Eight Minute Genius

Trendy new teaching methods always seem to offer something for nothing (a bit like weight loss cures or penis enlargement), a way for kids to get smarter without actually having to work hard. They also invariably provide a way for the teacher to be a "buddy" dispensing "fun" and avoiding the need for "discipline". The latest one to surface involves eight minute lessons followed by play, and then a repeat of the lesson, maybe with words missing so the kids can fill in the blanks. It's wonderful! The kids love it because they never have to concentrate for more than eight minutes. The teachers hardly have to do any work (preparing an eight minute lesson that you deliver twice is just a bit easier than an hour of real teaching) and everyone goes home happy.

Unfortunately it's also bollocks. If you want to raise a generation of kids with an attention span of eight minutes that's great, but show me a job in the real world where you get to switch off and play every eight minutes. A heart surgeon would hardly have opened you up before needing to go for a game of Tetris; the automotive production line would keep shutting down as people wandered off, and a two-hour Chinese massage would last all day. You'd never get to the happy ending! This new teaching style is being used at a school in the UK, but it was pioneered in the US, perhaps indicating that while America comes up with the daftest new ideas only Britain is stupid enough to actually try them.

I hear a lot about Generation Y - this new generation of kids that "expect so much more from work and life". If you peel back all the sociological bullshit what it actually comes down to is that they have been raised in an age where everything is taken for granted, and where they have endless "rights" but zero "responsibilities". They expect work to be like home - no discipline, no structure, no problems and everything provided for them. Forget about earning that promotion - why can't I have it today? I want it now! Waaaahhhh! I know not all kids of that age are like this, but I certainly see a fuck of a lot of them around here, with their shiny new cars that mommy and daddy bought, and then replaced when they drove them drunk into a tree. They come into the gym and don't bother putting the weights back after using them (until "reminded") because they never have to pick up their shit at home. Taken as a whole they're more spoiled and more dumb than any generation before them.

And you know what? I don't blame the little fuckers one bit. Who made them that way? Their fucking lazy parents. Want new trainers like the other kids? Sure honey, we'll get them right now. Want a BMW to drive to school? OK honey, would a red one be nice? Your gang beat up a white kid and you got arrested? Why, your civil rights have been violated honey, let's organize a march! Black, white, rich, poor, it doesn't make much difference. These days half of all robbery suspects in the UK are under eighteen - wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that they've been raised to believe (apparently correctly) that there are no consequences for anything they do, would it?

Still, for any parents of kids with an eight-minute attention span, all is not lost. In the future there will still be some jobs where eight minutes of concentration is all that's required. Teaching, apparently, will be one of them.


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison