Western News editor Jason Winders, you’re exactly correct about Generation Why’s apathy/lack of energy (“Generation Why? Federal budget backs Boomers,” April 5). They must be tired out from all the partying and rioting they do; ever try to get into a bar or restaurant on a weekend in London?
About the Boomers, you’re not so sanguine.
Debt-free educations? Well, you seem to ignore we were making $1.75 an hour in our summer jobs back in the day, and we didn’t spend all our money on electronics, phones, alcohol, trips to the tropics, restaurants, cars, fashion, etc.
Full employment? I graduated as a teacher in 1976, wrote every single public school board in Ontario for a job, got one interview in Manitouwadge (look it up) and, after taking every supply teaching job I was offered anywhere around the GTA, finally landed a job in a small Ontario rural town only because of a personal connection where I had practice taught the year before. I could go on correcting your other assertions, but I won’t.
You weren’t there, so you wouldn’t know about what the Boomers went through.
The current young folks here in Ontario, as a whole, are probably the most pampered and prosperous in human history, and yet too many of them still whine and complain about how tough life is. Maybe they should do what their successful peers do, i.e. check out what type of education will bear fruit in the current economy, go get it, then go wherever the work is.
I know of many young ones in their 20s who are making very good money in interestng careers. With the help they got, they’re laughing, including at many of their peers who seem to be more interested in partying and/or staring at glowing screens and messaging each other.
Stop with the generational war, that’s facile.
Every generation, every nationality or race, every gender, has its ‘go-getters’ and its slackers. The route to success has always been hard work; that’ll never change, and there’s a pretty big world out there if you’re ready to strike out and leave the hearth.
Alex Lutz
BA’76 (Western), B.Ed’77 (Western), B.Commerce’81 (Windsor)