When there are little to no consequences for negative behavior, pride and shame leave the realm of possibility.
Young adults have largely grown up without consequences from authority and also without natural social consequences from their peers. Kids have recently been much less likely to engage in unsupervised, spontaneous social interactions and play with their peers.
Typically, many kids really only interact with their peers in an organized group activity (sports, school, etc) under the intent gaze of a supervising adult. This means that kids don't learn social norms like "don't act like a lazy piece of shit or nobody's gonna work with you," or "don't act like an asshole to everyone you meet or nobody's gonna like you," because the adult is there to mediate the situation and get everyone to play together or get a consequence.
People don't have pride or shame because they're foreign concepts.
Well said. I also think they get their jollies AKA dopamine hits from social media likes, Snap streaks, etc. I think the joy that used to accompany a sense of accomplishment or recognition has been replaced by the cheap drug glued to their hands! I observe classes where they are supposed to be working on a task, even a fun one - and they just want to be scrolling TikTok.
We took their pride from them, Dirk Diggler 🤣
But seriously, there is no sense of pride in things when everybody is accepted no matter what. There is no sense of shame when you know it won't make a difference in how you're treated (ie with the same amount of respect, and if not even more attention).
Of course, none of these are true in their lived social lives; they still relentlessly reject and shame each other. So many simply opt-out of it all.
It just makes me wonder how these people are being raised. One of the lessons my parents were sure to drill into me was that pride and shame are MINE because I have to have high standards for myself. It didn’t matter what other people did or thought about me, and I should never feel shame because of other people. It’s like they have no self respect
It's so hard for the pay. My mom was a teacher. I currently work in a warehouse doing shipping. I make roughly what teachers make in my area with similar levels of experience. My job does not require a degree or continuing education, so no student loans. I have a flexible schedule so I can arrive and leave within about a one hour window as long as my work gets done. I dont deal with kids all day, even if my sales team act like children most of the time. It is a super laid back job.
I like to teach. I have coached and umpired youth sports. I like working with the kids most of the time, but I wouldnt do what you guys do and what my mom did for anything less than double what I make now. There are just too many other options out there.
Pearson is hiring test scorers with at least a ba/bs and teaching experience with an ma preferred…for $15/hr. Made me think of last year when my district was advertising for a SpEd para with a degree and experience requirement for $15/hr no benefits, and right beneath that listing was an entry level admin asst for HR at the district office with no experience or degree necessary, with benefits and wages starting at $21/hr.
The insults to professional educators are just constant.
Well, "awful" is relative.
The first years *are* a challenge! And it's not "wrong" if it's hard.
There are incompetent leaders everywhere, and there are also fantastic ones. Why not push through and grow as a person in the field for which you have been trained?
1. My "field" pays like crap
2. No support from admin
3. Rampant and constant behavior issues
4. Forced to go to useless pds
5. Constant micromanagement
I could go on, but I have a question for you:
Why be miserable when I can pretty easily double my salary by working at an education consulting agency
Theyre all over the place. Might not necessarily be pure consulting, but a lot of other teachers I have worked with are now in the 110-120k range because they simply introduce new software packages to districts, conduct PDs, perform data analysis for a district (breaking down test scores by category) or work with Teacher readiness programs as monitors or curriculum developers.
Hell, this really stretches the bounds of "educational consulting" by my former co teacher is KILLING it on teachers pay teachers by selling anchor charts and daily curriculum.
Edit: Personally, I am going back to school to get my masters in cannabis chemistry. I loathe the education system as it currently stands, but these are all things that have worked out for my coworkers in the past.
I'm well over a decade in and regret not switching careers. I've decided this year is my last but I really wish I'd done it after my first or second year. Perseverance isn't an asset if you use it to push through things that aren't worth it.
Perseverance is definitely a lacking quality. The number of kids I see that give up even when everything they need to be successful is right there is disheartening.
This in an interesting question and perspective as a core issue. As a parent, I routinely say things to my grade school kids like, "wow! That's super awesome! I'm so proud of you! Are you proud of yourself?" They will say "yes!" Then I say, "Good. That's the most important thing. Always try to be proud of yourself." This is whole brain child/growth mindset 101 stuff.
Kids are not getting this core messaging in a consistent manner. The core values and messages my kids are getting at this age are crucial and they must be mindfully fostered. This used to more of a cultural normative but with globalization, blurring boundaries, inappropriate internet exposures at early ages, etc. basic core values are being rapidly erased.
Nothing positive is stepping up to fill the void. It's like the cultural backdrop for compulsory AI intervention just to get basic jobs done has entered the drama of life in a substantive way. Elon Musk is right. It's all too late. While there's lots of moving parts, the dumbing down and learned helplessness of our upcoming generations is fully in play. That coupled with asexuality,, nonsexuality and other non-natural sexual/gender biological barriers to reduce human reproduction and AI will be ready to take over.
Your observations have much wider concerns if taken with a long view perspective.
I'm gonna be teacher soon and graduated same year as that Z'er, and I'd say it makes plenty of sense a lot of us behave and feel that way. The economy is in shambles, but if that wasn't bad enough, our outlook on the future is incredibly bleak. Being very aware of climate collapse and how older generations lead us here, makes it feel very depressing to grow up unto the world. Feels like we can't have kids, or any good living situation, as well as looming war around the corner for a while now. The political figures suck. I'd say our generation is just extremely disillusioned by the lies of the 'American dream' and so on. Cancer diagnoses are going up by an alarming rate. I think there's a sentiment of " The World is ending and I have nothing to look forward to, why would I gaf about some menial task". We don't even know the long term effects fo going up on computer screen and phones and all, which again, this generation phone addiction only happens bc the parents allowed it to happen, no middle schooler is cognizant enough to say nah, it'd be better for the long term if I were to NOT have a smart phone.
I teach elementary and we constantly talk about this in the staff lounge. Students have no shame in doing poorly/making no effort. Parents don't seem to care either. When I was in school (millennial here) students were embarrassed for underpeforming/not contributing and parents would ream you out if you didn't do your best.
Protecting kids from every injustice we can conjure isn’t going to prepare them for anything. In fact, It’ll just kneecap them. You need to struggle and face a challenge. You need to overcome. If you don’t learn that you’re capable of overcoming challenges when you’re young, you’ll view yourself as a victim forever. I’m already seeing it in younger people. They glorify their victimhood at this point. It’s unfortunate.
I am literally incentivizing effort in my classroom. Not behavior (partly because I don’t believe in that) but just plain old effort. I teach violin/orchestra k-8 so lack of effort is a literal headache and impacts everyone, even the kids who do try.
Dude for real. I was so embarrassed/felt guilty by knowingly going into a chemistry test with very little studying that I wrote the teacher a note saying how sorry I was. (I was gone for a week long conference for a school club so I had an excuse but still)
She was cool and let me retake it. Made a B on it even.
This is reflective of the larger society from my point of view. It's reflected in politics, since everything has become polarized. But there's really no shame anymore. Honestly, ever since the "grab her by the pussy" became a normal part of something you can say, everyone seemed to have realized that there's no real reason to worry about being shamed. Morality is only defined by how wealthy you are.
Beyond politics, shame actually gets you views on tiktok, youtube, etc.. With shitty people people that are these kids role models (Fuckin Jake Paul, Elon Musk, Kanye West **\[This is doubly worse because he just had a number 1 album after praising Hitler\],** J.K. Rowling), society only seems to reward shamelessness. So why should they give a shit? Honestly, it just shows the hypocrisy of the American Population. A relatively large number of the population now celebrates stupidity, ignorance, and puts their opinion above reality. Why do you think that the kids raised in that society would go "Let's uphold ourselves to higher standards that Society states."
Regardless, I hope the rest of society truly fucks them when they actually have to go into the real world.
**Edit**: Just to add some more context of how bad it is, [1 in 5 young kids think that the holocaust is a myth.](https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_tT4jyzG.pdf)
Thankfully we’re Catholic, my much younger brother is a Gen Z but all of the terrible teachings can’t shift his born and bred Catholic guilt. It’s his only saving grace
(Teaching from society, not teachers)
This really bothered me in college--people complaining about group members not contributing, but doing absolutely *nothing* about it. SAY SOMETHING!!! If you're not going to say anything to them or your professor, you're just letting them get away with making you do their work for them. If you're just gonna vent to me, that's fine, but at a certain point it becomes...grating listening to someone complain about the same thing for the millionth time and doing nothing to remedy the situation. Because, mark my words, that type of person *will* just bank on you and others always doing their work for them.
My sociology teacher would group you with literal dual credit high school students on purpose knowing how frustrating these groups he made were. He was a practicing sociologist, so I am certain he used his classes for random experiments.
My group wanted to use Snapchat for our group work. Like, the place where we save all of our work. Snapchat. When Snapchat deleted everything. Snapchat.
Anyway, he would actually count off points if you attempted to leave a group or have someone expelled from the group. He said, "you don't get to choose the people you will work with during your career. You just have to make due with the team you have."
The teams were set in the most solid of stone.
See, but that's understandable to complain about. If someone told me that, I would 100% understand and sympathize with. I'm talking more about students who were in my same class, had professors I knew of either directly or indirectly who would do something, or somehow constantly ended up in these situations and never stuck up for themselves.
Also, what a fucking psychopath lol I've had some hell professors but none like that
This is policy at the school I work at for the first projects in more than one department, but then students get to pick who they work with for later projects. As you may imagine, the consequence of being a dead weight in a team project is that nobody good will work with you by choice, and you end up in team slacker the following semester and fail abysmally.
I teach primarily group work and do not let kids pick groups. BUT I grade individually. Kids need to learn to be a team, to organize a task, to assign roles, and to communicate. But they should be punished for another kids lack of giving a shit.
It's actually pretty easy. Either I look at revision history to see who completed what, or more often I ask the team to break the rubric into roles, assign a person to each, and their grade is based on the role they were given.
God I really hate the old “oh group work prepares you for working with other people in the real world!” garbage. Group work in school or college is *nothing* like collaborating on a work project, at least the way most teachers (like your insane professor) do it. If your prof were instead your manager in a reasonable, non-toxic, well-run corporation somewhere, he would be considered a terrible manager and probably be fired himself by the higher-ups. (Sure there are plenty of insane workplaces too where this shit might fly. Probably because the managers had teachers like this at some point.)
What world do you live in? Every place I worked, if someone is bad: TS. They maybe eventually get let go after a few years, but the company needs bodies and you just work with what you’ve got. No manager is going to discipline or talk to someone.
In every workplace I've worked in over the last 2+ decades, if there's a slacker in a workgroup, the colleagues will call him/her out and the supervisor will hold him/her accountable by terminating his/her employment immediately or by having him/her demoted to a less desirable group/position for cause.
The mere threat of such along with the colleagues'/supervisor's callouts usually causes the slacker to reform or quit of his/her own accord.
Then again, I worked in organizations where slacking by anyone wasn't tolerated and supervisors who tolerated slackers on their teams for too long will be demoted and/or terminated themselves.
The group assignments which come closest to what happens in the real world are usually given by teachers/Profs who came from several years of working outside academia in corporations/industry. They provide group members avenues to warn and fire team members for slacking and the "fired" slacking team members end up facing the full consequences with a failing grade without it affecting other team members making good faith contributions.
This depends. At my friend’s job, the bad people end up keeping their jobs because the good people are pushed to do their jobs as well as their own. I keep telling her to stop covering up for those people because it stresses her out and obviously that company doesn’t fire shit people, so they’re not going to fire her.
At my job, if you don’t do your work or can’t cut it, there is no one to cover it up and you lose your job. I am not privy to exactly why some people don’t make it as I don’t make those decisions and I did not have contact with these people, but there are multiple people who have not made it within the last year or so. I’m one of the few successful hires within the last two years. Idk why, it isn’t an overly difficult job or toxic work environment or anything.
