Essay/Term paper: The adults are always right?

Essay, term paper, research paper:  History Essays

The Adults Are Always Right?


"Clean your room! Don't do that! Stop watching that stupid television,
don't you have a book to read? Didn't I tell you to clean your room, do you want
to be a slob when you grow up? Go to school, don't you have school today? When I
was a kid . . ."

Welcome to the lives of almost every teenager in North America. To most
parents, when the above words are spoken, they expect to see their teen rush at
the opportunity to serve them. The above words mean something to them and they
think it means something to us teens. They don't understand that the words go in
through one ear and out through the other. Does a German understand the words of
an Italian? No! Does a Chinese man understand the words of a Greek man? No! The
reason, they are two completely different languages. Now although parents and
their kids speak the same language, parents don't understand that we tune out of
English when we want. If we know something is going to be asked of us and we
don't want to do it, we turn our brains into "Nag Mode." To define Nag Mode, is
simple. Every syllable that comes out of the mouth of an adult is heard as "
nag.' For example:

Adults say: "clean your room! ."
Kids hear: "nag nag nag!"
Adults say: "Stop watching television."
Kids hear: "nag nag nag nag nag nag nag."

They think of us as being lazy, and irresponsible, selfish and useless.
Some adults quiver when they hear how we will one day run this world. What makes
us lazy, the fact that we watch an hour of television after a hard day at school,
before eating dinner and doing our homework? Why are we irresponsible, because
we don't have time to walk the dog due to us studying for our upcoming exam?
We're selfish because we want peace and quite for when we study? And useless
because we can't run any errands for them when we're taking that one hour out of
our day to relax. They do, do a lot and I respect them and all, but give us some
credit for a change. Is it our fault that almost every house has at least one
television bigger than 22" and that basic cable comes with at least thirty
channels? They keep telling us their stories about when they were kids, and it
always has to do with something we can't help.

"When I was a kid we had a 13" black and white television,
and if you had BETA . . ."
"When I was a kid, our schools were 14 miles away and we had
no shoes. We walked bare foot through mountains,
and had to wrestle crocodiles . . ."
"When I was a kid, we never had music!"

Like we really want to hear about their pet dinosaurs, and what they had
and never had. It's fun to hear how adults can over-exaggerate and all but what
can we do about technology? Is it our fault it exists? They don't understand how
times have changed, and how kids are growing up in this, the modern world. They
grow up with music, and sports, and fast cars. Adults criticize these kids. Just
the other day I was at the mall and two Greek women were talking about how I
looked and what kind of person I must be (in Greek of course,) not knowing I
myself was Greek. I turned to them and translated "never judge a book by its
cover' in their language. The expressions on their faces would have made a great
Kodak© moment, however I don't think my camera catches the particular shade of
red that was expressed on their faces. They think it's easy to look the way we
do, but we take pride in our "grooming' ourselves. This goes to show how times
have changed. Kids no longer wear uniforms to public school anymore.We have the
freedom to wear what we want. However, is it our looks that make adults think
we're irresponsible and lack values? There are the few that look odd, act odd,
and . . . well . . . are odd, but do those few speak for the rest of us?
All kids ask for, is to be treated like they deserve to be treated. How
will putting them down and insulting them, make them feel better about
themselves and their surroundings? There are many intelligent minds out there
that have yet to be discovered. Teachers look at a lot of these kids and think
of them as being punks and like to pick on them because they don't pay as much
attention in class, as the rest of the students. They don't spend as much time
with these kids because they think that they're going to grow up and be nobodies
in life. What they look at as fooling around and not paying attention, is really
lack of interest. Lack of interest because the class is too boring. To open up
these minds classes have to have more life in them. I mean, who wants to be in a
classroom for an hour and listen to a sustained, monotonous voice speak rather
slowly as they take notes? I mean no offense to those teachers, but put
yourself in that position and contemplate how it may feel. This seems like
laziness to learn. Laziness, leads to selfishness, which leads to dishonesty,
which leads to lack of values. For example:
Mark's mother tells him to clean his room. Mark is watching
"Honeymooners" reruns at the time and is too lazy to clean it. Besides it's the
one where Ralph takes the gang to his boss's house for dinner, one of his
favourite episodes, so he says he cleaned it. Mark's mother finds out the truth
because his little sister Sarah ratted him out. Mark's mother doesn't think her
son is a really bad person, but she can find room for lots of improvement.
Mark's laziness to clean his room makes him selfish, in which he doesn't
want to help his mother. He would rather watch television. In order to continue
to watch television, Mark must lie to his mother which makes him dishonest.
Mark's mother finds out that her son was lazy, selfish, and dishonest and begins
to believe that he lacks values.
It is true that many kids are lazy for no apparent reason, and that they
do have better things to do with their time. And instead of putting them down
and saying, "Hey Paul, why don't ya get up and do something instead of watching
that damn T.V. all the time." They can try to include kids in their activities,
or reward them for what they have done. The better the job done, the larger the
reward. This way kids are encouraged to do something around the house.
The last point I would like to make is that kids want to be heard. A
good example here is when it was time to go school shopping. Two weeks before
school started my father told me to write a list of everything I needed and that
upcoming weekend we would go and get everything. The weekend passed and I had
not yet gone. I asked again the next day when he had returned from work and he
told me, "you never said anything about going school shopping. You have to wait
till next weekend now." Having my older brother and mother witnesses to both of
these encounters, they told him how I already said I wanted to go school
shopping. He changed the subject and continued another conversation. Now I'm
sure I could have reminded him that weekend, rather than just writing a list and
giving it to him, he's a busy man, but the fact that he couldn't even remember
me telling him about it really got to me. And that is why I say kids want to be
heard. I'm sure many things that kids say are senseless and better off unheard
however there are those intelligent minds out there that can actually say
something, worth saying. And it is those kids that should be listened to.
To conclude I would like to say that kids shouldn't blame adults for
looking at people and criticizing. I mean even kids criticize other kids and
adults, however the feeling is different when you are called dumb by a classmate,
and called dumb from your teacher. But to tell you the truth I don't think kids
should really care about what others say when they criticize. I'm pretty sure
people didn't tell Bill Gates that he was the coolest guy on earth! Thank you!