My reaction was exactly the same as yours, LB, that this is a problem in the school's scheduling rather than the students' attitudes. What kind of school doesn't schedule lunch?!
My guess is that there's actually two lunch periods and the school needs to do that because there are too many students to have them all on the same schedule.
Yup. I can see reasons like overcrowding -- they don't want kids eating outside the lunchroom, and the lunchroom's too small for the whole school at once. Or security problems -- not enough staff to manage all the kids if they're not in a controlled classroom setting. But anything I can think of is a problem for the school, not something going on in the students' heads.
Can't see the article you want, but I did this in high school and the Times needs to calm down. The reason it's possible to schedule through a lunch at my old high school is that there are three periods for lunch due to cafeteria capacity, which means it's impossible to have an entire school shutdown around noon. We couldn't fit 2000 students in the cafeteria, so periods 5, 6, and 7 were the potential lunch-hours. The idea was that you picked your classes (electives like arts and music only met at certain times), and ended up in the lunch that worked for you.
But it's the science labs and the arts that screw everything up.
At my good public high school, we had science labs (two consecutive periods, once a week, which necessitated either a study hall, missing lunch for lab or a really forgiving music teacher who didn't mind you missing one day a week) and a music program (for obvious reason, the various bands couldn't be offered at many multiple times), and that led to a lot of constraints on the flexibility of the schedule if a student wanted to load up on AP science courses.
I never had a study hall, and after ninth grade I never had a lunch either because it was the only way to make the schedule work given that I was in the orchestra and the band and taking an assload of science classes.
Did I starve? No, I packed around a brown bag lunch. Woo.
5 to 3. To 4, sure, but then the school has a responsibility (a) not to schedule classes where the only section is during a lunch period and (b) not to approve a student's schedule without lunch in it. The story's angle is still weird.
6: That's another possibility, that this is neither new nor a problem.
My high school had an open campus for lunch. Probably a good thing considering the cafeteria was earthquake unsafe and shut down for renovation most of the time I was there.
"Kids today are under so much pressure to succeed" is an evergreen story that I can remember from my high school years. I don't believe any of them anymore. I don't actually read any of them anymore. They're the kind of stories that make me think I should actually read Chomsky.
Did I starve? No, I packed around a brown bag lunch. Woo.
I would think the bigger concern is/should be whether you got some 20 minute period of downtime at some point during the day.
At my high school there were three lunch periods, but all in the fourth hour, 20 minutes each. So you either went directly to lunch and then to class, or to class and then to lunch and then back to class, or to class and then to lunch. Not ideal for the people with their fourth hour broken up, but at least there was lunch.
Mine shut down for lunch, and had what I guess you'd call an open campus. All the scheduling flexibility happened at the end of the day -- your day might end any time between 1:35 and 3:05.
This year, 12 percent of Briarcliff's 665 students have no free periods, while an additional 30 percent have classes the entire time the cafeteria is open. (and presumably have a free period.)
So, 12% of students get to eat lunch in the classroom. I realize these kids are missing out on their sushi and shrimp dumplings in the cafeteria (and the little tiny violins playing, presumably), but this really looks like an article in search of a problem.
Easy solution: tell the teachers not to be dicks about students eating a sandwich in class.
13: Yeah, we were like that too, with flexibility at the start too. There were 8 periods and most people went either 1-7 or 2-8. You could do a long day of 1-8 but you'd always get lunch.
I do suppose that scheduling problems at my high school were generally easier, given that there weren't any AP classes, science labs, language classes past the second year, or higher level math.
10: I tend to read them as propaganda for the idea that a decent middle class life is something you don't deserve unless you're flawless and driven: "This is what kids who go to college are doing; if you're so pathetic that you need to eat regularly, you don't deserve any better than a job mopping floors. Keep your head down and don't complain, peon."
13: That's probably ideal, but harder for a district that relies on busing to get kids home. Our day ended at 2:33.
I'd rather have the missing lunch than have the school day go on longer. I had homework and activities and jobs to get to. (Though other than the homework, the other two didn't really feel like stuff I was putting myself through for the sake of getting into college.)
15: We actually had the dreaded zero period -- in cases of scheduling emergency, they'd tack on a period before the beginning of the day. i was lucky enough to never have one.
18: Huh. Of course, busing would explain pressure to keep the end of the day uniform -- from my school people just went home when their day was over. How do kids in busing school districts manage sports? A second round of buses, or just getting a ride from someone?
we had the "zero" period, too -- though I don't think that's what we called it. I actually liked being there early. Of course, I was able to catch up on any missed sleep later in the day during 8th period chemistry...