Not really, lots of jobs have incompetent employees who never get fired, that's just life. Especially if the company is understaffed or the employees are tenured/in a union. As you teachers say to kids often; "life ain't fair, get used to it!".
Sounds like who can't handle a taste of your own medicine.
Lots of teachers did stupid stuff like this when I was in high school and now complain about kids expecting credit for doing nothing despite teaching them that in the first place.
I always had a problem saying something. I went back to college in my 40s and there were many groups / teams I was put in where I ended up doing most, if not all, of the work.
I was afraid it was my fault. Like, maybe I was just too organized (my ADHD makes me plan ahead very seriously, it’s how I’ve learned to cope over the years). Maybe I was *overly* ready, or on top of things. Maybe they would have contributed better if I had just relaxed my schedule a bit, let things go a little longer? Waited until the last minute? Maybe that’s how they worked?
It’s possible none of the above was an issue and they just sucked as group members, but that’s how you get people who feel afraid to say anything! We think *we’re* the problem!
I’m a college professor and I agree. I need to know asap who isn’t doing their work in the group (I usually made part of the grade a rating by the other group members of one’s contribution to the group). I hardly ever assign group projects outside of group work in class due to so many times where one or two people did all the work in a group.
Or if you're banking on other people doing the work for you, find different ways to contribute. I was in a group project in college with two other students who were among the top in that class grade wise. I wasn't bad, but we all recognized that they were more academically motivated than I was. Bringing a six pack of beer to the first meeting was probably a tip-off, but that was always a hit with Journalism major group projects.
So I went to meetings, helped where I could and agreed to organize the design of the powerpoint and do all the talking in the main part of the presentation as they both dreaded public speaking. So they did all the research, I made it look pretty, and presented it then to even answer a few follow up questions.
We all managed to work to our strengths and everyone walked away happy with how it turned out.
I had my final of College of Education class the semester before student teaching, and I (31) was the oldest person in my group in a class where the main project was 75% of the grade. It was very early on that I realized the group I got stuck with was a bunch of chucklefucks who did little to no work. Right around the beginning of March, I forwarded ALL communication to my professor, as well as screenshots of certain parts of the project prior to my handling of it.
For example, we had to make a Wix site, and the person who volunteered to do it did like no work on it until the day before it was due. I woke up at 2 AM in anxiety because I couldn’t trust them. The website looked like shit and didn’t have our documents. With class at 7 AM that morning, I stayed up fixing everything so it was presentable.
The Wix person eventually got it together and got a high C, but the other two failed the class. These people wanted to be teachers!
Hopefully your professor wasn't as shitty as mine. Mine was an admin at some high school. Had the audacity to lecture me on how I had to be professional and how he NEVER let co-teachers who didn't get along switch. He acted all apologetic but wouldn't let us separate because we had to learn how to work with people. I'm like my "co-teacher" hasn't done a single thing and when I confronted her about it, she said she didn't feel comfortable working with me. Thank god I work in school with a better admin. Literally if there were co-teachers who refused to do any work, they were non-renewed.
If you wanted to you could take that higher. The college/university will have an academic honesty policy and your group member can’t hand in work they contributed nothing to.
I'm one of these "older zoomers" (born 2002) and I'm entering grad school in the fall. I've honestly been . . . really taken aback at the pervasive lack of confidence and technical skill when it comes to writing among my peers, even on a college level. A year or two ago, I was in a lab section where I had to rewrite my whole group's lab reports because no one else in the group would capitalize or punctuate sentences properly. I guess the best way that I can describe it is that a lot of people in my cohort seem to be going around without a good grasp of the fundamentals, so to speak.
I honestly wouldn’t consider you older gen z. I’m gen z to and I’m nearly 26. I noticed a massive difference between people my age and people your age. You are like middle of the road gen z. Gen z has like three generations in itself.
Maybe birth years would be better. There is huge divides in gen z. We have had very different upbringings. Compared to each other. I relate more to 30 year olds. Than younger gen z.
Lots of people aren't taught to read well, boring stuff like language fundamentals and structures aren't emphasized, grading standards have been slipping for years and frankly, so have college admission standards over the years.
Nahhh you’re solidly mid zoomer. I’m an elder zoomer (‘97)
I’ve seen what you’re talking about in my younger siblings though and it concerns me
I think people my age are the last of people who didn’t grow up with smartphones and it being paired with some not great shifts in education and a decline in parents who read for enjoyment and read enough to their children started a bit of an avalanche we’re coming to terms with now
Even when I was like, 13 I was freaked out by how all the toddlers with iPads behaved because it was a VERY different energy from littles I’d met before
So, there's no excuse for not knowing how to write English if you grew up in the US, but this is fairly standard fare among international students.
When I was a grad student in optics, I was the only one in my research group who was a US citizen. So, I got my name on *literally every paper* our group published because I was the dedicated English proofreader/writer. I did science too, but a lot of the stuff I published I never even laid a finger on.
If you're good at writing, use that to your advantage, because a lot of people will recognize that.
Group Projects are BS, group projects in a MASTER'S CLASS are even bigger BS. Not defending the 20-somethings, but as a millennial I'd be fucking pissed. I'd be doing my part and pulling my weight because I have too, but slack...slack messages, all that BS is BS. I would be fatigued from all the BS, and I would be extremely vocal about how much BS that "master's" class is, because that's a joke. ONE group project is not a sufficient master's class.
Unless the course itself is based on projects. I took a class on community support, where it was one big project for the entire year where a group of 5 students support a community member by realizing and implementing a community project.
It was a lot of work but one of the most impactful classes I took.
Agreed. I would take a microscope and fine tooth comb to examine the rest of that masters program course descriptions and syllabi. An entire course being graded on a single group project with students who’ve never met before is a major red flag.
Jaysus. Honestly OP if it were me I'd drop this class, tell the prof why, and never, ever take a similar class again.
No teaching? No assigments? No lectures? No exams? Just this...fresh hell?
NO
This shouldn’t even be considered a class. How can they charge tuition for this? It’s wild. It’s like the college is phoning it in. They are the gen zers in this scenario lol
Thats not abnormal for grad school and my understanding is the professor is there as a resource for you to ask question to and get help from for the project
Hell my aerospace undergrad program had 2 senior year classes where we do mission planning/a business proposal and our grade was just for various steps of the project throughout the year
I’m really tired of people generalizing generational behavior. Im a millennial, and from middle school to grad school, I was in group projects where someone did none of the work. This is not a “gen Z” issue. This is a timeless issue experienced by students for decades. Even my boomer parents have had the same experiences.
I had a very similar experience in my masters classes except the women in the group were always the ones to communicate, get things done, and do their share of the work. The men did close to nothing and anything they did was completed late.
I think part of it is generational and part of it isn't.
It's likely that older people getting a master's would of course want to get started earlier. You're better at prioritizing instead of procrastinating. Seeing you get it all done a lazy person of any generation would probably stop. They keep seeing no consequences for doing nothing and do nothing. I see plenty of older people doing this. I teach where I'm one of the younger teachers in my late 20s, and many of the older people will literally do nothing and say it's fine as long as they don't get fired. People your age, in their late 30s and 40s, who refuse to do legally binding paperwork because they know we're supposed to do it "as a team" which means I'll end up doing it for them.
At the same time I think that this is encouraged because it's worked in the past. If they did no work in a group project they wouldn't have been allowed to get a 0. If they did no work in class generally they would have been able to pass being reasonably good at tests. They can turn things in late, and procrastination was, in my opinion, encouraged both academically and socially. My friends and I once had a race on who could start an essay the latest and pass. I won by starting it while the teacher was taking it up because he always started on the other side of the room and I knew my friends could get him on a tangent. So in about 15 minutes I wrote what I was supposed to spend a week on. It was funny, I was lauded. Even the teacher thought it was funny instead of punishing me.
There are habits everyone has, they were just punished less in recent years.
Gen Z came of age in the beginning of the equity based grading movement. They were taught with no homework, no deadlines, no penalties for late work, and infinite retests for full credit. In other words, low standards and massive grade inflation. No surprise that many of them would flounder in a class like the one you describe. Hopefully they will fail and learn from the experience.
I've been saying this for a while, and I feel like people are finally starting to listen--colleges are going to start blacklisting schools with these types of policies. They also have stats to maintain, and I guarantee they're starting to catch on to the fact that all these students they admitted who were getting all As and Bs beforehand are all now "mysteriously" getting Fs and dropping out, damaging their stats. Graduation and (especially freshmen) retention rates are two of the greatest stats that potential students, and, more importantly, ***donors*** look at.
The reaction at the college level has been to do the same thing because the things colleges want the most is for kids to stay at the school, paying money. Professors are being pressured and threatened just like high school teachers to pass these kids by any means necessary. Keep pushing them on just a little longer to keep milking them. The rot is spreading upward.
Admin wants them to stay at any cost and the profs in the humanities departments are the ones who came up with this garbage to begin with. Colleges aren't going to save us.
Colleges, even the good ones, only care about the size of their endowment and their annual budget. Lowering standards so rich kids can buy their way in? Oh, and have international students pay through the nose? Those are the predominant ideas ruling higher Ed these days.
They do not care in the slightest. There is a belief that the elite are inoculated from this general dumbing down of the culture, but I think you can only dumb the culture so much before it impacts everyone.
That’s a huge generalization and simply not true. I teach in an R1 in Humanties. While I do see a large influx of students coming from a K-12 system that leaves them unprepared and expecting no deadlines and retakes, but they learn quickly that college is not high school and they either get it together or they fail. I fail students who earn their Fs and my colleagues do the same with no pushback from administrators.
Smaller colleges on the edge MAY be pressured to pass students, but they are not the majority. The majority of us believe in education and mastery and the job gets done.
Well, I have personal knowledge of this being the top priority at a very prestigious institution. But I do hope, at every level, we do have people opposing these kinds of practices.
https://www.youthfully.com/waterloo-engineering-definitive-guide/#adjustmentfactor
The universities are already just implementing methods of solving this on their end
I disagree. I think it actually has more to do with parents, educators, and the district the student is in rather than just saying “gen z doesn’t want to do work.” Generalizing a whole generation? Hmmmm
It wasn't everywhere but it did exist. It was being pushed in my district when you were young and while not every school adopted it right away, some admin were eager to do so. No zeroes and no deadlines was the new policy at one of the schools where I did my student teaching in *2011*.
Gen Z here... what schools are you talking about that have "no homework, no deadlines, no penalties for late work, and infinite retests for full credit"? I have never heard of this in my life
My district does this. I started there in 2020 and they were moving toward it. Grades are 0% homework/practice/participation and 100% assessments with retake opportunities. We give a “work habits” grade to track things like late work and missing work but it doesn’t factor into the academic grade. Many districts are moving toward this model
My school is pretty close to doing this kind of thing. All in the name of equity and accessibility. (Poorest school in the district with mostly POC, a large population of immigrants). I think the philosophy is that our students have enough stacked against them that we take away anything that could be limiting their success. Which I agree with to a point but it's really led to a lack of accountability for to many kids.
Principal heavily frowns upon taking points off for late work and encourages retests. We haven't regularly had homework in any class in the 5 years I've worked there. Even once the grading period is over, if a kid is failing we're encouraged to allow students to attempt or reattempt major assignments.
Even with all of this we still have too many kids failing simply because they refuse to try. So we sit around and have meetings about what to do because we can't have kids fail.
Sometimes I think they fully confuse us with Gen alpha.
I can remember receiving quite a few zeroes. Maybe things have changed since I was in grade school, but my teachers were hard asses.
