Share your quips/anecdotes/etc about the decay of society

[Arwon]

All that means is these schools are lacking the resources or flexibility to properly meet the needs of their actual students by running ESL/EFL classes. That's not "including people", it's lazy, insensitive and exclusionary. I also note that forcing kids into English classes is kinda the exact opposite of abolishing English classes.

And in any case it's worlds away from the sort of PC GONE MAAAAAAD strawman being "satired" here.

Oh and the citations in that Wiki article don't support the text in it.

 

[warpus]

Scenario: Johnny and Jill exchange nude pictures of themselves on their cellphones
1958 - The FBI arrives, confiscates cellphones, dis-assembles them and tries to figure out where they came from and what they are
2008 - The FBI arrives, confiscates cellphones, charges Johnny and Jill with the posession of child porn, throws them both in jail, put Johnny's name on a nasty list.

 

[LucyDuke]

drug violations for asperins? oh jeez.

Here is an interesting story.

Huh, I was going to link to an article about the same story.

The School Crotch Inspector

 

[Bigfoot3814]

All that means is these schools are lacking the resources or flexibility to properly meet the needs of their actual students by running ESL/EFL classes. That's not "including people", it's lazy, insensitive and exclusionary.

So are you agreeing that they shouldn't be in there? My school definitely has enough money to support those programs, they're doing this to mainstream people who can't speak English and people with learning disabilities.

I also note that forcing kids into English classes is kinda the exact opposite of abolishing English classes.

They're not forcing the kids into the classes expecting them to meet the standards of the class, they're expecting the classes to accommodate the kids. And when that doesn't happen certain people stand up and cry rasist.

 

[Huayna Capac357]

Scenario:
Amy wants to play football.
1958 - Amy gets a lecture by the principal, is socially ostracized at school, and has lessons in 'femininity' shoved down her throat by her mother.
2008 - The principal hands her a signup sheet for the girl's football team. If the school is to small to have one, her mother applies some pressure on the school to let he play on the boy's team.

Scenario:
Johnny writes out his report with his left hand.
1958 - Johnny's teacher straps his dominant hand, Johnny's grades slip and due to the difficulty of writing. Johnny finds writing his own name difficult.
2008 - Teacher spends a few minutes teaching him how to write backward. Johnny develops a bit of a flair for short stories.

Scenario:
Jimmy, a black kid, drinks out of the water fountain for white people on a dare.
1958 - Jimmy get's his head knocked against the concrete, one of the bystanders mentions the 'uppity negro' to his two sons, who take that as an excuse to go bully him. Jimmy looses a tooth, and gives both of them blackeyes, Jimmy finds himself dancing the hemp fandango the next night.
2008 - White persons water fountain?

Scenario:
Jack never develops an attraction to the fairer sex, and prefers his own gender
1958 - He never really came out of the closet, but Jack goes through high school lonely and depressed, fighting constant putdowns and occasional beatdowns by his classmates before going to college. One day he goes to a seedy bar to drown his sorrows, and hooks up with another guy. the guy leads him out into the parking lot, where Jack is beaten to death with a tire iron.
2008 - Jack comes out of the closet at fifteen, gets teased and bullied allot in high school, then moves to San Francisco where he lives quite nicely as an accountant.

Scenario:
Nate's father is an abusive alcoholic
1958 - After years of abuse, Nate's mother gets a divorce, but no one will hire her. Nate is an outcast at school, and never learns how to cope with what he grew up with. Eventually he follows in his father's footsteps.
2008 - Nate's mother calls the cops. She goes to work as a clerk the next day. The next couple of years are messy and unpleasant, but Nate retains most of his friends. Nate gets some therapy and lives a successful life as head of a plumbing industry.

Awesome. Perfect counter argument. I love you Miles Teg.

 

[Bigfoot3814]

It's not really a counter-argument. Every era has it's good and bad qualities, I suppose.

 

[Huayna Capac357]

It's not really a counter-argument. Every era has it's good and bad qualities, I suppose.

The 50s were great for a very small amount of people and terrible for the rest. Today, we have connectivity in the Internet and almost everyone can have a job here, or at least they could.

