ages in just about any other life situation.
But what hell is going on in NY that LB thought running from a sod stealing prank was a good way to get shot?
I was brought up believing that making any sudden movements when a cop could see you, much less actually running from them for any reason, was dangerous -- that for any police officer, there was a fair shot that they were exhausted to the point of paranoia, nervous, jumpy, easily frightened and easily pissed off. Mom may have gone a little overboard with this; she grew up in an Irish neighborhood in Queens, so knew a lot of guys who grew up to be NYC cops, and found them scary.
133 sounds pretty convincing to me.
Sure, I did something wrong and I was in prison for 18 months.
When did we start letting felons comment here?
Oops. That was me. Came off sounding mean and stupid, rather than jokey.
One of my friends recently accidentally ran from the cops in the Bronx. Two men with guns jumped out of an unmarked car yelling at a person he happened to be walking past. They never identified themselves as cops, but one of them did run him down and slam him on the concrete. I think the cop told him he was lucky he didn't get shot.
Is there any evidence that parenting styles overall have become more dysfunctional. It seems to me that complaining about "parents today" is second only to complaining about "kids today" in terms of perennial, anecdotal tales of social decline.
Here is an Atlantic article complaining about "parents today":
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-land-your-kid-in-therapy/8555/
I don't think it is a good idea to be a helicopter parent, but is that shit really going to hurt the kids? Like child abuse hurt the kids? I don't see it.
I would not call the cops here about anything short of a major crime, for fear that I would be indirectly responsible for someone's death. I think since I've been here you're almost as likely to be killed by a cop in my precinct as by a civilian. (Including one cop shooting another cop for running down the street with a gun chasing after a criminal.)
127: Yup! We yelled at cops. It was wrong, officer; I'm sorry.
Oh, people yell at us all the time, it's not a big deal. It's just that I'm pretty sure the specific instance you describe would likely result in a ticket pretty much anywhere in the country. We've got areas with chronic problems with drunks and fights so there's less tolerance on open containers and such. Typically it's a lot easier for me and nicer on the other party to just have them pour it out and go somewhere else. No fine for them and no paperwork for me. But if the response from them is to tell me to go fuck myself than that citation and report starts looking a lot more appealing.
I've internalized the idea that around cops you should make no sudden movements, be really polite, and consent to absolutely nothing. Raised in the East Bay Area.
Two men with guns jumped out of an unmarked car yelling at a person he happened to be walking past. They never identified themselves as cops, but one of them did run him down and slam him on the concrete. I think the cop told him he was lucky he didn't get shot.
Were they plainclothes? Because sometimes really stupid shit gets done by plainclothes guys. Especially at night. Citizens can't tell who the hell you are, not to mention other cops.
The author of the article linked in 145 needs to reread Winnicott.
147: I was 23, and had about 50 cents to my name, and the cop had no evidence, but was writing me up anyway. It wasn't easy to remain calm.
149: Yeah, I think there's a real problem where "I know I'm a cop, therefore everyone else should know I'm a cop." That seems to be how the Sean Bell thing went bad.
Yeah: plainclothes at night.
Why do (non-undercover) cops ever not wear uniforms anyway? If L&O is to be believed it mostly seems to be a status thing for detectives. But it sure seems like saving lives would outweigh that.
the cop had no evidence, but was writing me up anyway
With ticket offenses at least, isn't it the norm for a cop's word to be taken as sufficient? Just curious.
96: My parents were wildly overprotective, but by the time I was 15 I was driving 75 miles or more by myself to other towns without telling anyone where I was.
I'm having trouble reconciling the first part of this sentence with the second part.
I was 23, and had about 50 cents to my name, and the cop had no evidence, but was writing me up anyway. It wasn't easy to remain calm.
Ah, that's different. If he's already writing the cite then fuck it, might as well vent. A lot of open container laws are ridiculous. Ditto smoking. A nice big public park is the perfect place for a beer and a smoke. Banning it there is sadistic.
156: Try imagining why someone who grew up with overprotective parents might be excited to learn how to drive and get a job so she can buy a car.
155: I'm reading that as meaning "The cop didn't actually see me with an open container -- he was writing me up based on speculation." But I could be wrong.
156, 158: I think all pf meant was that your parents had clearly loosened up on the overprotectiveness by the time you were fifteen -- they let you learn to drive, buy a car, and go places without keeping them in the loop. Parents overprotective enough to prevent their teenagers from doing any of those things are conceivable.
159: He was a block away when I threw away the can in a bag. My friend just put his under the bench around the same time. The cop hassled me, telling me to go get the goddamn can out of the trash and show him what a bad girl I was or something. I told him I wasn't going to fish through the fucking trash for some park ranger on a Vespa. He demanded my license and made fun of me for having moved from Ohio. It went back and forth for a while.