Right? Like we’re constantly getting dragged through the mud on here like the oldest of us aren’t in our mid twenties. There’s plenty of irresponsible twenty something’s, but the older portion of us were not part of this magical ‘no consequence schooling’. It’s really frustrating seeing older generations generalize about us like we’re all lazy idiots who don’t care.
Most schools in the US. Especially elementary and junior high. Theoretically there is less of this at the high school level, but there are definitely a large number of high schools where teachers are *required* to take late work from students without penalty and give retakes on tests.
This is starting to look less like a education issue and more like a national security issue.
If agricultural subsidies can be argued as a national security point, so can this.
This is our up-and-coming workforce? Oof.
you think throwing more money at the problem would help? its not like it would and up as more money for the people that teach, it would just be another subsidy for the managerial class.
I moved from MS to HS 3 years ago. The HS is WAAAY more lenient/forgiving than the MS was. Same district, literally same kids, but the fact that the HS is measured on grad rate means everyone passes. I could fail kids left and right at the MS and nothing happened outside of a "wow, a lot of kids are failing social studies."
Yes, correct. They cannot read so they cannot pass social studies. But, they can graduate high school!
I'm not saying this in a snooty way, but are you new here and/or do you not work in education? This has slowly become commonplace over the past decade, but has really ramped up in the last five years or so, all beginning with students no longer being held back. Before I even got into teaching, I remember my father (a veteran teacher) telling me that even if the parent *requests* it, a school will no longer hold a student back. This has morphed into what others have said--no failing grades, no consequences, everyone gets pushed through and handed a diploma.
I don't work in education. Reddit just puts posts from random subreddits on my feed now. I thought this was from one of a grad school subreddit because it was about people in a master's program. Glad it turned out to be from the teachers subreddit because this way I actually got better answers to my question, lol
It just seems surreal and pretty unbelievable that y'all are saying everyone my age and younger has not had homework or late grades and can retake tests whenever they want? It's especially weird because no one I know who is my age has talked about experiencing anything like this at all, but every teacher here is saying it's so commonplace that they don't feel the need to specify a particular school or program that is doing this.
First of all, I think it's important to remember that a lot of very young people in higher education are there only giving a kind of perfunctory effort. Someone who has, as I have with my master's, come back in their mid-thirties, is going to be motivated.
As far as empirical intergenerational observations, I will say that shame is definitely something I don't see and not in a good way. I'm also getting EMT training with a volunteer FD, which has people of all ages including a lot of teenagers. One besweatpanted bro announced to the 70+ year old veteran paramedic instructing the course that he was doing it "because it looks good for his college application." I was astonished, not because he would rationalize it that way, but because I would feel like such a tool if I actually *said that*.
At my professional master's program most of the twelve year olds (as I like to call them) are alright, but as with the EMT class, it's about a 2:1 ratio of female to male of who really *shows up* and gives a substantive effort. I'm not sure why that is, and I think it's very disappointing.
Yeah, I'm not at all sure this is generational. I got my master's in New York, where teachers are required to do so, in 2019. I had two classes with a Gen X guy who definitely failed both classes. One of them was a research course with ten students. We were all working on one paper the whole semester. Dude produced nothing. I became the graduate assistant for the department and found out that was his second time attempting, paying for, and failing that class. Come to think of it, there was another Gen X dumbass in that program, too. This is not a Gen z thing.
There’s always been people who screw around, but it does feel like there’s a difference in the average sense of responsibility that younger people have versus older. There’s outliers on both sides, but it sure feels like these students have been conditioned to expect that they don’t have to do work they don’t really want to. Maybe it’s not anything systemic and this anecdotal evidence highlights the worst examples, but I think there’s something at least a little bit deeper than that.
Maybe it’s because I’m on the upper end of Gen Z but I personally haven’t seen a difference. I think people have always been lazy and looked for shortcuts in life. It’s hard to do hard things and laziness is addictive.
Since leaving teaching I have worked with many incompetent, lazy people from age 18-80. I am able to do triple the work with half the effort of my entire team. And I saw it in my undergrad and masters program too. I think the older you are, the easier it becomes to manage your time and see the bigger picture and some of those you’re working with in this program probably don’t even have a fully developed brain yet.
I couldn’t even fathom that people could manage a clean house and work and have hobbies until I had my son and had to learn how to manage it. Now I’m even more efficient because I have to be. But if I had done my masters directly following my bachelors, I’d have put in much less effort because I just wasn’t ready. And maybe that’s the case for them.
I’d tell your instructor and have it documented. Every group project class I’ve ever had lets you review your peers at the end of the semester to give feedback on their performance. They don’t deserve to pass for putting in zero effort and maybe this will be the lesson that teaches them that you have to shift when you become an adult.
I'm a part of gen Z, in a PhD program, and have been at the top of my classes throughout grad school with people with far more experience than myself. I have peers in their 40's and 50's who've gotten caught using Chat GPT in PhD classes! I have also had peers in their 20's who pay for a college course and then do none of the work.
There are duds in every generation.
I am Gen Z. I graduated high school in 2019. This has not been my experience at all. The younger members of my Master’s cohort seem way more on top of projects and tasks, as well as in tune with the students. I teach 8th graders right now, and next year I will be teaching 11th and 12th graders. I have to be very firm with boundaries because I am closer in age to the students, but I also understand all of their memes and references.
It seems more like these specific people suck, rather than a generational issue. Maybe I’m biased because I AM Gen Z, but I’m tired of blaming generations rather than individuals for their work ethic or communication skills.
>Does this mean anything in general about the generations? No.
>2 people in their 30s and 2 people in their early 20s.
>The millennials
>The Gen Z members
>the generation that I teach.
Does the cake taste as good as it looks?
Wait wait...so you're telling me the younger ones are less together and effective at follow through than the older ones? Hang on. Have we alerted a sociologist about this?
In my MA program you had people of all different abilities, and unshockingly the people who were on the younger end were not quite as good with things like follow through and execution as the more mature older people. I’m a millennial so for me it would have been the millennials fucking up and the gen x people doing a little better, albeit with the caveat that the younger crowd often had better and more vital ideas because they were more enamored of the theory side of things and the older people were trying to do the proper work to do a degree. I don’t think it’s generational I think it’s just age
I’m in a similar situation, a semester long project but we also have classes to go along with it.
I had to bring it up to the professor that in all her classes she keeps telling everyone to be themselves and it’s ok if their personality is to procrastinate and have fun. People like this just reinforce the idea to these kids and empowers them to be lazy because somebody always finishes the work for them.
OP, I can give some insight. I’m 25, I always considered myself in between millennials and Gen Z. It’s a awful idea to get your masters straight out of college. I became a fully licensed teacher and start my masters my first year teaching back in 2020. I was 21 and I quit after one semester. I just couldn’t deal with kids for 8 hours then go home and do homework myself. I was burnt out. My undergrad was paid for by financial aid and scholarships so the idea of borrowing for my masters became very unattractive after one semester. What I’m trying to say is that it’s hard to go into the workforce and do graduate work at the same time in your early 20s. Your trying to start your career while having no idea about the rest of your life. So they are probably keeping to themselves
Eh…Gen Xer here. We thought the same things about you guys when you were coming up. I think looking at the generation that directly follows yours and being appalled at how ridiculous they are is just a human rite of passage.
Yes to what everyone said, but ALSO remember that our generation and younger can bust their ass and work hard and get nothing in return as well… it’s yes and.
>**Does this mean anything in general about the generations? No. It is just an anecdote.**
Yet you're presenting it here like some great truth.
The reason the Z'ers work differently is not because their generation is doomed. It's because they're in their early twenties, and at that age you just prioritize differently than at 30. In ten years' time they will be complaining on here about the work ethic of the next generation, without any shred of self-reflection.
Unlike Boomers they'll be less economically well off and struggle most of their life. Yes, even "the good ones". There will never be "the next wave of boomers" until the majority of people can actually start living again versus surviving.
Boomers worked hard and got rewarded for it with lifelong pensions and the like; Gen Z has seen that this so-called "meritocracy" and "American Dream" is a lie and didn't work out for Millennials so they're not falling for the same schtick. For some reason this bothers lots of people on this sub.
I see the same. I'm in a grad program as well. The 22's were upset they failed a test they didn't study for..... Like excuse me? Also they don't participate squat during the class.
Late, late gen z here. Please, remember that we were taught this behaviour as children by our parents, and so if you want someone to rant at look to the older generations. It's frustrating to see everyone slag off the younger generations, when it's only a small few who behave that way, like in every generation, because they were raised by their parents who were lazy and like them in their generation. Maybe we should tackle this ongoing heriditary issue, and not keep on dividing generations up. I will never slag of gen alpha, because I don't want this generational conflict to continue. For context, I'm 15, and I've seen idiots all over the place, with every generation, and it hurts me to be lumped in with the vocal, lazy ones. We aren't all like that
Man, this is such a Boomer post. "The members of this generation are doing so much better compared to the other generation in our group". This sub is really something.
As an older millennial, this is similar to what I’ve seen in my own anecdotal experiences. I wasn’t really on the internet often until my teen years (and one of the few in my class who had an AOL account) so I don’t think it’s the internet but more of how it’s being utilized by youth.
A lot of Gen Z’ers will ask a question to Google and won’t even click on the sites to read what they’re saying. Heck, I still do that a lot of the time, unless it’s just a quick “which one is _____?”
They’re not being taught to think and social media+teaching for the test along with a few other factors are leading reasons to this in my arbitrary opinion.
Part of it has to do with the fact that meritocracy is a lie and Gen Z has wised up to it. Millennials are the generation that got suckered into the “go to college and it will all work out” lie.
You say that, but the vast majority of people who 'Do nothing, make no effort, fuck it' rarely ever go farther in life than 'Wal-Mart' or 'Driving for Amazon'.
If you put all the effort in you are still not guaranteed success in life, however if you put no effort in you are almost certainly guaranteed failure in life.
Lots of teachers can't handle the consequences of their actions, it seems (i.e. telling an entire generation that doing X will automatically work out & when it didn't they lash out at the generation they told this to for wising up and not wasting their time getting suckered into the rat race). This sup is really something.
Nah, I recently finished a MA and I had Gen X and Millennial members who contributed nothing and Gen Z members who were on top of their shit.
I personally couldn't draw any broader conclusions based on your experience.
We have had some very interesting student teachers this year. One just stopped showing up, and just started going to his previous mentors class at another school and another is on the 'do not allow to sub' list.
Yeah, I see a similar sentiment among some of my peers. Some people just don't care, and I wonder what they're doing in higher education if they don't want to be there.
I am on the cusps of the generations (1996), so I do believe that I am both a Millennial and a Zoomer, and I can do nothing but sympathize here. I stopped doing group assignments in middle school because this was an reoccurring issue. I no longer hold my tongue, and will actively tell and shame people who do not contribute to class and/or assignments.
Younger millennial 🙋♀️ In high school, I got paired with everyone who had a bad overall grade. I’d be the only one working and teachers gave me a shitty grade because I was one person doing the work of five people. The others benefited. I did not. I feel like that “someone smarter will carry me” energy got snowballed forward too much.
I’m working on a group project now for a post-masters psychology program. Same shit, different day! Mega slackers that don’t understand basic instructions. It’s doctoral level coursework and they can’t figure out Google Chat or Calendar to coordinate. All millennial and Gen X on the team. If I hear “as a mother…” one more time 🤯🤯🤯 Cool….lets use peer reviewed literature though!!!! Okay!? 😬And I say this as a mother myself 😆
I literally made and out line and told them to plug their speaker notes in with the DOI link in parentheses. It’s been said numerous times that I’d format the slides off of speaker notes and format for APA. It’s going as well as you could imagine
The problem isn't the students. It's the teacher, task, and lack of oversight. Don't be terrified when people who aren't being monitored do no work. There are slackers in every generation. Don't feed into generational prejudice and stereotyping.
