Youth Nowadays

Heard over local radios:

"現在的青年，哪裡像我們以前 ..."

"以前老師講什麼，我們那裡敢 ..."

"現在的學生，不懂尊師重道 ..."

"As teachers, they have certain honour in them and should be respected ..."

"Kids nowadays are ..."

A foreign student studying at a local university stabbed his lecturer and committed suicide afterwards. Local media spare no efforts to 'angelise' the lecturer and diagnosed all sorts of mental illnesses and intellectual problems on the dead student. The chinese saying "死無對證" could not be better demonstrated.

Many call-in programmes on the local radios wasted no time in opening the lines for callers to discuss circling the topic of "Youth Nowadays". And I have guessed it right that most callers are the middle-aged housewives or their male counterparts. The boring theme coupled with the equally repetitive response from the callers could not bore me further. Like the blame shifted wholesale onto the dead student, the middle aged shifted the blames for the dysfunctions of youths in the current time to the youth's internal dispositions. A handful went a step further by blaming them on the teachers, the school and the society as a whole. 

However, when one points the accusing finger outside, he fails to realise that three other fingers are pointed at himself. Have they forgotten - Who brought up the youths? Who sent the kids to tuitions, ballet class and shop for all the supplementary workbooks? Who built the society we live in today?

Such is the characteristics of our middle-aged - talk, whine and no action, complain-criticise-condemn.