Solo Current Event: "Hey Parents, Are You Raising a Generation of Nincompoops?"

Before I get into a discussion on my own current event topic, I really wanted to talk about another presentation that went before me because it was really interesting! (I kind of felt really intimidated by the time I had to get up in front of the class to present. haha) I would love to talk about the others but since I should keep this short....... I can only put in a little bit extra >.<

The most interesting one I thought was the one about the discovery of a planet that seems very similar to this Earth that we live in. It raises so many different possibilities, conflicts, and just curiosity! Are there other living species besides the ones we know on the Earth today on that planet? Would we ever be able to communicate with them, if they do exist? Can we ever come up with the technology to travel 20 light years away to visit the planet ourselves? Would we be able to take refuge on it if/when the Earth fails us (even if it won't be until many many generations after us)? If life exists on this planet, what can be said about the principles of some religion, such as Christianity? Above all, are there other planets that are like this one out of the countless number of planets in our galaxy alone? The possibilities seem endless.

As for my own article, "Hey Parents! Are You Raising a Generation of Nincompoops?" I found it while I was looking through the news on http://www.msnbc.com/ I read through several articles under the Technology section to find a curent even article and to me, the one I picked seemed the most interesting and relevant. The article basically talked about how children of the new generation are lacking some 'basic' skills that used to be elementary and necessary to people. In most cases, they were like second nature! Children learn to tie their shoelaces later, if at all, and teenagers are baffled by can openers, ice cube trays, and clothes hangers! The articles goes into an analysis of whether this lack of basic skills in children is of their parents' faults or not.

The questions I asked were "Should parents be teaching everything that kids used to be taught or is it unnecessary?"  and "Are we really 'nincompoops' or did the whole set of required knowledge just change?" The respones I got were pretty interesting and it was even better to see how the opinions differed among people who were part of different generations. The general idea, though, is that children are not stupid by any means. It is true that they are lacking some skills that were thought to be basic but times changed with the advancement of technology. Parents and schools have stopped teaching as many skills for a reason: they're not necessary! New machineries and skills that are needed to operate them have overtaken the set of skills we previously needed. In place of them, however, we have a whole diffeent set of skills that are needed to function successfully in a technology-driven society.

So to answer the question of my article, no, we are not a generation of nincompoops nor are the next generations. In fact, we are actually the ones who are most fit to live in the current state of society.