Mijn generatie, tien jaar later ~ Epiloog

• door: Peter Ester, Henk Vinken & Isabelle Diepstraten

Het ene geslacht gaat, en het andere geslacht komt;
maar de aarde staat in der eeuwigheid
Prediker 1:4

Het generatiebesef in Nederland is sterk. Dat was het in het midden van de jaren negentig van de vorige eeuw en dat is het tien jaar later. Grote groepen Nederlanders rekenen zich tot een generatie. Het generatiebesef neemt niet eenduidig toe met het ouder worden van de drie generaties die we in ons boek onderscheiden hebben. Wel zien we dat vooral de oudere generaties nu meer verwijzen naar historische gebeurtenissen uit hun jeugdjaren dan ze tien jaar geleden deden. Geen van de drie generaties, ook de jongste, keuzegeneratie niet, noemt recente formatieve gebeurtenissen, wat opmerkelijk mag heten als we denken aan de grote turbulentie in de periode 1996-2006. In het onderwijs, op de arbeidsmarkt, in het domein van waarden en normen en in de politiek in binnen- en buitenland hebben zich grote en soms zeer abrupte omwentelingen voltrokken. Het is opvallend dat zelfs de jongste generatie hier nauwelijks aan refereert als ze de typerende kenmerken van de eigen generatie benoemt. We vinden een grote verscheidenheid aan zelftyperingen binnen deze generatie, een verscheidenheid die fraai overlapt met de vele, zeer diverse en elkaar snel opvolgende etiketten in de media. Het is evident dat hoe verder in de tijd we teruggaan, hoe meer oudere generaties zich eenduidiger typeren en hoe meer jonge generaties blijk geven vooral een heterogene generatie te zijn.

Generaties zijn met de jaren optimistischer geworden over hun eigen kansen in het onderwijs. Als ze zich vergelijken met jongere en met oudere generaties oordelen ze doorgaans positiever over de kansen van de eigen generatie. Het jongste keuzegeneratiecohort (geboren na 1970) is het meest opgeschoven in deze gunstiger zelfbeoordeling en de keuzegeneratie als geheel acht zich op dit moment zelfs het beste af. Die toppositie was tien jaar geleden nog voor de babyboomers weggelegd. In de oordelen over diverse kansen van jongeren in het onderwijs is ook een trend naar meer optimisme waarneembaar. Grote groepen dachten in 1996 dat jongeren het in het onderwijs moeilijker kregen, bijvoorbeeld vanwege de druk op de studieduur, de betaalbaarheid van opleidingen, de kansen op een baan na een studie. In 2006 zijn alle generaties minder somber. Ook de jongste keuzegeneratie, al hebben zij hun oordelen het minst in positieve richting aangepast. In het onderwijsdomein, zo kan men concluderen, zien de generaties minder scherpe generationele tegenstellingen.

Dat is anders in het domein van de arbeid. De kansen op werk en de carrièremogelijkheden worden in 2006 juist sterker generationeel beoordeeld. Naar de oordelen van de drie generaties zijn er scherpe verschillen. De babyboomgeneratie onderstreept de eigen betere uitgangspositie als ze zich vergelijken met oudere generaties. De keuzegeneratie is in de loop van de jaren optimistischer en de oorlogsgeneratie juist het meest pessimistisch geworden. Het kunnen ‘zorgen voor de oude dag’ is voor de jongste keuzegeneratieleden een heet hangijzer en reden tot somberheid. Over de hele linie zijn alle generaties, ook de jongste, pessimistischer geworden zodra ze zich in het arbeidsdomein vergelijken met jongere generaties. Ook vindt men, en zeker de jongste generatie, nu meer dan een decennium geleden het oneerlijk dat de overheid voor oudere generaties van alles geregeld en betaald heeft en dat jongeren hier nu letterlijk zelf de rekening voor moeten betalen. Er is ook onder de jonge generatie een toenemende neiging om te oordelen dat generaties beter voor hun eigen generatiegenoten kunnen zorgen. Dit paren zij aan een afnemende bereidheid om bij te dragen aan de AOW voor huidige en toekomstige generaties ouderen en aan steun voor het draagkrachtprincipe bij de herinrichting van de AOW (zoals de ‘Bos-belasting’). Economische herstelbewegingen ten spijt zien we scherpe tegenstellingen tussen de generaties en een somber oordeel over de sociale zekerheid van de jongere generatie, iets waar de oorlogs- en babyboomgeneratie zich nauwelijks zorgen om maken. Read more