A nice big public park is the perfect place for a beer and a smoke.
But not a blowjob, as we established some time back!
||
This is a great picture of W. With the pointy ears and the pose that makes the suit look a little too big (and the horrible pattern on the suit) he looks like a pure huckster.
In fact he looks like some familiar pop culture icon of untrustworthiness which I can't place at the moment.
|>
Parents overprotective enough to prevent their teenagers from doing any of those things are conceivable.
Hoo boy, are they ever. My parents wouldn't let me date until I was 16 (meaning: wouldn't let me go anywhere alone with a boy) and then afterward wouldn't let me miss 6 pm dinner unless they knew exactly where I was and with whom.
Why do (non-undercover) cops ever not wear uniforms anyway? If L&O is to be believed it mostly seems to be a status thing for detectives.
It also happens with cool guy squads like gang suppression (Vic Mackey types). Very dangerous in a lot of ways because they're still working the street.
Missouri City is in Texas.
The current center of population for the US is in Texas County, Missouri.
Catching up with this thread slowly:
I like XKCD fine and also see your objections to it, but I very much appreciate that there are women in every one of these panels.
Back to catching up with the thread...
163: In fact he looks like some familiar pop culture icon of untrustworthiness which I can't place at the moment.
Look to me like an unholy combination of Ross Perot, Neil Patrick Harris and the Keebler Elf.
Look to me like an unholy combination of Ross Perot, Neil Patrick Harris and the Keebler Elf.
That made me laugh.
I'm glad there's nobody else in the office at the moment.
But not a blowjob, as we established some time back!
Oh sure, blame the park regs on why you're not getting blown.
170.last: Unemployment is bad, but at least you don't need to keep your pants on the whole day if you are employed.
[A]t least you don't need to keep your pants on the whole day if you are employed.
Now you tell me.
Depending on how much your desk covers.
Wow, the link in 115 really brings home how fucked the Central Valley and my favorite incredibly awful place, El Centro, are.
Oh my poor Valley. I can't compare employment stats, but I think you've got to consider Avenal for the position of favorite incredibly awful place. Beautiful little valley, but boy does it have a creepy vibe to it.
Heavy.
I blame high-fructose corn syrup.
Beautiful little valley, but boy does it have a creepy vibe to it.
Inspired by this I just googled Avenal. I'm not sure whether the creepiness actually does come through in the google image results or whether I'm just primed to perceive them as creepy due to 175.
Depending on how much low-hanging fruit your desk covers.
Fixed.
I very much appreciate that there are women in every one of these panels.
So now men can't have long hair?
115. This stuff should be better known. I can say with some confidence that if you told any random person outside the United States that 10 out of 11 metro areas in that country with >15% unemployment were in California, they'd call you a liar to your face.
Much less that one of them is the Hanford-Corcoran "metropolitan" area. Even I had to look that one up.
I would have thought that the Nevada part of California would be doing worse relative to the California part than it is.
I think the pop culture icon of untrustworthiness for which NickS is groping is Pat Robertson.
Try imagining why someone who grew up with overprotective parents might be excited to learn how to drive and get a job so she can buy a car.
LB caught my intent in 159. My parents weren't overprotective, but they didn't let me drive 75 miles or more by myself to other towns when I was 15. And at that age, they usually had a pretty good idea where I was (although often no clue whatsoever about what I was doing).
I can say with some confidence that if you told any random person outside the United States that 10 out of 11 metro areas in that country with >15% unemployment were in California, they'd call you a liar to your face.
Stories like this one probably don't help with the disconnect either. (Seriously, it's crazy right now. I posted my resume yesterday and have gotten more phone calls from recruiters -- starting less than an hour after it went up -- than I know what to do with.)
If I could go back in time I would make my 16-22 year old self pick up some actual computer programming skills. Math Ph.D. is certainly considered a useful qualification in silicon valley, but the addition of even a small amount of real computer knowledge and skills would make the tech industry a much more plausible fall-back.
The huge interior Valley is truly a different world. A strange one, too. I have often wanted to travel it slowly, but cannot imagine how I'd find someone else interested in taking that trip. Some of the Portuguese communities still have bullfights in the Valley.
187: I've been thinking that for awhile, too. Ah, well. Probably too late at 30 to become a "real" programmer, but not too late to take some classes and try to learn something.
189: Fuck no, not too late. Jesus Christ, there are more bad programmers* employed than there are bad of just about anything else. Also to 187.
*Not that you'd be bad.
184: Jeez yeah, the same pixie-ish look.
The problem for me is that it doesn't really make sense for me to spend time now on a backup plan rather than just putting that time into the main plan. But it sure would do a lot for my sanity if I knew in the back of my head I could just move to SF and get a tech job. (I mean, I'm sure I could get a finance job as a backup, but I don't want one. Whereas living in SF and working at a tech company actually sounds like a good life.)
