Skip to main content

Leading Generation Y

Pam Nissler gave me a fascinating Master's paper by Lieutenant Colonel Jill M. Newman of the United States Army. Click the title of this entry for a copy. The paper concerns defining, recruiting, and retaining a generation that prefers to call itself the Millennials. I liked this summary: what Newman calls Generation Y was "born between 1978 and 2000 and comprised of approximately 80 million people. They are the most parented and protected generation yet. Generation Y is highly confident, highly educated, techno-savvy, adept at global and diversity issues, team oriented and multi-taskers. They are also impatient, skeptical, blunt, expressive, and have grown up with a sense of entitlement."

The paper is insightful and useful reading for librarians.

Every generation has its own kind of intelligence. As the parent of two Millennials myself, I like this generation a lot, and see much to admire. But I'll make a prediction: if the problem of the Boomers is that we are so self-centered that we destroy communities rather than build them, the problem with the Millennials is that their very collaborativity, enhanced by technology, has the potential to make them the most spied upon and oppressed people in a long time. There's a pendulum swing between individuation and social consensus; both extremes are dangerous. For all that the Boomers have been insufferable in many ways, we have enjoyed extraordinary personal freedom. Imagine McCarthyism, but this time, fed by a government with instant and detailed access to your online accounts, cell phone calls, IM chats, and more.

Newman notes the Millennial longing for the reestablishment of "a regime of rules." As I've noted before in my talk on generations, I worry that we are, in fact, raising a generation of soldiers. Soldiers are indeed necessary, as are police. But we don't want a police state, and there's more to patriotism than obedience. Obedience coupled with despotism is a recipe for conflagration. It behooves us more than at any point in history to ensure that our national course is set by thoughtful leadership.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Unfortunately, when I tried clicking on the link, I was unable to download the paper. Evidently the file is corrupted. I managed to find the paper at http://www.stormingmedia.us/98/9879/A987974.html -- but I could only get it if I was willing to pay $19.95 for it (which I am not). All of the other links I found were to the same corrupted file that you originally linked to.
Jamie said…
Hmm. Just tried it again, and it worked.

http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA479789&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf
al

Not sure what the problem is. But I get it reliably whenever I click on it.

Popular posts from this blog

Uncle Bobby's Wedding

Recently, a library patron challenged (urged a reconsideration of the ownership or placement of) a book called "Uncle Bobby's Wedding." Honestly, I hadn't even heard of it until that complaint. But I did read the book, and responded to the patron, who challenged the item through email and requested that I respond online (not via snail-mail) about her concerns. I suspect the book will get a lot of challenges in 2008-2009. So I offer my response, purging the patron's name, for other librarians. Uncle Bobby's wedding June 27, 2008 Dear Ms. Patron: Thank you for working with my assistant to allow me to fit your concerns about “Uncle Bobby's Wedding,” by Sarah S. Brannen, into our “reconsideration” process. I have been assured that you have received and viewed our relevant policies: the Library Bill of Rights, the Freedom to Read, Free Access to Libraries for Minors, the Freedom to View, and our Reconsideration Policy. The intent of providing all tha

Installing Linux on a 2011 Macbook Pro

I had two MacBook Pros, both 13" models from late 2011. One had 4 gigs of RAM, and the other 8. Both of them were intolerably slow. In the first case, I wound up installing CleanMyMac , which did arcane things to various files, and put up alerts to warn me about disappearing memory. But it made the machine useable again, albeit not exactly speedy. I changed some habits: Safari as browser rather than Firefox or Chrome. I tried to keep tabs down to four or five. The second Mac had bigger problems. Its charger was shot, but even with that replaced, the battery tapped out at 75%. More importantly, the whole disk had been wiped, which meant that it wouldn't boot. Recently, I had downloaded a couple of Linux distributions ("distros") on USB drives. Elementary OS 5.1 (Hera) was reputed to be a lightweight, beautiful distro that shared some aesthetics with the Mac OS. So I thought I'd give it a try. Ahead of time, I tried to read up on how difficult it might be to

The enemies of literature

Every year, apologists for the restriction of reading stumble over themselves to "mock" Banned Books Week. Walther (Oct 1, 2023's " The Enemies of Literature ") upholds the grand tradition. Complaints about banning, the argument goes, are simply false. Walther writes, "In zero cases since the advent of Banned Books Week has a local or state ordinance been passed in this country that forbids the sale or general possession of any of the books in question." Yet Texas HB 900 was passed on June 13 of this year. It requires book vendors to assign ratings to books based only on the presence of depictions or references to sex. If a book is "sexually explicit" and has no direct connection to required curriculum, it must be pulled from the school. (One wonders what happens to the Bible, and its story of Lot's daughters, first offered by their father for gang rape, and whom he later sleeps with.) In Arkansas, legislation stated that school and pu