Mijn generatie, tien jaar later ~ Literatuur

• door: Peter Ester, Henk Vinken & Isabelle Diepstraten

Aalberts, C. (2006). Aantrekkelijke politiek? Een onderzoek naar jongeren en popularisering van politiek. Apeldoorn: Het Spinhuis.
Aalst, H. van (2001). Van marktwerking in het onderwijs naar leren in de markt: Naar microkeuzen en netwerkleren. In M. van Duyck (Red.), Onderwijs in de markt (pp. 313-336). Den Haag: Onderwijsraad.
Abma, R. (1990). Jeugd en tegencultuur. Een theoretische verkenning. Nijme­gen: SUN.
Akker, P. van den, I. Diepstraten & H. Vinken (1997). Jongeren en risicoge­drag. Een inventarisatie van theorie en onderzoek over invloeden van gezin en directe omgeving, school en werk, jeugdcultuur, vrije tijd en persoonlijk­heid. Tilburg: IVA.
Alheit, P. (1994). The biographical question as a challenge to adult edu­cation. National Review of Education, 40, 283-298.
Alheit, P. (1995). “Biographizität” als Lernpotential. In H. Krüger & W. Marotzki (Hg.), Erziehungswissenschaftliche Biographieforschung (pp. 276-307). Opladen: Leske + Budrich.
Alheit, P. & B. Dausien (2002). The double face of lifelong learning. Stu­dies in the Education of Adults, 34, 1, 3-22.
Alles begint met Nix (1997). De ik’s van Nix. Amsterdam: Boom.
Amato, P.R. & A. Booth (1997). A generation at risk. Growing up in an era of family upheaval. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Ancona, H. D’ & T. Beumer (1987). Marginalisering of mobilisering? De minstbedeelden in de afbrokkelende verzorgingsstaat. In P. Fortuyn & S. Stuurman (Red.), Socialisten in no nonsense-tijd (pp. 99-115). Nijme­gen: SUN.
Arnett, J. (2004). Emerging adulthood. The winding road from the late teens through the twenties. New York: Oxford University Press.
Atkinson, J.S. (1984). Flexibility, uncertainty and manpower management. Brighton: Institute of Manpower Studies (IMS report no. 89).
Baird, S. (1999). What’s wrong with boys? Adressing the underachievement discussion. www.generationyouthissues.fsnet.co.uk/education/what’s wrong with boys.htm.
Baltes, P.B. & M.M. Baltes (1990). Successful aging: perspectives from the behavioral sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Beekers, W.P. (2005). Mao in de polder. Een historisch-sociologische be­nadering van het Nederlandse maoïsme 1964-1978. Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit (doctoraal scriptie).
Beck, U. (1986). Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Beck, U. & E. Beck-Gernsheim (1994). Riskante Freiheiten. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Beck, U., A. Giddens & S. Lash (1994). Reflexive modernization. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Becker, H.A. (Ed.) (1990). Life histories and generations. Utrecht: ISOR.
Becker, H.A. (1992). Generaties en hun kansen. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff.
Becker, H.A. (1995). Onderzoek naar generaties. Een reactie op Dekker en Ester. Acta Politica, 30, 351-354.
Becker, H.A. (1997). De toekomst van de verloren generatie. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff. Read more

Trump In The White House: An Interview With Noam Chomsky

• by: C.J. Polychroniou

Noam Chomsky

On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump managed to pull the biggest upset in US politics by tapping successfully into the anger of white voters and appealing to the lowest inclinations of people in a manner that would have probably impressed Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels himself.

But what exactly does Trump’s victory mean, and what can one expect from this megalomaniac when he takes over the reins of power on January 20, 2017? What is Trump’s political ideology, if any, and is “Trumpism” a movement? Will US foreign policy be any different under a Trump administration?