17: I see them somewhat similarly. I think they accomplish several things: (a) they encourage people to work as hard as possible for fear of falling behind, (b) they explain to people who haven't had the success they wanted that they failed for not working hard enough, (c) they give people who have had unexpected success a pat on the back for being so awesome, and (d) they read out of the success algorithm all sorts of factors with which we're uncomfortable, and so allow us to believe strongly in the existence of a strict meritocracy.
I just find it astonishing how often these stories turn up, and in what similar form. I sometimes wonder if I could be just as informed by just reading papers from the 80s and pretending that they described today.
Come to think of it, I'm moving 22 up into the post.
At least know we know now why Cala is the way she is.
25: Malnutrition during her formative years?
There are two kinds of education story in America. The kind where kids are careerist maniacs who are totally overburdened with schoolwork, and the kind about how American kids are retards who can't find their own ass on a map or get the right answer to elementary math problems.
When the reporters come around and ask me if her acquaintances had ever had any hint that Cala would do something like that, I'll describe her as "driven" and "intense" and tell them about her skipping school lunch.
"We knew that she would do something newsworthy some day. We just didn't think it would be something like this."
26 is cracking me up. But I must fly, for it is too nice to sit indoors. I need to find me a beach and some research assistants to peel me some damn grapes.
I need to find me a beach and some research assistants to peel me some damn grapes.
I'll send you mine. Maybe you can train them better.
27: You can bring them together by writing a story about how the schoolwork they're overwhelmed by is pointless busywork.
So, we had a full hour for lunch, and two fifteen minute break periods through the day. Absolutely no classes scheduled during lunch time, and no academic classes before 9am.
There seems absolutely no need to fill the school day in ways that prevent kids getting regular breaks and time to eat.
Also, US school kids sound like they start at some incredibly early time in the morning? We were at school from about 8.40 till about 3.40.
33: I had 8am till 3.30pm, though the last 2 hours was optional i.e. you had to pay extra (everyone did it though, who wants to fall behind?). ttaM, where did u go to school?
There was 40mins for lunch I think...
ttaM, I saw Trainspotting. I know what the Scots are like. With an educational system like that's, no wonder.
I'll add that I had classes like home economics, introductory technology and agricultural science. Which sort of make sense in an LDC, but which don't actually, because, what you learnt was a trivial part of the larger discipline...
Though that can be said for high school subjects in general. Except math.
Also, US school kids sound like they start at some incredibly early time in the morning?
Didn't we discuss that article here about the school in Kentucky that pushed back starting time by an hour and saw greatly increased test scores?
We started at 8:40, but I was at the beginning of my bus route, so I had to be ready for the bus by about 7:20. Have I mentioned that parts of rural life sucked?
re: 35
Hah. You'll notice how erudite, articulate and well-informed some of the junkies were, though.
re: 37
We had home economics for the first year of high school, in the second year you had to choose whether you took the home economics course for a second year, or took on metalwork, more technical drawing/draughting and more woodwork. Generally in 2nd year that meant a split largely down gender lines. About 90% of the girls doing home economics and about 90% of the boys taking metalwork, woodwork and draughting.
I lived about 2 miles from the school, but we walked. So we could leave pretty late [8:20 or so] and get there on time.
To reconcile the articles about overworked kids versus the kids are stupid, you have to divide the schools. There are the large number of really bad public schools that are lucky to produce students who can score over 1000 on the SAT. Example being the DC pubic schools. Then there are the kids in the top 10% who are determined to get into an Ivy league because attending the state flagship universities will cut off many career paths to them. See a school like Walt Whitman in Bethesda Maryland. A graduate of Walt Whitman who attends University of Maryland-Baltimore County will be seen as a loser and a student attending Montgomery County Community College will be seen as a victim of child abuse.
superdestroyer, are you a turbo version of our regular commenter destroyer, or someone else?
I always think that other schools let out remarkably early. My high school was 8:30-4, and then 8:30-4:30 most of the last year.
20: In my non-urban experience, there was often a second, more limited round of buses - the limits of which kept me from participating in any after-school activities until I could drive. I also think that this is connected to the model of driving one's kids to and from school; the extra-bus service gets cut back, and so if you want your kid to have all those critical extra things, you have to shuttle them around yourself.