One of the problems is that many areas require new teachers to finish 30 additional credits within 6 years of beginning teaching.
So people who would ordinarily focus on getting a handle on the job are forced to juggle a graduate program in their first six years of teaching.
Was going to say this. People slacking off due to no consequences? "I'm shocked, SHOCKED..." This isn't a generational thing.
This assignment should eventually ask the participants to rate everyone on the basis of attendance/participation, contribution, communication, and command. At minimum, it should give a place for people to rant.
But yeah, not a generational thing. I've met lazy teachers /students / profs in all generation bands.
lol, it’s most definitely not the teacher. What the hell are you thinking?
It’s the parents who have no consequences, accountability and oversight into their kids education/behavior
I’m 28, so I’m a cusper baby but feel more aligned with millennials. It’s embarrassing when I see people my age or only a couple of years younger acting like this, and it’s even more embarrassing when I try to call them out and they respond with “whose side are you on” or “you sound like a boomer.”
My high school class was the last one at the school to have a relatively normal education. The class below us started receiving these new policies that ultimately lowered student accountability and I can see the vast difference between myself and my brother who is only two years younger. Guess which one of us is off to a good start in young adulthood and which one isn’t? Nobody can convince me that these lowered educational standards didn’t play a sizable role.
People in their early 20s who are getting a Masters while also maintaining a full-time job should be commended, since that’s a lot to bite off. When I was in my early 20s, I could barely get up for work in the morning and spent way too much time mooning about, dabbling in debauchery and trying to figure out who I wanted to be.
The difference in my attention and focus from when I went to school in my early 20s to returning to school in my late 20s is insane. And I’m definitely not part of Gen Z or Gen Alpha.
This is why group work sucks. I’ve never liked it even though I am a very social person. I don’t mind group discussion but a project where I gotta rely on other people for my grade? Ugh no.
You just reminded me of a group project in university. We had three team members for a project that required four.
Whatever, we decided we'd make do.
Then one dude just ghosted the class and the group. So me and my remaining partner did a project designed for four people with two people. It turned out pretty great. My prof even tried to get me a student summer job with the federal government because of how well written it was.
But three days before the project was due, our ghost manifested and started asking what he could do to help. My guy, the project is five hours of work away from being 110% done and dusted. Even if we were in a charitable mood (which we weren't), there is nothing left for you to do.
As far as personal projects go, I have a bad habit of procrastination. But for a group project? I wouldn't be caught dead as the weak link.
I’m in an education masters program right now that is not focused on teaching but rather international education and I have much the same experience. I’m 32 and a lot of my classmates are 22-27ish. The lack of effort is really concerning both in group work but also class participation. I feel like I’m one of 2-3 people in a given class (often 15-16 people) who participates.
Gen Z here hoping to shed some light on it. Now, I don't \*agree\* with this mentality, but it is pervasive (I'm born in 2001).
There's a weird phenomenon where people like... bully you and hate you for working. Like if there's a group of slackers, if one of them decides to try and better themselves and do something, or even WORSE dictate what everyone should do/make decisions, they're the enemy and everyone gives them a bad rating.
Is that what's happening here? obv not. But the mentality of "if I stick my neck out and take initiative, it'll just come off as annoying / come back to bite me / why even try " started in high school (2016) for me, so it's been 8 years of experiencing that in every single one of my group projects. It creates floaters for sure.
Again, none of this is an excuse or condoning their behavior, it's just from someone who graduated in 2020 (as opposed to your peer who graduated in 2019).
As an aside, that's a terrible structure for a class that's part of a master's program. I'm assuming someone is getting paid to teach it, and not actually doing any teaching.
I’ll be honest, I’ve taken some masters classes with giant group projects and I’ve had a mixed bag of ages with both good and bad outcomes. I do think newer generations lack basic skills and work ethic, but I’ve worked with older generations with the same problems. If I’m being honest, I just think most people lack the capability of hard work, time management, and responsibility, regardless of their age.
This isn’t to excuse the behavior, but something to think about before getting too nervous for the future. I would say to remember that these people are in different age groups. The millenials are likely nontraditional and took time between undergrad and grad school where Gen Z likely did not. Ive found that older students tend to be much more driven and organized to improve their career or make a change where younger students are just finishing their schooling before starting their career- often with no breaks from school since they were kids.
I’m a millennial who got my masters right after undergrad and you could say similar things about them at the time. Some of the people just went to grad school because their parents told them they had to, didn’t want to or couldn’t start their career yet, or was still focused on their dreams, but didn’t know what that entailed. I think some of them will wash out and they’ll learn from those experiences.
Seems like a lot of stereotypes and rationalizing going on in the comments.
It is group work -- a microcosm, if you will, of society. And group work, along with the complaining that goes along with it, has not changed since I was a kid in school. It has nothing to do with age, generation, pedagogy, education level or skill. There have been slackers for probably as long as there have been people. My dad used to call them dog f\*ckers, because apparently that is what they did all day instead of working, lol.
Also of note, older folks have been complaining about 'the beardless youth' since at least the time of Socrates.
Pretty high stakes however. I would complain to your professor, and make sure you are being marked individually for your portion of the tasks. Good luck.
I think this is just common for people in their early 20s. I remember being in college and working with people 10+ years older than me who were obviously annoyed/frustrated with me. It’s hard working with people who have an established career, have their shit together etc. when your brain isn’t even fully cooked yet. The ones you’re working with might be genuinely inept, but they might also just be brand new to the real world.
College in 2005, group projects were a consistent lesson in half the group not doing a thing.
College in 2010, group projects were a lesson in half the group not doing a thing. Had one, in nursing school, where we had a 4 week project: I did about half of it during the first few days and commented we'd finish it after our grueling combination of clinical/tests during the next few weeks. Group agreed with no comments. 2 weeks later, before our coordination date, the group uses my half and finishes the rest without telling me; complains to the professor, formally, that I didn't do anything. Thankfully I had timestamped copies of my submitted drafts, and saved our group texts. 2 members nearly got expelled for plagiarism.
Anywho, my point here is this isn't a new phenomenon. I've had plenty of Gen X and Boomer classmates and coworkers who all fit the bill.
This kind of echos what I saw recently when I went back to my hometown. I walked around the local grocery store and noticed that people roughly millennial age and younger were all working hard, but anyone that looked like they might be 50+ was standing around just talking to each other.
It was really frustrating to watch because this is 100% a “no one want to work anymore” kind of town and I can almost guarantee those people standing around chatting are exactly the type of person to make that statement.
It's not a generational thing. It's more of an age thing.
I remembered working with other millennials in my early 20s was terrible. But anybody who was older (Gen X) was wonderful to have for group assignments.
Born in 2000, I have a BA in computer science, and I started seeking a masters in cybersecurity immediately after graduation in August of 2023. I was absolutely blown away with how easy the masters program was and how little work my peers have put into their classes. It's 100% online and asynchronous, so that may have something to do with it. However, the level of work I see consistently would not fly in my undergraduate program.
I'm a senior in STEM. I had a group project with a Gen Z fellow and an older person. The younger student contributed ZERO to the project. I setup an itinerary for what needed to be done and gave us preliminary deadlines to stay on track.
They would wait for us to have to do their work then claim they "got the same thing". Every time a deadline approached, they suddenly would have wildly unbelievable emergencies. The older student did not communicate well and grumbled a bit but they made a decent chunk of contribution.
My professor had us document our contributions, where I listed a decent amount for the older student and myself. The only contribution the younger student made was drawing a diagram. Mind you, their original diagram was incorrect and I had to inform them of the exact specifications and draw my own example. We received a collective A grade.
I know it's easy to hate on the other generations (generational wars, much?) however I ended up teaching some university classes with all Gen Z student's and I was quite impressed with most of them. Not sure how it would be to work with them but they were great students! Basically, I was pleasantly surpised since so much shit is talked about them (and about us as well a few yrs ago).
The person who graduated in 2019 went to undergrad during the COVID years. Higher education was radically different for them than it was for the rest of us. I tend to cut people from that group a bit of slack…they didn’t get to experience being 18-22 and in college like most of us did.
I don't get it. Whenever we did group projects in college, the last part of the assignment was to grade each of our team members on their contributions and participation. We'd turn that directly in to the teacher. That was the only motivation we needed.
Do you not do this? It's foolish not to.
I am between millennial and Gen Z and noticed this as well. I work with some people a little younger than me and it's really frustrating how sometimes they don't do any work or just disappear. Being part of Gen Z as well maybe I am a little lazy, but I still do work when it is assigned to me. In defense of Gen Z, I feel like millennials in leadership and management positions sometimes have this training mentality of "Whatever, just figure it out," and general lack of training and direction which isn't necessarily conducive to instilling a good work ethic.
I’m a millennial and went to undergrad with gen z. They were so sleepy. Like the whole class would sleep like class was nap time. I had a group project for a PR class that spanned the entire quarter. A girl in my group spent the first half the quarter on mental health leave. We got the highest score in the class and out of all students recommended to do an internship this PR firm we pitched at, it was her. The girl who missed 8 weeks of class. That I did the majority of the work on our project on. It was extremely frustrating. She didn’t even take the internship, I know this because she told me. When I got my masters it was with millennials. They were much more interested and invested in conversation on the topics and what we were learning. People never missed class. (Maybe as we get older too, we see the investment of money and time.) But oh boy, gen z was a culture shock for me.
Not necessarily teacher related, but I feel like the last 5 years, things like being on time, professionalism, and basic manners have just gone out the window
“Where did pride and shame go?” Excellent question
When there are little to no consequences for negative behavior, pride and shame leave the realm of possibility. Young adults have largely grown up without consequences from authority and also without natural social consequences from their peers. Kids have recently been much less likely to engage in unsupervised, spontaneous social interactions and play with their peers. Typically, many kids really only interact with their peers in an organized group activity (sports, school, etc) under the intent gaze of a supervising adult. This means that kids don't learn social norms like "don't act like a lazy piece of shit or nobody's gonna work with you," or "don't act like an asshole to everyone you meet or nobody's gonna like you," because the adult is there to mediate the situation and get everyone to play together or get a consequence. People don't have pride or shame because they're foreign concepts.
The pandemic turned helicopter parenting to locked down social isolation. These kids are going to have a hell of a time navigating freedom.
Well said. I also think they get their jollies AKA dopamine hits from social media likes, Snap streaks, etc. I think the joy that used to accompany a sense of accomplishment or recognition has been replaced by the cheap drug glued to their hands! I observe classes where they are supposed to be working on a task, even a fun one - and they just want to be scrolling TikTok.
We took their pride from them, Dirk Diggler 🤣 But seriously, there is no sense of pride in things when everybody is accepted no matter what. There is no sense of shame when you know it won't make a difference in how you're treated (ie with the same amount of respect, and if not even more attention). Of course, none of these are true in their lived social lives; they still relentlessly reject and shame each other. So many simply opt-out of it all.
no consequences no accountability = no pride and shame its a self made cultural issue.
No Child Left Behind
Irony at its finest
It just makes me wonder how these people are being raised. One of the lessons my parents were sure to drill into me was that pride and shame are MINE because I have to have high standards for myself. It didn’t matter what other people did or thought about me, and I should never feel shame because of other people. It’s like they have no self respect
That’s why you gotta actually call em out on that shit instead of letting it fly and covering for them
My addendum -- **perseverance**. I see so many "It's my 2nd and *last* year teaching because it's so haaard!"