Some years ago, public intellectual Noam Chomsky warned that the political climate in the US was ripe for the rise of an authoritarian figure. Now, he shares his thoughts on the aftermath of this election, the moribund state of the US political system and why Trump is a real threat to the world and the planet in general.

C.J. Polychroniou for Truthout: Noam, the unthinkable has happened: In contrast to all forecasts, Donald Trump scored a decisive victory over Hillary Clinton, and the man that Michael Moore described as a “wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full-time sociopath” will be the next president of the United States. In your view, what were the deciding factors that led American voters to produce the biggest upset in the history of US politics?

Noam Chomsky: Before turning to this question, I think it is important to spend a few moments pondering just what happened on November 8, a date that might turn out to be one of the most important in human history, depending on how we react.
No exaggeration.

The most important news of November 8 was barely noted, a fact of some significance in itself.
On November 8, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) delivered a report at the international conference on climate change in Morocco (COP22) which was called in order to carry forward the Paris agreement of COP21. The WMO reported that the past five years were the hottest on record. It reported rising sea levels, soon to increase as a result of the unexpectedly rapid melting of polar ice, most ominously the huge Antarctic glaciers. Already, Arctic sea ice over the past five years is 28 percent below the average of the previous 29 years, not only raising sea levels, but also reducing the cooling effect of polar ice reflection of solar rays, thereby accelerating the grim effects of global warming. The WMO reported further that temperatures are approaching dangerously close to the goal established by COP21, along with other dire reports and forecasts.

Another event took place on November 8, which also may turn out to be of unusual historical significance for reasons that, once again, were barely noted.

On November 8, the most powerful country in world history, which will set its stamp on what comes next, had an election. The outcome placed total control of the government — executive, Congress, the Supreme Court — in the hands of the Republican Party, which has become the most dangerous organization in world history.

Apart from the last phrase, all of this is uncontroversial. The last phrase may seem outlandish, even outrageous. But is it? The facts suggest otherwise. The Party is dedicated to racing as rapidly as possible to destruction of organized human life. There is no historical precedent for such a stand.

Is this an exaggeration? Consider what we have just been witnessing.
During the Republican primaries, every candidate denied that what is happening is happening — with the exception of the sensible moderates, like Jeb Bush, who said it’s all uncertain, but we don’t have to do anything because we’re producing more natural gas, thanks to fracking. Or John Kasich, who agreed that global warming is taking place, but added that “we are going to burn [coal] in Ohio and we are not going to apologize for it.”

The winning candidate, now the president-elect, calls for rapid increase in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations; rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to sustainable energy; and in general, racing to the cliff as fast as possible. Read more

Charlie Chaplin ~ The Great Dictator

Is Globalization Responsible For  Climate Change? An Interview With Graciela Chichilnisky And Helena Norberg-Hodge  

• by: C. J. Polychroniou & Marcus Rolle   

Helena Norberg-Hodge

What is the connection between economic globalization and climate change? Is globalization reversible? Can climate  change be reversed? If so, how? In the interview that follows, two leading voices in the struggle for a safe planet and a sustainable future, Graciela Chichilnisky and Helena Norberg-Hodge, address these questions from their own unique perspectives and offer critical insights on how we can avert a climate change catastrophe.

A world renowned economist and mathematician, Graciela Chichilnisky is the architect of the Kyoto Protocol carbon market and  cofounder and CEO of Global Thermostat, a disruptive, carbon negative technology company based in the Silicon Valley that removes carbon dioxide from the air. She  is Professor of Economics and of Statistics at Columbia University and  Visiting Professor of Economics at Stanford University. Helena Norberg-Hodge is the founder and director of Local Futures, a pioneer of the “new economics” movement. She is the producer and co-director of the award winning documentary “The Economics of Happiness” and recipient of the Goi Peace Award.

 J. Polychroniou and Marcus Rolle: Climate change is the most daunting problem facing humanity today, and globalization seems to be accelerating it. In fact, the effects of climate change are moving faster than predicted as free trade agreements are proliferating, multinational corporations move their operations to developing countries in order to avoid stricter environmental rules at the home country, and export-oriented industrial agriculture has replaced local farming. Do you agree with the view that economic globalization bears responsibility for climate change?