40: random story: my class was split off because we wanted to take calculus. Of this class of 57, there were 6 girls. Some guy came around every month to ask if the class needed any supplies and such and we'd always say something along the lines of: "we need chalk and a duster etc, but if we really could get more girls that would be phenomenal, thanks"
44: I was unaware that Human Trafficking was offered as an elective anywhere.
These stories aren't about kids, they're about parents. The message is: Driving Your Kids Too Hard? Good, Because You Have No Choice.
Yeah, my high school went in for the ultra-flexible scheduling too. Our first classes each day started at 7:30 and our last classes finished at 4:20. 20 periods of 20 minutes each with a 5-minute walk period between. Most classes were 3 periods, some were 2, and the physics lab classes were 5. Scheduling always seemed to work out just fine, with plenty of downtime, but they also had limits on how many classes you could take a term (7 was the most, and you had to take one pass/fail in that case. You could graduate only taking 5 a term with gym as a 6th class for a couple semesters).
They could get away with such early scheduling because it was a boarding school, so we could roll out of bed 10 minutes before class, but I don't think it would kill kids to go to school later so long as there's downtime during the day.
Also, I'm with SCMT. Fuck a load of this genre of articles. They're not yet below my bitching about how unrealistic they are, but at least I've also hit the point where I don't read them.
46: What Nápi said.
Really this is just version E7.6g of the evergreen "things ain't now but what they used to be" story. The annoying thing is that they generally get presented in these little context-less vignettes and almost never get tracked back to the parents, institutions or anxieties of society as a whole, much less what trends and societal political choices over the last 40 years might have engendered those anxieties (whether justified or not).
It's just another part of an overarching passive voice narrative of societal trends that drives conformity at the same time it excuses us all from any responsibility for the overall state of affairs.
Kids today, what can anyone do?
||
I was just looking at the numbers. Obama has a 190-vote lead. Montana and South Dakota have 86 votes, and he'll gain slightly with them. Clinton gains 113 votes if Florida and Michigan are seated at full strength, reducing Obama's lead to 77 plus a little from SD and MT. Say 82 total, which is probably an underestimate.
There remain 208 supers and 95 Michigan and Florida delegates representing voters who did not vote for either Clinton or Obama -- totalling 295. Clinton would have to get 189 of them to make up the difference. Superdelegates have not been going her way, and the 95 FL-MI delegates represent anti-Clinton voters.
My conclusion is that Obama should just agree to seat all of the FL-MI delegates. That will take the wind out of Clinton's sails and bring this thing to a quick end.
|>
Bussing and commutes in general take up vast amounts of kids' time. My kids have been going to a very good selective HS just south of the loop. They have to be in around 8:00 We leave the house around 6:45, picking up some other kids along the way to put them on the subway by 7:00. They're home by any time from 4 to 7, depending on activities, and have to get their work done then. Getting my son up at 6:10, when his only free-time has been after about 10:00pm, is always a struggle.
See, people talk about child prostitution as a bad thing, but they get lunch breaks.
Easy solution: tell the teachers not to be dicks about students eating a sandwich in class.
Exactly. My mom teaches high school, and seems to be pretty well liked in no small part because she ignores retarded rules like "no eating in classrooms."
re: 52
They're home by any time from 4 to 7, depending on activities, and have to get their work done then. Getting my son up at 6:10, when his only free-time has been after about 10:00pm, is always a struggle.
!!
No free time till after 10? How much homework do they have?
51: Two immediate thoughts there:
1. If FL and MI take no penalty at all, the next cycle's primary schedule is going to be complete anarchy. It infuriates me that they broke the rules, were told what was going to happen if they did, and are going to get away with it. Whole problem with the Democratic Party etc etc.
2. It won't take the wind out of Clinton's sails. If the past behavior of the campaign is any predictor, McCauliffe will next protest that by delaying so long on agreeing to seat the delegates, Obama reduced their influence on uncommitted supers, who otherwise would have broken for Clinton in droves, droves I tell you. They'll fucking file suit to turn back the calendar.
My suburban high school had only one lunch period!
Oddly, I can't remember if it started at 7:30 (except Thursdays, when it started at 8:30) or 8:30 (except Thursdays, when it started at 9:30).
They didn't gain their immediate goal of enhancing their importance in the process. They took themselves out of the game and were only let back in when they made no difference.
We're just talking about a stake through the heart. Rats are already jumping ship. This would be a stunning enough move to turn everyone but the Hillary diehards.
