Glimpse of the future?

On my way home, I heard this story on NPR. You've got to wonder: will we be next?

When will my students figure out that we are doing them a great injustice by giving them grades so that they aren't failing ("Don't leave any child behind!!") but that don't help them master material? It sounds like something similar has happened in Greece -- and the students have taken things into their own hands. Now, I don't know all the details, but this reporter seems to suspect that an entire generation has the power to make life miserable for the rest of us. I can't imagine living in Athens -- tourist destination de jour -- and watching the apartment buildings around me crumble to the ground because 17 and 18 year olds are frustrated.

Except then I go to work and I talk with students who are similarly frustrated. Seventeen and eighteen years-olds who are frustrated and can't do much about it. They aren't legal, so they don't think they can go to college. And if they can't go to college, why try hard in school? And if I'm not trying hard in school, and learning (about, say, Greece), then I have lots of time to make trouble in the streets. Hummmm...sounds like a nasty cycle.

I take a wee bit of comfort in this story -- in that my job isn't the only one where we struggle with the nastiness of a culture that is. We need to face the fact that our students are in a global world -- almost one culture (driven, it seems, by American standards) where greed and success and instant gratification are the expectation. Knowing that my colleagues around the globe are seeing what I'm seeing, I'm hoping we can do our jobs before it's too late.