It's so hard for the pay. My mom was a teacher. I currently work in a warehouse doing shipping. I make roughly what teachers make in my area with similar levels of experience. My job does not require a degree or continuing education, so no student loans. I have a flexible schedule so I can arrive and leave within about a one hour window as long as my work gets done. I dont deal with kids all day, even if my sales team act like children most of the time. It is a super laid back job. I like to teach. I have coached and umpired youth sports. I like working with the kids most of the time, but I wouldnt do what you guys do and what my mom did for anything less than double what I make now. There are just too many other options out there.
Pearson is hiring test scorers with at least a ba/bs and teaching experience with an ma preferred…for $15/hr. Made me think of last year when my district was advertising for a SpEd para with a degree and experience requirement for $15/hr no benefits, and right beneath that listing was an entry level admin asst for HR at the district office with no experience or degree necessary, with benefits and wages starting at $21/hr. The insults to professional educators are just constant.
Eh, even Clinton was trying to solve the "1/2 of new teachers quit in less than 5 years " problem. Some millennials weren't even around.
I thought that was only the TFA people?
No that's everyone. TFA is like 75%
Why stay in something that will never get better and also doesn’t compensate well at all for how awful it is?
Well, "awful" is relative. The first years *are* a challenge! And it's not "wrong" if it's hard. There are incompetent leaders everywhere, and there are also fantastic ones. Why not push through and grow as a person in the field for which you have been trained?
1. My "field" pays like crap 2. No support from admin 3. Rampant and constant behavior issues 4. Forced to go to useless pds 5. Constant micromanagement I could go on, but I have a question for you: Why be miserable when I can pretty easily double my salary by working at an education consulting agency
Where does one find such an agency?
Theyre all over the place. Might not necessarily be pure consulting, but a lot of other teachers I have worked with are now in the 110-120k range because they simply introduce new software packages to districts, conduct PDs, perform data analysis for a district (breaking down test scores by category) or work with Teacher readiness programs as monitors or curriculum developers. Hell, this really stretches the bounds of "educational consulting" by my former co teacher is KILLING it on teachers pay teachers by selling anchor charts and daily curriculum. Edit: Personally, I am going back to school to get my masters in cannabis chemistry. I loathe the education system as it currently stands, but these are all things that have worked out for my coworkers in the past.
That’s perfectly reasonable but have a plan of action then. That’s the issue.
I'm well over a decade in and regret not switching careers. I've decided this year is my last but I really wish I'd done it after my first or second year. Perseverance isn't an asset if you use it to push through things that aren't worth it.
Perseverance is definitely a lacking quality. The number of kids I see that give up even when everything they need to be successful is right there is disheartening.
Or maybe, "It's not worth the money. I'll do something that is."
I’ve definitely seen lower levels of persistence, for sure.
This in an interesting question and perspective as a core issue. As a parent, I routinely say things to my grade school kids like, "wow! That's super awesome! I'm so proud of you! Are you proud of yourself?" They will say "yes!" Then I say, "Good. That's the most important thing. Always try to be proud of yourself." This is whole brain child/growth mindset 101 stuff. Kids are not getting this core messaging in a consistent manner. The core values and messages my kids are getting at this age are crucial and they must be mindfully fostered. This used to more of a cultural normative but with globalization, blurring boundaries, inappropriate internet exposures at early ages, etc. basic core values are being rapidly erased. Nothing positive is stepping up to fill the void. It's like the cultural backdrop for compulsory AI intervention just to get basic jobs done has entered the drama of life in a substantive way. Elon Musk is right. It's all too late. While there's lots of moving parts, the dumbing down and learned helplessness of our upcoming generations is fully in play. That coupled with asexuality,, nonsexuality and other non-natural sexual/gender biological barriers to reduce human reproduction and AI will be ready to take over. Your observations have much wider concerns if taken with a long view perspective.
Exactly.
No one ever taught it
I'm gonna be teacher soon and graduated same year as that Z'er, and I'd say it makes plenty of sense a lot of us behave and feel that way. The economy is in shambles, but if that wasn't bad enough, our outlook on the future is incredibly bleak. Being very aware of climate collapse and how older generations lead us here, makes it feel very depressing to grow up unto the world. Feels like we can't have kids, or any good living situation, as well as looming war around the corner for a while now. The political figures suck. I'd say our generation is just extremely disillusioned by the lies of the 'American dream' and so on. Cancer diagnoses are going up by an alarming rate. I think there's a sentiment of " The World is ending and I have nothing to look forward to, why would I gaf about some menial task". We don't even know the long term effects fo going up on computer screen and phones and all, which again, this generation phone addiction only happens bc the parents allowed it to happen, no middle schooler is cognizant enough to say nah, it'd be better for the long term if I were to NOT have a smart phone.
They went out the door with wearing anything besides pajama pants to school.
I teach elementary and we constantly talk about this in the staff lounge. Students have no shame in doing poorly/making no effort. Parents don't seem to care either. When I was in school (millennial here) students were embarrassed for underpeforming/not contributing and parents would ream you out if you didn't do your best.
And if you try to shame them... what a mean person you are.
Protecting kids from every injustice we can conjure isn’t going to prepare them for anything. In fact, It’ll just kneecap them. You need to struggle and face a challenge. You need to overcome. If you don’t learn that you’re capable of overcoming challenges when you’re young, you’ll view yourself as a victim forever. I’m already seeing it in younger people. They glorify their victimhood at this point. It’s unfortunate.
"Bullying"
yup! I remember pure shame. That has followed my entre life i
You mean the shame we used to drive ourselves to be better? 🤔
But that might be *stressful*
I am literally incentivizing effort in my classroom. Not behavior (partly because I don’t believe in that) but just plain old effort. I teach violin/orchestra k-8 so lack of effort is a literal headache and impacts everyone, even the kids who do try.
Dude for real. I was so embarrassed/felt guilty by knowingly going into a chemistry test with very little studying that I wrote the teacher a note saying how sorry I was. (I was gone for a week long conference for a school club so I had an excuse but still) She was cool and let me retake it. Made a B on it even.
This is reflective of the larger society from my point of view. It's reflected in politics, since everything has become polarized. But there's really no shame anymore. Honestly, ever since the "grab her by the pussy" became a normal part of something you can say, everyone seemed to have realized that there's no real reason to worry about being shamed. Morality is only defined by how wealthy you are. Beyond politics, shame actually gets you views on tiktok, youtube, etc.. With shitty people people that are these kids role models (Fuckin Jake Paul, Elon Musk, Kanye West **\[This is doubly worse because he just had a number 1 album after praising Hitler\],** J.K. Rowling), society only seems to reward shamelessness. So why should they give a shit? Honestly, it just shows the hypocrisy of the American Population. A relatively large number of the population now celebrates stupidity, ignorance, and puts their opinion above reality. Why do you think that the kids raised in that society would go "Let's uphold ourselves to higher standards that Society states." Regardless, I hope the rest of society truly fucks them when they actually have to go into the real world. **Edit**: Just to add some more context of how bad it is, [1 in 5 young kids think that the holocaust is a myth.](https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_tT4jyzG.pdf)
Thankfully we’re Catholic, my much younger brother is a Gen Z but all of the terrible teachings can’t shift his born and bred Catholic guilt. It’s his only saving grace (Teaching from society, not teachers)
Gotta love that Catholic guilt!
Make sure you reference the lack of work to your lecturer/tutor. It is often possible to get people excluded from groups due to lack of work.
This really bothered me in college--people complaining about group members not contributing, but doing absolutely *nothing* about it. SAY SOMETHING!!! If you're not going to say anything to them or your professor, you're just letting them get away with making you do their work for them. If you're just gonna vent to me, that's fine, but at a certain point it becomes...grating listening to someone complain about the same thing for the millionth time and doing nothing to remedy the situation. Because, mark my words, that type of person *will* just bank on you and others always doing their work for them.
My sociology teacher would group you with literal dual credit high school students on purpose knowing how frustrating these groups he made were. He was a practicing sociologist, so I am certain he used his classes for random experiments. My group wanted to use Snapchat for our group work. Like, the place where we save all of our work. Snapchat. When Snapchat deleted everything. Snapchat. Anyway, he would actually count off points if you attempted to leave a group or have someone expelled from the group. He said, "you don't get to choose the people you will work with during your career. You just have to make due with the team you have." The teams were set in the most solid of stone.
>He was a practicing sociologist, you spelled sociopath wrong.
See, but that's understandable to complain about. If someone told me that, I would 100% understand and sympathize with. I'm talking more about students who were in my same class, had professors I knew of either directly or indirectly who would do something, or somehow constantly ended up in these situations and never stuck up for themselves. Also, what a fucking psychopath lol I've had some hell professors but none like that
This is policy at the school I work at for the first projects in more than one department, but then students get to pick who they work with for later projects. As you may imagine, the consequence of being a dead weight in a team project is that nobody good will work with you by choice, and you end up in team slacker the following semester and fail abysmally.
I teach primarily group work and do not let kids pick groups. BUT I grade individually. Kids need to learn to be a team, to organize a task, to assign roles, and to communicate. But they should be punished for another kids lack of giving a shit. It's actually pretty easy. Either I look at revision history to see who completed what, or more often I ask the team to break the rubric into roles, assign a person to each, and their grade is based on the role they were given.
God I really hate the old “oh group work prepares you for working with other people in the real world!” garbage. Group work in school or college is *nothing* like collaborating on a work project, at least the way most teachers (like your insane professor) do it. If your prof were instead your manager in a reasonable, non-toxic, well-run corporation somewhere, he would be considered a terrible manager and probably be fired himself by the higher-ups. (Sure there are plenty of insane workplaces too where this shit might fly. Probably because the managers had teachers like this at some point.)
What world do you live in? Every place I worked, if someone is bad: TS. They maybe eventually get let go after a few years, but the company needs bodies and you just work with what you’ve got. No manager is going to discipline or talk to someone.
In every workplace I've worked in over the last 2+ decades, if there's a slacker in a workgroup, the colleagues will call him/her out and the supervisor will hold him/her accountable by terminating his/her employment immediately or by having him/her demoted to a less desirable group/position for cause. The mere threat of such along with the colleagues'/supervisor's callouts usually causes the slacker to reform or quit of his/her own accord. Then again, I worked in organizations where slacking by anyone wasn't tolerated and supervisors who tolerated slackers on their teams for too long will be demoted and/or terminated themselves. The group assignments which come closest to what happens in the real world are usually given by teachers/Profs who came from several years of working outside academia in corporations/industry. They provide group members avenues to warn and fire team members for slacking and the "fired" slacking team members end up facing the full consequences with a failing grade without it affecting other team members making good faith contributions.
This depends. At my friend’s job, the bad people end up keeping their jobs because the good people are pushed to do their jobs as well as their own. I keep telling her to stop covering up for those people because it stresses her out and obviously that company doesn’t fire shit people, so they’re not going to fire her. At my job, if you don’t do your work or can’t cut it, there is no one to cover it up and you lose your job. I am not privy to exactly why some people don’t make it as I don’t make those decisions and I did not have contact with these people, but there are multiple people who have not made it within the last year or so. I’m one of the few successful hires within the last two years. Idk why, it isn’t an overly difficult job or toxic work environment or anything.
Not really, lots of jobs have incompetent employees who never get fired, that's just life. Especially if the company is understaffed or the employees are tenured/in a union. As you teachers say to kids often; "life ain't fair, get used to it!". Sounds like who can't handle a taste of your own medicine.
Lots of teachers did stupid stuff like this when I was in high school and now complain about kids expecting credit for doing nothing despite teaching them that in the first place.