Bussing and commutes in general take up vast amounts of kids' time
If it weren't for abstinence, it could be fucking and commutes taking up that time, though.
I guess busing is right, although looking at it I want to lengthen its u.
To much 'busing. Drug 'buse, alcohol 'buse, sexual 'buse, self-'buse.
Also, who should be banned for life? McAuliffe, Penn, Carville, who else?
I hate stories that psychologize systematic problems. -- is there any other approach to systemic problems in the mainstream media?
My high school used to have an open campus, but then, as one administrator put it the P.A. announcement in which he rebuffed the student pressure to reinstate it, "September 11th happened, and the world changed." (The year in which this justification was still being used: 2007.)
Maybe he meant "September 11th happened, and your stupid parents went crazy."
My suburban high school had only one lunch period!
Oddly, I can't remember if it started at 7:30 (except Thursdays, when it started at 8:30)
That's a pretty early lunch.
Bussing and commutes in general take up vast amounts of kids' time.
When they get older, it will be "blogging" and "commenting."
propaganda for the idea that a decent middle class life is something you don't deserve unless you're flawless and driven
IOW, "grades do TOO matter!!!!!"
That said, I have vowed to stay out of these damn threads.
w-lfs-n went to one of the pretentious schools where the midday meal is referred to as "supper."
Ben went to a culinary school where they had to start making their own gourmet lunch early in the morning.
68: You're on British time, see.
66: One of many reasons I'm extremely glad I finished high school before school administrators collectively went batshit crazy in the mid-late 90s in response to Columbine et al.
I went to an overgrown, 2500 person public high school that was nevertheless pretty laid back. We didn't even have metal detectors. Imagine!
I'm told that a couple years after I graduated they went into full lockdown mode. Open-campus lunch for seniors only, photo ID required to be in the halls during classes, that sort of thing.
Public schools have essentially been jails for children for a long time, but at least I got out before people stopped pretending otherwise.
We had open-campus lunch for seniors only in my h.s. in the mid-80s.
I think we were officially no-open-campus when I was there, but it was easy to bribe the rent-a-cops with french fries.
w-lfs-n went to one of the pretentious schools where the midday meal is referred to as "supper."
This I've never heard of. I grew up with 'dinner' as the midday meal and supper as the evening meal, though. My grandparents called my lunchbox my dinnerpail.
w-lfs-n went to one of the pretentious schools where the midday meal is referred to as "supper."
This I've never heard of. I grew up with 'dinner' as the midday meal and supper as the evening meal, though. My grandparents called my lunchbox my dinnerpail.
Oh, right. I reversed supper and dinner. Supper sounds more pretentious.
Public schools have essentially been jails for children for a long time
After going on a field trip with PK's class this week, during which we walked to the local H.S. and I kept shouting like a drill sergeant to the kids to KEEP MOVING and STAY IN A SINGLE-FILE LINE, I've decided that the whole "school is jail for kids" "school is training kids to be soldiers" lefty nonsense is just risible crap. The similarities between jails and the military and schools? Have everything to do with the simple fact that getting a large group of people to do something is impossible without a lot of yelling and/or seemingly inane rules. I suspect this is also true of parents with three or more kids.
I said I was going to stay out of this thread, didn't I? Crap.
I went on a field trip with my daughters' class to the zoo yesterday, and I can only conclude that school is training kids to be anarchists.
Our high school had a particularly ingenious way of keeping at least the senior class in line: they instituted a system of "senior privileges," the only important one of which was not having to take last-trimester finals, and threatened to take them away for the class if there was any sort of senior prank or mass rule-flouting.
I was featured in one of these articles when I was 16. The article was actually sort of optimistic, about how a hard-working lower-middle-class public high school student can expect to get merit-based scholarships to colleges. They followed me around for a day, wrote down a bunch of the stupid things I said, and worked it into an "Isn't America Great?" two-page feature. Very embarrassing. At least I was in my somewhat-humble phase where I talked about how most of my friends had extra-curricular activities and internships, and that our school offered us a lot of opportunities for intellectual and pre-professional development. But yeah, I looked at it recently when I was home and thought (a) "Wow, I looked fat with long hair," and (b) "What kind of psycho has three part-time jobs, does theater, choir, literary magazine, philosophy club, art, forensics, and photography, and also takes six AP classes? STONE HER."