188: I totally would do it (were I not moving in a month and a half). I think it would be amazing to do a closer look. After a decade of living in Stockton, Sacramento and Davis I know the upper valley fairly well, but much of the southern section remains more mysterious.
188: That idea appeals to me some, actually. Earlier this year I experimentally planned out a 58-county-seat tour, but eventually decided it was too much driving; plus, while there are several Google Maps-integrated traveling-salesman-algorithm online tools, none accepts more than 20 locations or so at a time. (What's First World Problems cubed?)
187 If I could go back in time I would make the 18-year-old me get a job, any job, either an after-school thing or a year before college so I wouldn't float through college with no idea what people have to do every day of their lives. It's the only thing I can think of that might have prevented me from bumbling around so much, most of which time (but not all) I regard as wasted.
I was sheltered and not sheltered. My parents so forcefully assumed I would never do anything wrong that, sensing them floating above me, a semi-external superego, I never did until I left for college. They knew where I was pretty much every moment of the first 18 years of my life, and this was a bit crippling. On the other hand they encouraged all kinds of interesting exploration I'm glad of (capital-C Culture, travel, languages), and in certain ways I was, I think, sophisticated.
I suppose I wish I'd grown a pair and been more rebellious in the mostly harmless ways kids usually are and had some fights with them about it I'd end up having awkwardly, at the wrong time in life, later. Sometimes indirectly, in their absence.
(were I not moving in a month and a half)
Wait, you're moving? And not into the house next to me? I do think the shouty neighbors will leave, and I was just waiting until they did to ask you to please move next door.
My last drive up from LA, I took the 43 for as long as I could. Stopped by the Colonel Allensworth Historic State Park which I'd read about in The King of California. A while later I totally regretted adding two hours to my drive. But once I got home, I was glad I did again.
188: Ooh, can I come? I'm always up for trying to find little California towns that are still connected to their past communities. Oh, hey - while we're out there, can we go to the spot near Hanford where the Mussel Slough Tragedy happened? I've wanted to go there ever since I read The Octopus. Also, I've always wanted to do a trip to the extreme northeastern corner of the state - it looks like you could plot a drive that would loop you through California, Nevada, Oregon, and back to California in a day. But it's through extremely desolate country - we'd have to be prepared to survive a few days in case of auto breakdown.
196: I am! I'm removing myself to England. So, about as different from California as could be. I would have rather enjoyed the house next door to you, though.
Yes! I don't know the Mussel Slough Tragedy (off to look it up), but I'll stay in the Hanford vicinity for as long as I can, to listen to my favorite radio station in the world: 103.3 Kings Radio, your nostalgia station for Porterville, Lindsey and Hanford.
Really? An unspoken longing for a trip to the San Joaquin Valley lurks in many commenters' hearts? There's also the Tehachapi Loop, which I've seen, with a train on it.
197, 199 et al. -- Central Valley + Northeastern Corner exploration* sounds like my dream trip. Maybe we can organize a group. I also love the Tehachapi Loop!
I've spent a lot of time in Bakersfield,* but that's about it.
*Been fantasizing about buying a shack in Shasta or Trinity county for when the shit goes down.
*Walked the streets, you might say.
I thought you of all people would get the reference.
I don't want to name drop or boast about my incredible connections or anything, but I could probably get us a tour of a canal or two. Or maybe Edmonston (the pumping plant on the east side of the Grapevine) (although I don't know if they give tours and kinda think they don't).
I've been walking the floor over you
I can't sleep a wink that is true
I'm hoping and I'm praying
As my heart breaks right in two
Walking the floor over you.
This floor is in Bakersfield?
I thought you of all people would get the reference.
Heh, I first heard of that song via this blog.
199: Really? You haven't read Frank Norris? I'm surprised! Especially The Octopus - a novel that's a really good look at Central Valley farming life (including irrigation!) in the late 1800s. All of his works are good for detailed looks at late-19th-century day-to-date life in California, generally in a somewhat melodramatic framework. Actually, start with McTeague - that is such a great book!
191: The word "pixie" reminded me of another possiblity - This may be who NickS is thinking of.
I'm removing myself to England.
Ji? Which bit?
210: Banbury-adjacent at first. Once I can work, we'll be looking a bit farther afield for more permanent settlement, but it's unlikely we'll get too far away from there.
I knew about The Octopus as an influential book, but haven't read it. I'll pick that up, thank you.
This may be who NickS is thinking of.
That's pretty awesome. And has some of the carnival barker feel that I get from the suit in the photo.
211. I'd ask about that, cos my grandparents lived in Banbury when I was a kid and it was great then, but after Alcan folded it looked like a bit of a ghost town. Nice to know people are still going there, but what do they do?
