Our Centers Of The Universe

by Jonah Goldberg - August 8th, 2007 - Townhall.com

. . . . according to a report, "Egos Inflating Over Time." Jean Twenge of San Diego State University and a team of psychologists combed through the answers of 16,475 college students nationwide who took the Narcissistic Personality Inventory survey between 1982 and 2006. Their conclusion: Today's American youth are the most self-absorbed since we've studied the subject. "We need to stop endlessly repeating, You're special, and having children repeat that back," Twenge told the Associated Press. "Kids are self-centered enough already."

No matter how many times we repeat that mantra, it means nothing when kids see others beating them. Their reaction is to shut out the world and become more narcissistic. It is at its heart the reason for the other obvious symptom we see daily. Children expect that their world will be filled with excitement and interesting things. "That's boring" is their answer to anything that requires discipline or more than a momentary attention span. As a result, they can learn nothing of any great complexity.

It is the reason so many kids have mastered the superficial use of technology, like cell phones and text messaging and chat rooms. At the same time they are useless at "understanding" any complex technology subjects. A superficial use of technology while expressing boredom at understanding it is not a recipe for future success in our increasingly technical world.

At our Bertie Schools we see a large percentage of students who use technology while they score abysmally on the state tests about math and science. After two generations of the feel good mantra of our public schools, why are we surprised?