I figure part of the shock of these articles is that we adults have a hard time remembering what it was like to be able to sleep so little and dabble so much in so many different things. I just can't switch gears enough to do the kinds of work I did in high school.
81: Oh, PK's school is not at all into the rules, which is why I ended up being the one shouting at the kids.
take them away for the class if there was any sort of senior prank or mass rule-flouting
Oh, man, what a bummer. My favorite senior-prank legend is that many years ago, some hooligans released three pigs into the school over the weekend, with the pigs numbered #1, #2, and #4.
I don't know if my high school installed metal detectors - we were open campus-no detectors when I was there - but they did start cracking down on people on campus outside or in the halls during class periods without passes giving a reason for them to be out of classrooms.
Jesus, be sure to send the, to MLC to complete their training. Your girls have a lot of promise.
After going on a field trip with PK's class this week, during which we walked to the local H.S. and I kept shouting like a drill sergeant to the kids to KEEP MOVING and STAY IN A SINGLE-FILE LINE, I've decided that the whole "school is jail for kids" "school is training kids to be soldiers" lefty nonsense is just risible crap.
I believe the phrase is "mugged by reality".
86 is the story of our campus, too. It had been built in 1967 as a sort of hippie experiment---a public school with a totally open campus, a smoking lounge for students, totally flexible scheduling, etc. But during my years there, they installed a cop who had a list of "suspected students," the principal sold out the school to Pepsi to buy shit for the sports teams, the Board of Ed tried to put an end to funding for music and visual arts, foreign languages, and some of the social sciences. They started trying to censor some of the theater programs, made the "open campus" a privilege for upperclassmen with high GPAs, and began interrogating people found in hallways.
Why? There wasn't any increase (that I know of) in drug use, drinking, violence, or anything like that. It was like they just decided over a period of a few years that, no, actually, we hate and fear teenagers! We don't believe in education after all! Mine was the last class to have open campus at all. I hear all the teachers have become miserable and sullen.
84: To be fair, I should say that the experience encouraged anarchy only in its failure to suppress it, and I did my own drill-sergeant bit with a group of kids from some other school who were preventing Siobhán from seeing the leopards. It's amazing how a stranger can control kids who have already figured out how to manipulate their parents and teachers.
it's all over the front of my local paper that the heads of two of our local schools have said "no" to the Metropolitan Police's kind offer of "knife detectors" to install at their school gates. They are apparently the last two sane people in Camden.
87: I'm keeping that option open, but we're also working on MLCifying our neighborhood school, with some small success so far.
oh btw, at a recent parents' evening I was told that apparently the other six-year-olds in little Napoleon Adolf's class "go to him to settle their disputes". He is far and away the smallest and lightest child in his year, but apparently has a sort of il Padrino role.
94: That's adorable, D^2. My ex's younger son was like this in his kindergarten class. He had the magical power, at four, of distracting people from their anger by being so damn likable.
90: I noticed, as a kid, that the rules changed from year to year, and yet they were always so insistent that the rules were important. Spaghetti straps are bad! Now they're fine! Now shorts have to be longer! Now shorter shorts are fine! Fortunately most of the teachers ignored it.
Well after I had left high school, the district developed a heroin problem. To the surprise of many parents, middle-class white suburban kids are often the buyers of drugs. To the further surprise of many parents, all those policies about cracking down on drugs in school that they supported when it was kids in the ghetto? Yeah, not so much a fan when it's their own kids.
The principal, who was a good guy, didn't cave to the whiny parents, and all the students liked him even if he did have the drug-sniffing dogs brought in a few times, because he balanced that out with not being an ass as a disciplinarian and supporting the school fundraisers.
Why? There wasn't any increase (that I know of) in drug use, drinking, violence, or anything like that.
There was an increase in violence, or if not that, crime in my school towards and after the end of my time there. I think there was only one drive-by shooting, though, and most of the people involved weren't even students at my school, and it was after the school day had ended, so that hardly even counts. (And my freshman year had a bunch of beatings, none of which involved me.) Someone flooded the second-floor bathroom of one building by plugging the drains; later someone started a fire in another building that I think led it to be gutted and redone.
it's more that he has absolutely no fear of taking decisions; whenever me and the missus are trying to decide something, Napoleon will pop up and immediately and vociferously support one option over the other, seemingly on the basis of no evidence at all. I'm hoping he'll make a career in management.
further anecdotes from the intersection of the Venn diagram {adorable, worrying}; two weeks ago, when we were all bustling round the house looking for Lucretia Katherine's favourite soft toy for bedtime, Napoleon decided that incentives were needed and, leaping to the task and grabbing hold of mummy's box of chocolates, loudly proclaimed that "whichever grown-up finds Cow will get a sweet!". As I say, I have high hopes for the boy getting into a decent business school.