 

[Miles Teg]

It's not really a counter-argument. Every era has it's good and bad qualities, I suppose.

Yes and no. Nostalgia sets in when people remember the good parts days gone by without the bad. The OP is pure nostalgia, so I'm just sliding in some realism to temper it. Of course, the focuses are somewhat different. The OP mostly concentrates on the greater freedom/responsibility emphasis in those days, where as my list is more directed to the bigotry and ignorance of the same time period.

 

[gangleri2001]

[FONT=&quot]Scenario:
Jack's taking out garbage[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]1988 - Eric Freeman appears and yells "Garbage day!", then he shoots at Jack. Jack tries to deflect the bullet with his trash can while yelling "Uh? NO!" but he fails. Finally, Eric does some lame laugh and keeps rampaging.
2008 - Jack takes out garbage.[/FONT]

THIS IS THE END OF OUR SOCIETY!!

 

[Cutlass]

Scenario
Conservative Politicians Elected to High Government Office

1958 - They balance the budget, pay down past debts, enforce the laws, even when they don't like them, obey Supreme Court rulings, work to limit the scale and scope of government, but simply dismantle regulation.

2008 - They spend money, not like drunken sailors, because that's so far in the past that couldn't possibly spend that little. They instead spend like drug addicted popular entertainers. They run up the deficit for no reason other than that they flat out refuse to be responsible in their actions. They expand the power, scale, and scope of government to take away the freedom of the people. They ignore the law and Supreme Court rulings if they don't like them. They make the regulators within the government ignore their responsibilities in favor of giving special interests anything and everything that they ask for.

 

[eastsidebagel]

1958: Black kid gets constantly beaten up and picked on.

2008: Same kid gets elected for the next prez, just to take his vendetta whch is nourished by a long concealed wrath on the crackers of the planet. Oh, who will stop Evil Black Dude from his horrific schemes?

 

[Huayna Capac357]

Lol Funny, but Obama was born in 1961

 

[gangleri2001]

[FONT=&quot]1958 - Scientology is getting huge.
2008 - Scientology is getting pwn3d.[/FONT]

 

[eastsidebagel]

1958: Johnny is a 7-year-old farmer kid in Arkansas which visits the 2nd grade of the Elementary School of Cowballs County. He said to his teacher, Ms Smith, that he wants to be a lawyer like his uncle, when he'll be big.
2008: Johnny is a half-dead meth addict in the State Prison of California, getting sodomized by the other inmates for cigarettes. The uncle took his own life after his bankruptcy and Ms Smith is now a German porn star.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

anecdotes

Don't you mean the decay of American society? And some of those are way too exaggerated.

 

[Kraznaya]

Miles Teg wins this thread.

 

[Irish Caesar]

1958: Some good stuff happens, some bad stuff happens.
2009: A bunch of people think they can be cool over the internet by just talking about how we're so much better off today... because if we're improving anything in society, that must mean we can ignore things that may have gotten worse.

 

[Kraznaya]

1958: Some good stuff happens, some bad stuff happens.
2009: A bunch of people think they can be cool over the internet by just talking about how we're so much better off today... because if we're improving anything in society, that must mean we can ignore things that may have gotten worse.

Only as a response to conservative fantasizing of the "good ol' days."

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I was reprimanded in school just for TALKING about guns. Idiots.

How long ago was that?

Sheesh, I remember at the turn of the '60s/'70s, we used to play "Get Smart" at recess. We ran around quite happily, pretending to shoot each other... using a stick, a banana, or our bare hands for "guns." The teachers took not the slightest notice of any of it.

 

[Bugfatty300]

How long ago was that?

Either 1999 or 2000, not long after the Columbine massacre.

Sheesh, I remember at the turn of the '60s/'70s, we used to play "Get Smart" at recess. We ran around quite happily, pretending to shoot each other... using a stick, a banana, or our bare hands for "guns." The teachers took not the slightest notice of any of it.

Me also in the 1990s. Then after Columbine and 9/11 things started getting ridiculous. That was my middle school though. My high school was much more sensible. JROTC does armed drill everyday and every freshman class shoots targets and clay pigeons behind the school as part of gun safety education. That's how rural my old high school is.