Helena Norberg-Hodge: Absolutely. Globalization – or the deregulation of global trade and finance –  has direct consequences for the climate. It promotes unnecessary long-distance transportation of goods, rampant consumerism, biological monocultures, energy-intensive technology use, and mass urbanization – which leads to ever-increasing fossil fuel consumption. It is also worth noting that a 2013 study found that two-thirds of the fossil fuels that have been burned over the last 150 years were burned by just 90 corporate entities, including companies such as Texaco and ExxonMobil.

With the help of corporate-funded think-tanks, there is a commonly-held belief that individual citizens’ consumption patterns, rather than the systemic changes in production because of globalization are to blame for climate change. This is a very narrow framing of the climate crisis, but it’s one that has gained a lot of credence in the media due to the support of Al Gore and others. Meanwhile, it’s becoming increasingly clear every day that there are inherent and predictable connections between the deregulation of transnational corporations and the climate crisis. And people are beginning to notice those connections.
So reversing the trend towards further globalization needs to be central to the climate movement.

Graciela Chichilnisky

Graciela Chichilnisky: Yes: globalization was led by the Breton Woods institutions that were founded after WWII to encourage and enforce a pattern of international trade duplicating colonialism at a global scale: deep and extensive extraction of resources from developing nations that were exported  at low prices for consumption in industrial nations. This pattern of international trade can be seen as a global tragedy of the commons, since developing nations lack property rights on extractive resources and their governments are dependent of international organizations and therefore “permeable” This term was introduced by Natasha Chichilnisky-Heal who documented the “permeability” of governments in developing nations that are rich in extractive resources in the cases of Mongolia and Zambia, with examples on the direct role of the World Bank in the case of Rio Tinto and Mongolia’s copper mines, the largest in the world. Read more

How Do We Prepare The Next Generation Of Citizens?

• by: Deanna Kuhn

www.tc.columbia.edu

“College and career readiness” is the objective American educators are focused on these days, and it’s one both students and their parents will approve. Both want assurance that the cost and rigors of getting into and through college will pay off as a sure ticket to life success. A recent Harvard poll showed achieving this personal success to be the number one concern of today’s youth, and parents are likely glad to know. The broader purposes once associated with higher education have taken a back seat as college increasingly becomes a strict means to an end.

An initiative introduced recently at a premier suburban public high school in the US Northeast seems well aligned with this focus. Taking advantage of now widely available technology, beginning in 9th grade students are required to begin a “digital portfolio project” to “track their accomplishments throughout their high school careers and choose how the world perceives them.” Student reactions are reported to be positive. One spoke of it as an opportunity to set new goals for herself and a good reflection of what she achieves over the next four years. Another said it will be a good tool, especially for college applications. Instituting this future-oriented focus early on will perhaps be useful in helping teens to construct an identity and succeed in communicating it to others who can acknowledge and validate it, rather than postpone this task to the extended adolescence now frequent among twenty-somethings.

Yet absent from this focus is another dimension of preparing for adulthood, one that extends beyond individual success, to collective prosperity. It’s one long regarded as a central aim of education in a democracy – preparation for citizenship. A US election year reminds Americans of its significance. The American president elected this year will likely still be in office when today’s high schoolers begin their adult lives. Is establishing a personal identity and life trajectory enough to prepare them sufficiently for responsible citizenship under this president in their increasingly troubled nation and world?

A cursory look at the current political climate could be seen as reassuring in this regard. Although a segment of the citizenry lament the emphasis of image over ideas, modern media provide us a never before known opportunity to get to know the candidates, up close and personal. Candidates are well aware of their need for a skilled team to project a carefully shaped and managed image – their life story, the experience they bring to the job, and, most important, what kind of person they truly are. Above all, this image must portray them as personable and likeable, appealing to many.