Can I have his hand in marriage, please, dsquared?
98: Adorable! Can I rent him to incentivize cleaning my bedroom?
94: Genghis Khan was famous for his fairness and generosity. However, a number of individuals who might have called his reputation into question before their testimony could be taken.
98: Don't you find that this is occasionally irritating as shit? I'm getting pretty tired of having PK trying to take charge in every situation.
Allow me to take this opportunity to note the amazing sameness of D^2 and B. Twins parted at birth.
I'll die if PK goes to business school.
You'll die anyway, B. I thought that was the one thing that The Church drilled into everyone's head.
"school is jail for kids"
Agreed, that's not quite right, B. More of a holding pen, really (at least later years)
My hulking but easily led children are available as henchmen for a reasonable wage (paid in sweets). Sally's martial arts training is fairly well advanced, while Newt will be useful if anyone needs the legs talked off a donkey.
Let me know when Sally's correspondingly advanced in marital arts.
107: It sounds like you shouldn't let them near Adolph Napoleon, or he'll snap them up as henchmen before you can blink.
94: Genghis Khan was famous for his fairness and generosity. However, a number of individuals who might have called his reputation into question died before their testimony could be taken.
Fucking keyboard.
102: no, as I say, he's quite physically small and weak and this is his only chance to ensure physical survival in the harsh and hostile world of London's school system.
in related news, they really are just schools where you learn about business, you know.
furthermore, even if I did object, what could I do? the child rules the household through sheer force of personality; the old regime of benign dictatorship by his mother is long since passed. I calculated a long while ago that a palace coup was pointless and that the best thing I could do was stay on his right side and hope for a role as a sort of Martin Boorman figure.
111: Worry when he comes home from school and informs you that his classmates simply need a whiff of grapeshot to keep them in line.
111: PK's pretty small, and cautious. But if the kid doesn't learn to go along with the group *sometimes* I, for one, am going to kill him.
Re. business, it's not business I object to, nor even learning about it. It's the kind of people who go to B school.
rules the household through sheer force of personality
And, of course, judicious distribution of sweets.
Be strong, B. It's business itself that I object to. If it were up to me sheep would be the currency and the grocery stores would stock beets, turnips, cabbages, and nothing else.
116: I can see terrible economic confusion as the currency escaped from the cash registers and wreaked havoc on the inventory.
It's the kind of people who go to B school
we're lovely when you get to know us. (bizarrely, a lot of "the kind of people who go to B school" have hangups about "the kind of people who do PhDs in humanities", which is equally silly).
to be honest, one of the things you learn in business school is that the distinction between "sheer force of personality" and "judicious distribution of sweets" is less than you'd think.
No, each is as bad as the other says. Retired alcoholics living in the villages of their birth are the only sane people.
Wait, we are normalizing and valorizing Napoleon's approach to people-management? It's cute.
No, each is as bad as the other says
Completely correct.
Anyone who takes their education seriously is going to turn out pretty badly.
Anyone who takes their education seriously is going to turn out pretty badly.
I'm pretty sure this is not true.
I always thought the purpose of this kind of article was to make readers paranoid about being left behind in the big rat race of life: If YOUR kids aren't working as hard as the ones in the article, maybe they won't get into Good School X, while your neighbor's do.
In fact, a surprisingly high (in my estimation) number of NYT articles fit this pattern. Women are getting ahead in the workplace? If you're a man, maybe they're going to pass you by; if you're a woman, how come you're not making as much progress as the ones in the article? The "Millenials are amazing" article also fits the pattern, for obvious reasons.
Gaijin Biker,
You are so correct.
It comes from all over. At Globalcorp my manager had us all sit still for an hour (Little Jimmy stop squirming!) to tell us how this is a NEW Globalcorp and we were investing over $3 billion in new research and development plants in India. Clearly one of the messages was "we are racing to the bottom so you better run faster to stay in place."
With nearly 30 years in I wanted to tell my twenty-something manager "I don't need you to tell me this is a new Globalcorp. It resembles the place I hired on in name only. Trust me, I KNOW this is a different corporation.
But one doesn't get nearly thirty years in by saying such things to management.