The Dumbening of America's Youth

I just want you all to know. We're fucked.

Example. The kids nowadays when they're writing, like writing using a pen and paper, will write stuff like, "U in da way :)", in which the word "You" is spelled "u", "the" is spelled like "da" (appropos, no?) and the emoticon colon parenthesis is written out as an emoticon instead of just a regular smiley face.

I feel like I want to write like a whole essay about why it's retarded to write out an emoticon and about how the emoticon has now come to actually represent the thing it was meant to symbolize and replaced it altogether. It would be a whole long thing and I would be really angry at the end. So instead I'll just express my frustration like this:

>:-(

Can't Make This Shit Up

A couple weeks ago:
Student: "So mista, was Shakespeare's time back when they had, like, castles and dragons and everything?"
Me: "You mean like everyone was walking their pet dragons around?"
Student: "Yeah."
Me: "Ah, no, that's more medieval times, which was like 0 - 1300. Shakespeare was in the 1600s."
Student: "Zero, no way. That was like cavemen and stuff."
Me: [pause] "Good luck on that Global History Regents exam."
Student: "Huh? I already passed that."


Today (Not sure what's up with the Shakespeare theme):
Student: "Mista, we're reading MacBeth. That shit is mad boring. Did you ever read MacBeth?"
Me: "Yeah, I read it in middle school."
Student: "Middle school (eyes wide)? Damn, that book must be old."


Also today (no Shakespeare here, but still worth it):
Student 1: "Shit, I'm hungry. I'm gonna go get a Pepsi with my benefit card." (the fact that the Pepsi was going to constitute her lunch is not really germane to the story, but is an interesting side note.)
Student 2: "Yo, that benefit card is the shit. I used to be embarrassed to use it, but now I just roll in like, 'What!', swipe."
Student 3: "For real, it's hot. You got a benefit card, mista?"
Me: "What are you even talking about?"
Student 1: "Son, you get a benefit card, then you go to the grocery and just swipe it and you don't got to give any money."
Student 2: "Yeah, but you can't O.D. on it. You gotta get food. You can't go to the grocery and get like plates and shit."
Me: "Where do you get it from?"
Student 2: "From the government."
Student 3: "You should get one mista. All hispanic people have them."
Me: "I don't think it has anything to do with being hispanic."
Student 3: "All the hispanic people I know have them."
Me: "So, is there a limit or can you get as much food as you want?"
Student 2: "No, there's a limit, but you don't ever really reach it. I think it's like 600."
Me: "Can you roll over the money?"
Student 1: "I think you can. Also if you want to you can get cash with it."
Student 2: "Word, we get the food and then my mom gets the 100 cash."
Me: "So, everyone in your family has a card to use whenver they want?"
Student 2: "No, it has my mom's picture on it. But I can just go and use it."
Student 1: "Yeah, my mom's picture is on mine. But she didn't like the picture she had on it so she went and got another one."
Me: "Your mom didn't like the picture on her benefit card so she went and got a new one?"
Student 1: "Yeah."

I Never Thought I'd See This Again

Does everyone remember back in the day, circa 1990, when the coolest thing going was the hi top fade? You all remember the high top fade, right? If not, here's the most famous hi top fade ever.

This, of course, is the famous duo, Kid N Play. Kid, on the left, rocked the quintessential box cut and if he's famous for anything else, then I don't know what it is. My man Play, on the right, rocked a far more standard box cut with a bit of a Gumby rolled in.

Here's some other fine examples of great box cuts:


It didn't seem like it at the time, but this is a pretty stupid haircut. I mean, by and large, it's just funny looking on most people. Add to that the various designs and permutations that people made to it, think Bobby Brown circa Humpin' Around, and it's clear that this was a style that had gotten way out of hand.



Also I think this style suffered from the fact that white people were also in the midst of really bad hairstyles and blatant overdoing in their cuts as well. It was a worldwide phenomenon. The pre-Clinton era was just a bad time for hair around the world. Exhibit A:

This is too awesome not to be real.

Anyway, I'm not making this up, the hi top fade is on the comeback. There are several kids in the high school I work in rocking the box cut today as we speak. I thought I had gotten my fill of making fun of kids with box cuts in 1993, but I was wrong. It's just as fun today to make fun of kids with the box/fade.

I think this current woebegotten trend started itself with the arrival of one Brandon Jennings on the scene. Brandon Jennings is known for two things: The first is that he's the kid who was the number 1 ranked high school basketball player who opted to play professionally in Europe rather than go to college for a year. The second is that in high school he rocked a box with fade. Seriously.


Since I've started teaching high school there have been several trends that have boggled my mind - wearing 3XL solid colored t-shirts, chicken noodle soup (with the soda on the side), having babies (which I was once told was "in style"), and so forth - but this box with fade trend coming back is the one that I really just wouldn't believe unless I had seen it with my own two eyes.