Possibly, then, beginning as a young teen to shape one’s image and even to communicate it effectively in modern digital form is not far off the mark. Many of the teens afforded this opportunity aspire to leadership roles, and they are getting a head start in projecting who they are. They are learning the art and craft of branding and promoting a self.

Another view is that this accomplishment falls short and that we can and must do a good deal more if we wish to prepare our youth as citizens, ready to act in a democratic society that depends on their contribution. More than a few observers today find the level of discourse of the presidential candidates unsatisfying. There is a range, of course, from Trump at one extreme (“Look who I am”) to Sanders (“Here’s what we must do”) at the other. Yet, most of us, given the choice, would prefer all candidates, as a matter of course, to debate ideas rather than merely project images and for citizens to cast their votes based on these ideas.

If so, it is our responsibility to prepare our youth to become citizens who will have the vision and will to transform this preference into a reality. If we want people to think and talk about ideas, and solutions, we need from early on to afford them extended practice in doing so. There is of course a significant segment of the adult population who want their youth to consider only those ideas these adults themselves subscribe to. Yet, in work my colleagues and I have undertaken using modern technology to engage middle- and high-school students in electronic dialogs with peers on controversial social issues, we have found them keen to contemplate such issues at length with multiple partners, culminating in their writing individual “Letters to the Editor” position statements on them. Abortion is a topic they most frequently want to address, among numerous others such as foreign aid and criminal justice. Their initial ideas are often naïve and narrow, but that changes as they confront and respond to others’ ideas and examine evidence that bears on them. Some, for example, propose that instead of testing new drugs on animals, it would be better to use human prisoners since they are guilty and animals are innocent. With deliberation such ideas in time self-correct. Students also gain awareness of issues worth talking about. When we asked young teens in a New York City low-income school what the most important issues were that the new president will have to address, all but a very few mentioned just two, homelessness and stealing.

Although there are signs of change, peer discourse has never found much of a place in the American middle- or high-school curriculum. If students talk at all, it is in response to a teacher’s question, hoping to get the “right” answer. The social studies curriculum would seem the natural place for students to debate issues of current concern to the society they live in, but doing so is largely crowded out by an established curriculum designed to insure students know the history of their country, state, and city and the structure of these respective governments. We know not much of this information sticks. A recent video on Facebook showed American college students clueless when asked who won the civil war (yet all were successful in naming Brad Pitt’s present and former spouse).

Only belatedly, likely at the end of a term with time running out, do curriculum standards propose students be asked to consider the future – how what existed in the past or exists at present might change. New York State curriculum standards for social studies, for example, at the end of its comprehensive guidelines for American history, conclude with a brief section titled, “The US begins a new century.”   The new century, the standards suggest, offers an opportunity for “federal and state governments to reevaluate their roles,” and it is recommended that students contemplate these. The particulars listed under this heading are wide-ranging – “fiscal and monetary policies: 
taxation, regulation, 
deregulation” and “social programs: health, welfare, education.” The topic of reevaluating government’s role is a quite different topic than the descriptive historical topics that precede them in this and similar curriculum guides. “Teaching the future,” rather than only the past, calls for a different kind of intellectual engagement. It demands envisioning and weighing possibilities – what could be, rather than only what is or was.

Little in students’ school experience prepares them to shift gears to engage in this kind of thought, individually or with peers. If we believe it important that 21st century citizens be able and disposed to think in such ways, we must provide the opportunities that will prepare them, whether or not such thinking fits today’s culture.

—

Deanna Kuhn is professor of psychology and education at Teachers College Columbia University. She holds a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, in developmental psychology. She has been editor of the journal Cognitive Development, editor of the journal Human Development, and co-editor of the last two editions of the Cognition, Perception and Language volume of the Handbook of Child Psychology. She has published widely in psychology and education, in journals ranging from Psychological Review to Harvard Educational Review. She is an author of 4 major books — The development of scientific thinking skills, The skills of argument, Education for thinking, and, most recently, Argue with me: Argument as a path to developing students’ thinking and writing (Routledge, 2016). Her research is devoted to identifying and determining how best to nurture the intellectual skills that will prepare young people for lifelong learning, work, and citizenship.

Personal website: http://www.educationforthinking.org/