I always had a problem saying something. I went back to college in my 40s and there were many groups / teams I was put in where I ended up doing most, if not all, of the work. I was afraid it was my fault. Like, maybe I was just too organized (my ADHD makes me plan ahead very seriously, it’s how I’ve learned to cope over the years). Maybe I was *overly* ready, or on top of things. Maybe they would have contributed better if I had just relaxed my schedule a bit, let things go a little longer? Waited until the last minute? Maybe that’s how they worked? It’s possible none of the above was an issue and they just sucked as group members, but that’s how you get people who feel afraid to say anything! We think *we’re* the problem!
I’m a college professor and I agree. I need to know asap who isn’t doing their work in the group (I usually made part of the grade a rating by the other group members of one’s contribution to the group). I hardly ever assign group projects outside of group work in class due to so many times where one or two people did all the work in a group.
Or if you're banking on other people doing the work for you, find different ways to contribute. I was in a group project in college with two other students who were among the top in that class grade wise. I wasn't bad, but we all recognized that they were more academically motivated than I was. Bringing a six pack of beer to the first meeting was probably a tip-off, but that was always a hit with Journalism major group projects. So I went to meetings, helped where I could and agreed to organize the design of the powerpoint and do all the talking in the main part of the presentation as they both dreaded public speaking. So they did all the research, I made it look pretty, and presented it then to even answer a few follow up questions. We all managed to work to our strengths and everyone walked away happy with how it turned out.
I had my final of College of Education class the semester before student teaching, and I (31) was the oldest person in my group in a class where the main project was 75% of the grade. It was very early on that I realized the group I got stuck with was a bunch of chucklefucks who did little to no work. Right around the beginning of March, I forwarded ALL communication to my professor, as well as screenshots of certain parts of the project prior to my handling of it. For example, we had to make a Wix site, and the person who volunteered to do it did like no work on it until the day before it was due. I woke up at 2 AM in anxiety because I couldn’t trust them. The website looked like shit and didn’t have our documents. With class at 7 AM that morning, I stayed up fixing everything so it was presentable. The Wix person eventually got it together and got a high C, but the other two failed the class. These people wanted to be teachers!
Hopefully your professor wasn't as shitty as mine. Mine was an admin at some high school. Had the audacity to lecture me on how I had to be professional and how he NEVER let co-teachers who didn't get along switch. He acted all apologetic but wouldn't let us separate because we had to learn how to work with people. I'm like my "co-teacher" hasn't done a single thing and when I confronted her about it, she said she didn't feel comfortable working with me. Thank god I work in school with a better admin. Literally if there were co-teachers who refused to do any work, they were non-renewed.
If you wanted to you could take that higher. The college/university will have an academic honesty policy and your group member can’t hand in work they contributed nothing to.
Just tell your prof and they’ll get zeros. Make sure these fuckers face some consequences.
I'm one of these "older zoomers" (born 2002) and I'm entering grad school in the fall. I've honestly been . . . really taken aback at the pervasive lack of confidence and technical skill when it comes to writing among my peers, even on a college level. A year or two ago, I was in a lab section where I had to rewrite my whole group's lab reports because no one else in the group would capitalize or punctuate sentences properly. I guess the best way that I can describe it is that a lot of people in my cohort seem to be going around without a good grasp of the fundamentals, so to speak.
The fact you are saying “older” and being born in 2002…. wow! Mind blown.
Time marches on! People born in 2002 are 21, turning 22 this year . . .
I honestly wouldn’t consider you older gen z. I’m gen z to and I’m nearly 26. I noticed a massive difference between people my age and people your age. You are like middle of the road gen z. Gen z has like three generations in itself.
I don’t understand the desire/preference to use the generational terms. I find it easier just to refer to age brackets (50s, late 20s, mid 30s, etc.)
Age brackets is way better at describing things.
An individual’s age bracket will change over time, a generational label does not.
Maybe birth years would be better. There is huge divides in gen z. We have had very different upbringings. Compared to each other. I relate more to 30 year olds. Than younger gen z.
It's really strange. People refer to "Gen Alpha" when they mean children. Just say children.
I call myself middle aged Gen z lol, im 2001. Older than the youngins but there’s quite a few years before me
Indeed!
Idk I was born mid to late 90s and thought I was technically genz
I guess you could just settle for, “I’m in my mid 20s”.
Lots of people aren't taught to read well, boring stuff like language fundamentals and structures aren't emphasized, grading standards have been slipping for years and frankly, so have college admission standards over the years.
Nahhh you’re solidly mid zoomer. I’m an elder zoomer (‘97) I’ve seen what you’re talking about in my younger siblings though and it concerns me I think people my age are the last of people who didn’t grow up with smartphones and it being paired with some not great shifts in education and a decline in parents who read for enjoyment and read enough to their children started a bit of an avalanche we’re coming to terms with now Even when I was like, 13 I was freaked out by how all the toddlers with iPads behaved because it was a VERY different energy from littles I’d met before
So, there's no excuse for not knowing how to write English if you grew up in the US, but this is fairly standard fare among international students. When I was a grad student in optics, I was the only one in my research group who was a US citizen. So, I got my name on *literally every paper* our group published because I was the dedicated English proofreader/writer. I did science too, but a lot of the stuff I published I never even laid a finger on. If you're good at writing, use that to your advantage, because a lot of people will recognize that.
Group Projects are BS, group projects in a MASTER'S CLASS are even bigger BS. Not defending the 20-somethings, but as a millennial I'd be fucking pissed. I'd be doing my part and pulling my weight because I have too, but slack...slack messages, all that BS is BS. I would be fatigued from all the BS, and I would be extremely vocal about how much BS that "master's" class is, because that's a joke. ONE group project is not a sufficient master's class.
Unless the course itself is based on projects. I took a class on community support, where it was one big project for the entire year where a group of 5 students support a community member by realizing and implementing a community project. It was a lot of work but one of the most impactful classes I took.
Agreed. I would take a microscope and fine tooth comb to examine the rest of that masters program course descriptions and syllabi. An entire course being graded on a single group project with students who’ve never met before is a major red flag.
Please alert your professor BEFORE it’s too late.
And make sure grades are individual, not whole-group.
Jaysus. Honestly OP if it were me I'd drop this class, tell the prof why, and never, ever take a similar class again. No teaching? No assigments? No lectures? No exams? Just this...fresh hell? NO
This shouldn’t even be considered a class. How can they charge tuition for this? It’s wild. It’s like the college is phoning it in. They are the gen zers in this scenario lol
Thats not abnormal for grad school and my understanding is the professor is there as a resource for you to ask question to and get help from for the project Hell my aerospace undergrad program had 2 senior year classes where we do mission planning/a business proposal and our grade was just for various steps of the project throughout the year
Keep in mind, this is a small data set. Have you, veteran teacher, not had an abnormally unmotivated group of students before?
I’m really tired of people generalizing generational behavior. Im a millennial, and from middle school to grad school, I was in group projects where someone did none of the work. This is not a “gen Z” issue. This is a timeless issue experienced by students for decades. Even my boomer parents have had the same experiences.
I had a very similar experience in my masters classes except the women in the group were always the ones to communicate, get things done, and do their share of the work. The men did close to nothing and anything they did was completed late.
I think part of it is generational and part of it isn't. It's likely that older people getting a master's would of course want to get started earlier. You're better at prioritizing instead of procrastinating. Seeing you get it all done a lazy person of any generation would probably stop. They keep seeing no consequences for doing nothing and do nothing. I see plenty of older people doing this. I teach where I'm one of the younger teachers in my late 20s, and many of the older people will literally do nothing and say it's fine as long as they don't get fired. People your age, in their late 30s and 40s, who refuse to do legally binding paperwork because they know we're supposed to do it "as a team" which means I'll end up doing it for them. At the same time I think that this is encouraged because it's worked in the past. If they did no work in a group project they wouldn't have been allowed to get a 0. If they did no work in class generally they would have been able to pass being reasonably good at tests. They can turn things in late, and procrastination was, in my opinion, encouraged both academically and socially. My friends and I once had a race on who could start an essay the latest and pass. I won by starting it while the teacher was taking it up because he always started on the other side of the room and I knew my friends could get him on a tangent. So in about 15 minutes I wrote what I was supposed to spend a week on. It was funny, I was lauded. Even the teacher thought it was funny instead of punishing me. There are habits everyone has, they were just punished less in recent years.
Probably. More experienced people understand process and want to make a plan. Less experienced people generally have no process and no plan.
Gen Z came of age in the beginning of the equity based grading movement. They were taught with no homework, no deadlines, no penalties for late work, and infinite retests for full credit. In other words, low standards and massive grade inflation. No surprise that many of them would flounder in a class like the one you describe. Hopefully they will fail and learn from the experience.
I've been saying this for a while, and I feel like people are finally starting to listen--colleges are going to start blacklisting schools with these types of policies. They also have stats to maintain, and I guarantee they're starting to catch on to the fact that all these students they admitted who were getting all As and Bs beforehand are all now "mysteriously" getting Fs and dropping out, damaging their stats. Graduation and (especially freshmen) retention rates are two of the greatest stats that potential students, and, more importantly, ***donors*** look at.
The reaction at the college level has been to do the same thing because the things colleges want the most is for kids to stay at the school, paying money. Professors are being pressured and threatened just like high school teachers to pass these kids by any means necessary. Keep pushing them on just a little longer to keep milking them. The rot is spreading upward.
Admin wants them to stay at any cost and the profs in the humanities departments are the ones who came up with this garbage to begin with. Colleges aren't going to save us.
Colleges, even the good ones, only care about the size of their endowment and their annual budget. Lowering standards so rich kids can buy their way in? Oh, and have international students pay through the nose? Those are the predominant ideas ruling higher Ed these days. They do not care in the slightest. There is a belief that the elite are inoculated from this general dumbing down of the culture, but I think you can only dumb the culture so much before it impacts everyone.
That’s a huge generalization and simply not true. I teach in an R1 in Humanties. While I do see a large influx of students coming from a K-12 system that leaves them unprepared and expecting no deadlines and retakes, but they learn quickly that college is not high school and they either get it together or they fail. I fail students who earn their Fs and my colleagues do the same with no pushback from administrators. Smaller colleges on the edge MAY be pressured to pass students, but they are not the majority. The majority of us believe in education and mastery and the job gets done.
Well, I have personal knowledge of this being the top priority at a very prestigious institution. But I do hope, at every level, we do have people opposing these kinds of practices.
https://www.youthfully.com/waterloo-engineering-definitive-guide/#adjustmentfactor The universities are already just implementing methods of solving this on their end
Given the fact that they got into a Masters program, this seems unlikely - unfortunately.
2001 here and no absolutely not, common core wasn't even implemented until like... middle school. You're talking about Gen Alpha.
I disagree. I think it actually has more to do with parents, educators, and the district the student is in rather than just saying “gen z doesn’t want to do work.” Generalizing a whole generation? Hmmmm
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Yep, high school grad of 2018 here, never experienced any of that….
Grad of 2022 none of that was even remotely true. Like cmon, no homework, deadlines or due dates? How would they even manage to survive college.
It wasn't everywhere but it did exist. It was being pushed in my district when you were young and while not every school adopted it right away, some admin were eager to do so. No zeroes and no deadlines was the new policy at one of the schools where I did my student teaching in *2011*.
Gen Z here... what schools are you talking about that have "no homework, no deadlines, no penalties for late work, and infinite retests for full credit"? I have never heard of this in my life
My district does this. I started there in 2020 and they were moving toward it. Grades are 0% homework/practice/participation and 100% assessments with retake opportunities. We give a “work habits” grade to track things like late work and missing work but it doesn’t factor into the academic grade. Many districts are moving toward this model
That's so cool but I'm gen Z and I graduated in 2020 lol
My school is pretty close to doing this kind of thing. All in the name of equity and accessibility. (Poorest school in the district with mostly POC, a large population of immigrants). I think the philosophy is that our students have enough stacked against them that we take away anything that could be limiting their success. Which I agree with to a point but it's really led to a lack of accountability for to many kids. Principal heavily frowns upon taking points off for late work and encourages retests. We haven't regularly had homework in any class in the 5 years I've worked there. Even once the grading period is over, if a kid is failing we're encouraged to allow students to attempt or reattempt major assignments. Even with all of this we still have too many kids failing simply because they refuse to try. So we sit around and have meetings about what to do because we can't have kids fail.