214: I really can't claim to be an expert on this, but it seems like the town is doing pretty well. In part due to the construction of the M40, the villages have been populated by commuters, which while perhaps not ideal does mean more business. There is still a big Nestle plant there, which regularly makes the town smell of instant coffee. The high street seems to be doing well,* though it seems like business has been diverted to some extent to a large shopping mall at the foot of the high street. My partner's family have a business that he currently works in - a shop - and it's survived since the 1950s. My understanding is that the neighboring town of Brackley was hit even harder in the 80s/90s, but that too is on a rebound. Housing prices are certainly high. We'll likely be moving away from Banbury, but we want to remain close to the family, so not too far.
*I think it is a national difference, but I was amazed at the constant amount of foot traffic there. Very different than the US.
Singular! Singular! That damn "s" on "partner" confused me.
(Is that a British thing? I had no idea.)
I think saying "my partner" is more of a British thing than saying "family have".
Really? I just associate that with academics.
I associate it with people who spend time around LGBTQ people, or are sensitive to those issues.
Possibly a good deal of overlap between 220 and 221.
I associate it with people who are unmarried.
Maybe it's just been adopted by British media outlets as part of the house style, but especially on the sports pages and in sports podcasts I am always hearing about some footballer or cricketer or formulaoner's "partner" where US sports media 100% of the time would say "girlfriend".
(Is that a British thing? I had no idea.)
I think so. I first encountered it when I was teaching English in Germany, where all the teachers prided themselves on teaching British English.
Most common now among all couples, not only gay ones, is the confusing term, partner. At the Academy Awards, a winning actor thanked both his partner and his wife, and Miss Manners was disappointed to hear later that the former referred to a business partner.
227: I will now be tempted every time I make a grammar mistake to try to pass it off as British thing.
229: Probably not an effective strategy in Banbury.
230: Yeah, I was just realizing that. Oh well.
But then you can pass it off as an American thing. You get to play both sides of the non-border here.
197, 199, 201: Came across perhaps the ultimate Central Valley music video .
I've been wanting to do a hiking trip in the South Warner Wilderness for a while. Way far northeastern corner of CA with a view over the Great Basin.
187 If I could go back in time I would make my 16-22 year old self pick up some actual computer programming skills.
That's funny, I think I've made the exact opposite remark here before. I don't quite regret having programming skills, but I do regret the fraction of my teenagehood spent writing silly programs, and I regret having something of a reputation among physicists as a computer guy.
(Also, I'm pretty sure you could pick up decent programming skills without exerting a huge amount of effort.)
Partner is aloof or• British.
Americans would say, smashpiece.
• (or, not Xor).
Finally caught up, for some reason.
Also, I've always wanted to do a trip to the extreme northeastern corner of the state - it looks like you could plot a drive that would loop you through California, Nevada, Oregon, and back to California in a day. But it's through extremely desolate country - we'd have to be prepared to survive a few days in case of auto breakdown.
I went through that area a few times as a kid on family trips. No one day loop, but we did go across on some dirt road where there was some enclosed pool-like hot spring in the middle of nowhere. Also, Goose Lake's shores were full of animal droppings. I can't say I remember much else.
When I was 16, shortly before my 17th birthday, I was all set to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. My dad dropped me off at the Mexican border in early May; I walked 20 miles to where we had camped the night before and where he and my sister were still staying. Then they left and I went on. But I twisted my ankle a few days later, it was the first post-drought year and there was still snow in the southern California mountains, long before you get to the Sierras, and I decided, probably too impulsively, to just say forget it instead of waiting out the ankle, which really wasn't so bad considering I walked five miles along a highway to get to a phone. So I only went about 80 miles. It snowed in the Sierras at least twice after I gave up on the trail and the high pass roads weren't open until about a month after I'd planned to go through. They don't close the trails, but without more ice training than I had, I would have had to skip out anyway, or walk through the lower areas near towns, which is actually probably more dangerous than being in the mountains. And I couldn't wait it out, because going south-to-north you have to get to Canada before the weather turns, and anyway, I couldn't defer starting college in the fall, so I needed to be done by Labor Day and that wasn't going to be possible. In retrospect, not making it to the end and stopping in Oregon still would have been a much better way to spend the summer.
Socially, though, I lived a pretty sheltered life growing up. But mostly by choice.
Regarding the KCK/KCMO sub-thread, I was quite sure I'd previously shared this story about messing up a tour poster.
I think so. I first encountered it when I was teaching English in Germany, where all the teachers prided themselves on teaching British English.
It's definitely a British English thing; one of the better-known soccer bloggers freelances for ESPN, and every time he has an article up he tweets an apology for the house style making him refer to teams in the singular.
Yglesias points out here that many people will feel that if student loan debt keeps people from making trouble that this is a good thing.
