Kids These Days

About 2 years after finishing college I was at a party in my hometown with a bunch of people I had gone to highschool with. One buddy I got to speak with had been a solid baseball player while we were in school together and got to keep playing ball through college (cue Springsteen any time). For the last two Springs he was putting in some time as an assistant coach for our alma mater and was having a good time with it. As we spoke, the topic got to how the students on the team just didn’t seem to put in the effort he remembered putting in himself back in the day. To commiserate, I told him about the troubles I was having with the three new, high school aged employees my boss had saddled me with at the greenhouse. It took about five minutes of this venting (bitching?) before one of us used the phrase ‘kids these days.’ Mind you, we were about 24 years old ourselves and even now at the ripe age of 28 I don’t think it’s quite right for me to comment on youth culture as though it were something foreign from me. That being said, I did say something about kids these days a little while ago, talking with some friends here.

These guys were all 30-something Cameroonians with children between the ages of 1 and 10. Honestly, I think their gripe session was doing something a little more “uphill both ways in the snow” than “kids these days”, but it still seems relevant. In either case, both sorts of complaint highlight a difference in generations. Often, this is just a perceived difference based on an idealized view of our own youth (me and my friend fit this I’m sure) but other times it is real (the children of these Cameroonian guys do have access to technology and school/learning materials they themselves didn’t).

This got me thinking, is it just a part of the human condition to see a difference between your own generation and those that follow? Or does there need to be actual cultural differences? If the life of your children is nearly identical to your own life do you still vetch about kids these days? Or is it a symptom of the emergence of an actual youth culture?

I imagine that in 17^th century Europe there probably wasn’t too much disagreement between generations amongst the peasant class. There just wouldn’t have been enough media (music, books, theatre) or it wouldn’t have changed quickly enough to divide generations in a philosophical way. I’d guess that the same has been true here in Oku until very recently. You’ll hear people of all ages describe their culture in the same terms. What you don’t hear is anything about youth culture, counter culture, or underground culture (maybe you could find that in Bamenda). Being the product of my own culture (GenY, maybe?) I have to think that this is an unfortunate lack in Cameroon and one that may be filled in a reasonable amount of time if “kids these days” conversations are any indication.