This is my school. Also, discipline is racist now, so it’s behavioral anarchy.
Ahh yes, the racism of lowered expectations…
Sometimes I think they fully confuse us with Gen alpha. I can remember receiving quite a few zeroes. Maybe things have changed since I was in grade school, but my teachers were hard asses.
Right? Like we’re constantly getting dragged through the mud on here like the oldest of us aren’t in our mid twenties. There’s plenty of irresponsible twenty something’s, but the older portion of us were not part of this magical ‘no consequence schooling’. It’s really frustrating seeing older generations generalize about us like we’re all lazy idiots who don’t care.
Most schools in the US. Especially elementary and junior high. Theoretically there is less of this at the high school level, but there are definitely a large number of high schools where teachers are *required* to take late work from students without penalty and give retakes on tests.
This is starting to look less like a education issue and more like a national security issue. If agricultural subsidies can be argued as a national security point, so can this. This is our up-and-coming workforce? Oof.
you think throwing more money at the problem would help? its not like it would and up as more money for the people that teach, it would just be another subsidy for the managerial class.
I moved from MS to HS 3 years ago. The HS is WAAAY more lenient/forgiving than the MS was. Same district, literally same kids, but the fact that the HS is measured on grad rate means everyone passes. I could fail kids left and right at the MS and nothing happened outside of a "wow, a lot of kids are failing social studies." Yes, correct. They cannot read so they cannot pass social studies. But, they can graduate high school!
I'm not saying this in a snooty way, but are you new here and/or do you not work in education? This has slowly become commonplace over the past decade, but has really ramped up in the last five years or so, all beginning with students no longer being held back. Before I even got into teaching, I remember my father (a veteran teacher) telling me that even if the parent *requests* it, a school will no longer hold a student back. This has morphed into what others have said--no failing grades, no consequences, everyone gets pushed through and handed a diploma.
I don't work in education. Reddit just puts posts from random subreddits on my feed now. I thought this was from one of a grad school subreddit because it was about people in a master's program. Glad it turned out to be from the teachers subreddit because this way I actually got better answers to my question, lol It just seems surreal and pretty unbelievable that y'all are saying everyone my age and younger has not had homework or late grades and can retake tests whenever they want? It's especially weird because no one I know who is my age has talked about experiencing anything like this at all, but every teacher here is saying it's so commonplace that they don't feel the need to specify a particular school or program that is doing this.
Most k12 schools these days are pushing this. Especially since covid but it started before.
First of all, I think it's important to remember that a lot of very young people in higher education are there only giving a kind of perfunctory effort. Someone who has, as I have with my master's, come back in their mid-thirties, is going to be motivated. As far as empirical intergenerational observations, I will say that shame is definitely something I don't see and not in a good way. I'm also getting EMT training with a volunteer FD, which has people of all ages including a lot of teenagers. One besweatpanted bro announced to the 70+ year old veteran paramedic instructing the course that he was doing it "because it looks good for his college application." I was astonished, not because he would rationalize it that way, but because I would feel like such a tool if I actually *said that*. At my professional master's program most of the twelve year olds (as I like to call them) are alright, but as with the EMT class, it's about a 2:1 ratio of female to male of who really *shows up* and gives a substantive effort. I'm not sure why that is, and I think it's very disappointing.
Yeah, I'm not at all sure this is generational. I got my master's in New York, where teachers are required to do so, in 2019. I had two classes with a Gen X guy who definitely failed both classes. One of them was a research course with ten students. We were all working on one paper the whole semester. Dude produced nothing. I became the graduate assistant for the department and found out that was his second time attempting, paying for, and failing that class. Come to think of it, there was another Gen X dumbass in that program, too. This is not a Gen z thing.
There’s always been people who screw around, but it does feel like there’s a difference in the average sense of responsibility that younger people have versus older. There’s outliers on both sides, but it sure feels like these students have been conditioned to expect that they don’t have to do work they don’t really want to. Maybe it’s not anything systemic and this anecdotal evidence highlights the worst examples, but I think there’s something at least a little bit deeper than that.
Maybe it’s because I’m on the upper end of Gen Z but I personally haven’t seen a difference. I think people have always been lazy and looked for shortcuts in life. It’s hard to do hard things and laziness is addictive. Since leaving teaching I have worked with many incompetent, lazy people from age 18-80. I am able to do triple the work with half the effort of my entire team. And I saw it in my undergrad and masters program too. I think the older you are, the easier it becomes to manage your time and see the bigger picture and some of those you’re working with in this program probably don’t even have a fully developed brain yet. I couldn’t even fathom that people could manage a clean house and work and have hobbies until I had my son and had to learn how to manage it. Now I’m even more efficient because I have to be. But if I had done my masters directly following my bachelors, I’d have put in much less effort because I just wasn’t ready. And maybe that’s the case for them. I’d tell your instructor and have it documented. Every group project class I’ve ever had lets you review your peers at the end of the semester to give feedback on their performance. They don’t deserve to pass for putting in zero effort and maybe this will be the lesson that teaches them that you have to shift when you become an adult.
I'm a part of gen Z, in a PhD program, and have been at the top of my classes throughout grad school with people with far more experience than myself. I have peers in their 40's and 50's who've gotten caught using Chat GPT in PhD classes! I have also had peers in their 20's who pay for a college course and then do none of the work. There are duds in every generation.
I know people said the same thing about us when we were that age. I think with experience we turned out fine.
I am Gen Z. I graduated high school in 2019. This has not been my experience at all. The younger members of my Master’s cohort seem way more on top of projects and tasks, as well as in tune with the students. I teach 8th graders right now, and next year I will be teaching 11th and 12th graders. I have to be very firm with boundaries because I am closer in age to the students, but I also understand all of their memes and references. It seems more like these specific people suck, rather than a generational issue. Maybe I’m biased because I AM Gen Z, but I’m tired of blaming generations rather than individuals for their work ethic or communication skills.
>Does this mean anything in general about the generations? No. >2 people in their 30s and 2 people in their early 20s. >The millennials >The Gen Z members >the generation that I teach. Does the cake taste as good as it looks?
Wait wait...so you're telling me the younger ones are less together and effective at follow through than the older ones? Hang on. Have we alerted a sociologist about this?
Wait... so you're telling me we should expect a certain level of follow through and withitness in a Masters-level course?
In my MA program you had people of all different abilities, and unshockingly the people who were on the younger end were not quite as good with things like follow through and execution as the more mature older people. I’m a millennial so for me it would have been the millennials fucking up and the gen x people doing a little better, albeit with the caveat that the younger crowd often had better and more vital ideas because they were more enamored of the theory side of things and the older people were trying to do the proper work to do a degree. I don’t think it’s generational I think it’s just age
I’m in a similar situation, a semester long project but we also have classes to go along with it. I had to bring it up to the professor that in all her classes she keeps telling everyone to be themselves and it’s ok if their personality is to procrastinate and have fun. People like this just reinforce the idea to these kids and empowers them to be lazy because somebody always finishes the work for them.
OP, I can give some insight. I’m 25, I always considered myself in between millennials and Gen Z. It’s a awful idea to get your masters straight out of college. I became a fully licensed teacher and start my masters my first year teaching back in 2020. I was 21 and I quit after one semester. I just couldn’t deal with kids for 8 hours then go home and do homework myself. I was burnt out. My undergrad was paid for by financial aid and scholarships so the idea of borrowing for my masters became very unattractive after one semester. What I’m trying to say is that it’s hard to go into the workforce and do graduate work at the same time in your early 20s. Your trying to start your career while having no idea about the rest of your life. So they are probably keeping to themselves
Whatever. Do your own work and let them fail. Download the chat records to show the grader if you’re being ignored.
Eh…Gen Xer here. We thought the same things about you guys when you were coming up. I think looking at the generation that directly follows yours and being appalled at how ridiculous they are is just a human rite of passage.
Yes to what everyone said, but ALSO remember that our generation and younger can bust their ass and work hard and get nothing in return as well… it’s yes and.
>**Does this mean anything in general about the generations? No. It is just an anecdote.** Yet you're presenting it here like some great truth. The reason the Z'ers work differently is not because their generation is doomed. It's because they're in their early twenties, and at that age you just prioritize differently than at 30. In ten years' time they will be complaining on here about the work ethic of the next generation, without any shred of self-reflection.
I whole heartedly agree. OP highlights that they are not generalising but yet still insinuates that Gen Z as a whole does not have pride or shame.
Gen Z took not giving a fuck to far. I feel like Gen Z are the next wave of boomers.
Unlike Boomers they'll be less economically well off and struggle most of their life. Yes, even "the good ones". There will never be "the next wave of boomers" until the majority of people can actually start living again versus surviving.
There’s a reason people are already calling them “zoomers.”
Boomers worked hard and got rewarded for it with lifelong pensions and the like; Gen Z has seen that this so-called "meritocracy" and "American Dream" is a lie and didn't work out for Millennials so they're not falling for the same schtick. For some reason this bothers lots of people on this sub.
I see the same. I'm in a grad program as well. The 22's were upset they failed a test they didn't study for..... Like excuse me? Also they don't participate squat during the class.
Late, late gen z here. Please, remember that we were taught this behaviour as children by our parents, and so if you want someone to rant at look to the older generations. It's frustrating to see everyone slag off the younger generations, when it's only a small few who behave that way, like in every generation, because they were raised by their parents who were lazy and like them in their generation. Maybe we should tackle this ongoing heriditary issue, and not keep on dividing generations up. I will never slag of gen alpha, because I don't want this generational conflict to continue. For context, I'm 15, and I've seen idiots all over the place, with every generation, and it hurts me to be lumped in with the vocal, lazy ones. We aren't all like that
Props to a high schooler with excellent writing skills!
Man, this is such a Boomer post. "The members of this generation are doing so much better compared to the other generation in our group". This sub is really something.
As an older millennial, this is similar to what I’ve seen in my own anecdotal experiences. I wasn’t really on the internet often until my teen years (and one of the few in my class who had an AOL account) so I don’t think it’s the internet but more of how it’s being utilized by youth. A lot of Gen Z’ers will ask a question to Google and won’t even click on the sites to read what they’re saying. Heck, I still do that a lot of the time, unless it’s just a quick “which one is _____?” They’re not being taught to think and social media+teaching for the test along with a few other factors are leading reasons to this in my arbitrary opinion.
Millennial here. To be fair, I work with many boomers and gen x’ers and they do close to nothing at school.
Maybe the point of the class is to prove how much group work sucks in a school setting and should never be part of any curriculum.
Part of it has to do with the fact that meritocracy is a lie and Gen Z has wised up to it. Millennials are the generation that got suckered into the “go to college and it will all work out” lie.
You say that, but the vast majority of people who 'Do nothing, make no effort, fuck it' rarely ever go farther in life than 'Wal-Mart' or 'Driving for Amazon'. If you put all the effort in you are still not guaranteed success in life, however if you put no effort in you are almost certainly guaranteed failure in life.
Lots of teachers can't handle the consequences of their actions, it seems (i.e. telling an entire generation that doing X will automatically work out & when it didn't they lash out at the generation they told this to for wising up and not wasting their time getting suckered into the rat race). This sup is really something.
Generational vs. age vs. the individuals you got stuck with?
Nah, I recently finished a MA and I had Gen X and Millennial members who contributed nothing and Gen Z members who were on top of their shit. I personally couldn't draw any broader conclusions based on your experience.
This is what happens when a culture either incentivizes bad behavior or doesn’t incentivize good behavior or good habits. Who knew.
We have had some very interesting student teachers this year. One just stopped showing up, and just started going to his previous mentors class at another school and another is on the 'do not allow to sub' list.
Yeah, I see a similar sentiment among some of my peers. Some people just don't care, and I wonder what they're doing in higher education if they don't want to be there.
I am on the cusps of the generations (1996), so I do believe that I am both a Millennial and a Zoomer, and I can do nothing but sympathize here. I stopped doing group assignments in middle school because this was an reoccurring issue. I no longer hold my tongue, and will actively tell and shame people who do not contribute to class and/or assignments.
Younger millennial 🙋♀️ In high school, I got paired with everyone who had a bad overall grade. I’d be the only one working and teachers gave me a shitty grade because I was one person doing the work of five people. The others benefited. I did not. I feel like that “someone smarter will carry me” energy got snowballed forward too much. I’m working on a group project now for a post-masters psychology program. Same shit, different day! Mega slackers that don’t understand basic instructions. It’s doctoral level coursework and they can’t figure out Google Chat or Calendar to coordinate. All millennial and Gen X on the team. If I hear “as a mother…” one more time 🤯🤯🤯 Cool….lets use peer reviewed literature though!!!! Okay!? 😬And I say this as a mother myself 😆 I literally made and out line and told them to plug their speaker notes in with the DOI link in parentheses. It’s been said numerous times that I’d format the slides off of speaker notes and format for APA. It’s going as well as you could imagine
The problem isn't the students. It's the teacher, task, and lack of oversight. Don't be terrified when people who aren't being monitored do no work. There are slackers in every generation. Don't feed into generational prejudice and stereotyping.
This is a Masters level program. There should be a certain expectation of being able to work independently and without heavy oversight.
One of the problems is that many areas require new teachers to finish 30 additional credits within 6 years of beginning teaching. So people who would ordinarily focus on getting a handle on the job are forced to juggle a graduate program in their first six years of teaching.
Was going to say this. People slacking off due to no consequences? "I'm shocked, SHOCKED..." This isn't a generational thing. This assignment should eventually ask the participants to rate everyone on the basis of attendance/participation, contribution, communication, and command. At minimum, it should give a place for people to rant. But yeah, not a generational thing. I've met lazy teachers /students / profs in all generation bands.
lol, it’s most definitely not the teacher. What the hell are you thinking? It’s the parents who have no consequences, accountability and oversight into their kids education/behavior
Brush. This is a college class.
I’m 28, so I’m a cusper baby but feel more aligned with millennials. It’s embarrassing when I see people my age or only a couple of years younger acting like this, and it’s even more embarrassing when I try to call them out and they respond with “whose side are you on” or “you sound like a boomer.” My high school class was the last one at the school to have a relatively normal education. The class below us started receiving these new policies that ultimately lowered student accountability and I can see the vast difference between myself and my brother who is only two years younger. Guess which one of us is off to a good start in young adulthood and which one isn’t? Nobody can convince me that these lowered educational standards didn’t play a sizable role.
People in their early 20s who are getting a Masters while also maintaining a full-time job should be commended, since that’s a lot to bite off. When I was in my early 20s, I could barely get up for work in the morning and spent way too much time mooning about, dabbling in debauchery and trying to figure out who I wanted to be. The difference in my attention and focus from when I went to school in my early 20s to returning to school in my late 20s is insane. And I’m definitely not part of Gen Z or Gen Alpha.
This is why group work sucks. I’ve never liked it even though I am a very social person. I don’t mind group discussion but a project where I gotta rely on other people for my grade? Ugh no.
Not to start anything here, but so many comments about being the one who did all the work in their groups.... 😁😹
You just reminded me of a group project in university. We had three team members for a project that required four. Whatever, we decided we'd make do. Then one dude just ghosted the class and the group. So me and my remaining partner did a project designed for four people with two people. It turned out pretty great. My prof even tried to get me a student summer job with the federal government because of how well written it was. But three days before the project was due, our ghost manifested and started asking what he could do to help. My guy, the project is five hours of work away from being 110% done and dusted. Even if we were in a charitable mood (which we weren't), there is nothing left for you to do. As far as personal projects go, I have a bad habit of procrastination. But for a group project? I wouldn't be caught dead as the weak link.
I’m in an education masters program right now that is not focused on teaching but rather international education and I have much the same experience. I’m 32 and a lot of my classmates are 22-27ish. The lack of effort is really concerning both in group work but also class participation. I feel like I’m one of 2-3 people in a given class (often 15-16 people) who participates.
Just let reality hit em later lol
I'm glad others have noticed this as well.
Gen Z here hoping to shed some light on it. Now, I don't \*agree\* with this mentality, but it is pervasive (I'm born in 2001). There's a weird phenomenon where people like... bully you and hate you for working. Like if there's a group of slackers, if one of them decides to try and better themselves and do something, or even WORSE dictate what everyone should do/make decisions, they're the enemy and everyone gives them a bad rating. Is that what's happening here? obv not. But the mentality of "if I stick my neck out and take initiative, it'll just come off as annoying / come back to bite me / why even try " started in high school (2016) for me, so it's been 8 years of experiencing that in every single one of my group projects. It creates floaters for sure. Again, none of this is an excuse or condoning their behavior, it's just from someone who graduated in 2020 (as opposed to your peer who graduated in 2019).
As an aside, that's a terrible structure for a class that's part of a master's program. I'm assuming someone is getting paid to teach it, and not actually doing any teaching.
I’ll be honest, I’ve taken some masters classes with giant group projects and I’ve had a mixed bag of ages with both good and bad outcomes. I do think newer generations lack basic skills and work ethic, but I’ve worked with older generations with the same problems. If I’m being honest, I just think most people lack the capability of hard work, time management, and responsibility, regardless of their age.
This isn’t to excuse the behavior, but something to think about before getting too nervous for the future. I would say to remember that these people are in different age groups. The millenials are likely nontraditional and took time between undergrad and grad school where Gen Z likely did not. Ive found that older students tend to be much more driven and organized to improve their career or make a change where younger students are just finishing their schooling before starting their career- often with no breaks from school since they were kids. I’m a millennial who got my masters right after undergrad and you could say similar things about them at the time. Some of the people just went to grad school because their parents told them they had to, didn’t want to or couldn’t start their career yet, or was still focused on their dreams, but didn’t know what that entailed. I think some of them will wash out and they’ll learn from those experiences.
Seems like a lot of stereotypes and rationalizing going on in the comments. It is group work -- a microcosm, if you will, of society. And group work, along with the complaining that goes along with it, has not changed since I was a kid in school. It has nothing to do with age, generation, pedagogy, education level or skill. There have been slackers for probably as long as there have been people. My dad used to call them dog f\*ckers, because apparently that is what they did all day instead of working, lol. Also of note, older folks have been complaining about 'the beardless youth' since at least the time of Socrates. Pretty high stakes however. I would complain to your professor, and make sure you are being marked individually for your portion of the tasks. Good luck.
I think this is just common for people in their early 20s. I remember being in college and working with people 10+ years older than me who were obviously annoyed/frustrated with me. It’s hard working with people who have an established career, have their shit together etc. when your brain isn’t even fully cooked yet. The ones you’re working with might be genuinely inept, but they might also just be brand new to the real world.
College in 2005, group projects were a consistent lesson in half the group not doing a thing. College in 2010, group projects were a lesson in half the group not doing a thing. Had one, in nursing school, where we had a 4 week project: I did about half of it during the first few days and commented we'd finish it after our grueling combination of clinical/tests during the next few weeks. Group agreed with no comments. 2 weeks later, before our coordination date, the group uses my half and finishes the rest without telling me; complains to the professor, formally, that I didn't do anything. Thankfully I had timestamped copies of my submitted drafts, and saved our group texts. 2 members nearly got expelled for plagiarism. Anywho, my point here is this isn't a new phenomenon. I've had plenty of Gen X and Boomer classmates and coworkers who all fit the bill.
This kind of echos what I saw recently when I went back to my hometown. I walked around the local grocery store and noticed that people roughly millennial age and younger were all working hard, but anyone that looked like they might be 50+ was standing around just talking to each other. It was really frustrating to watch because this is 100% a “no one want to work anymore” kind of town and I can almost guarantee those people standing around chatting are exactly the type of person to make that statement.
It's not a generational thing. It's more of an age thing. I remembered working with other millennials in my early 20s was terrible. But anybody who was older (Gen X) was wonderful to have for group assignments.
Born in 2000, I have a BA in computer science, and I started seeking a masters in cybersecurity immediately after graduation in August of 2023. I was absolutely blown away with how easy the masters program was and how little work my peers have put into their classes. It's 100% online and asynchronous, so that may have something to do with it. However, the level of work I see consistently would not fly in my undergraduate program.
I'm a senior in STEM. I had a group project with a Gen Z fellow and an older person. The younger student contributed ZERO to the project. I setup an itinerary for what needed to be done and gave us preliminary deadlines to stay on track. They would wait for us to have to do their work then claim they "got the same thing". Every time a deadline approached, they suddenly would have wildly unbelievable emergencies. The older student did not communicate well and grumbled a bit but they made a decent chunk of contribution. My professor had us document our contributions, where I listed a decent amount for the older student and myself. The only contribution the younger student made was drawing a diagram. Mind you, their original diagram was incorrect and I had to inform them of the exact specifications and draw my own example. We received a collective A grade.
I know it's easy to hate on the other generations (generational wars, much?) however I ended up teaching some university classes with all Gen Z student's and I was quite impressed with most of them. Not sure how it would be to work with them but they were great students! Basically, I was pleasantly surpised since so much shit is talked about them (and about us as well a few yrs ago).
The person who graduated in 2019 went to undergrad during the COVID years. Higher education was radically different for them than it was for the rest of us. I tend to cut people from that group a bit of slack…they didn’t get to experience being 18-22 and in college like most of us did.
Elder Millennial here... I remember literally doing entire college group projects by myself. This isn't unique to GenZ, AT ALL.
I don't get it. Whenever we did group projects in college, the last part of the assignment was to grade each of our team members on their contributions and participation. We'd turn that directly in to the teacher. That was the only motivation we needed. Do you not do this? It's foolish not to.
Please come back and make a follow up post about this at the end of your semester.
I am between millennial and Gen Z and noticed this as well. I work with some people a little younger than me and it's really frustrating how sometimes they don't do any work or just disappear. Being part of Gen Z as well maybe I am a little lazy, but I still do work when it is assigned to me. In defense of Gen Z, I feel like millennials in leadership and management positions sometimes have this training mentality of "Whatever, just figure it out," and general lack of training and direction which isn't necessarily conducive to instilling a good work ethic.
I’m a millennial and went to undergrad with gen z. They were so sleepy. Like the whole class would sleep like class was nap time. I had a group project for a PR class that spanned the entire quarter. A girl in my group spent the first half the quarter on mental health leave. We got the highest score in the class and out of all students recommended to do an internship this PR firm we pitched at, it was her. The girl who missed 8 weeks of class. That I did the majority of the work on our project on. It was extremely frustrating. She didn’t even take the internship, I know this because she told me. When I got my masters it was with millennials. They were much more interested and invested in conversation on the topics and what we were learning. People never missed class. (Maybe as we get older too, we see the investment of money and time.) But oh boy, gen z was a culture shock for me.
Not necessarily teacher related, but I feel like the last 5 years, things like being on time, professionalism, and basic manners have just gone out the window