This is probably my most serious blog post to date. Ever since the blog launched last year, I made sure I kept some sort of humor and halfheartedness in my posts, and never really sat down and wrote a very serious article. Well, this one is it.

Let’s face it, things aren’t the way they used to be. My mother tells me of when she was growing up. Walking around town, not a care in the world. When you wanted to talk to someone you either walked to his or her house and talked to them face to face, or used the phone. If you where driving and needed to make a call, you looked for a pay phone. Today we have so many means of communication. Yes, we still use phones (albeit in a mobile way) for talking to people away from us. We still talk face to face. But with the advent of the Internet and texting, things have gotten quite bad in America.

It isn’t often that you read how bad things are from someone who is there. Most reports you read nowadays about horrid test scores and the like are written by the people observing, not the people failing. You can blame the teachers, you can blame the standardized tests, but no one seems to blame the actual source: the kids.

So the first issue I want to tackle is spelling, grammar, and the overall language of most American kids. Yes, every generation has their words and phrases, but it seems as if this generation is taking things from ones past and manipulating it into something totally different.

Let’s take the word ‘nigger’. Yes, I said it. Now let me make my point. I can’t tell you how many people, black, white, Hispanic, whatever, say ‘nigger’ or some sort of off shoot of it on an every day basis. Last time I checked, ‘nigger’ was a derogatory term that offended black people for, well, a very long time. Isn’t it odd that the children and grandchildren of the generation that fought for equal rights for all, including blacks, are hearing the horrid words being spoken by their own offspring? What the hell is happening?

Another issue is the entire texting thing. Yes, I admit, I am quite a skilled texter, if you will. I often send off around twenty texts during the school day. It may be a lot. It may not. I don’t know. But the thing is, instead of keeping the abbreviations where they belong (in places like texts, instant messages, and emails), kids are using them in school papers! A few kids in my own English class handed in their mid term paper with abbreviations such as ‘u’ and ‘tmrw’. On top of that, one kid used the non-existent word “ain’t” in the paper several times. I know, because I read it. Don’t kids understand that this isn’t how we spell or speak?

Finally, I want to target the hip-hop rap segment of music. I have no problems with you listening to whatever music you like, but when your songs lyrics talk about shooting cops and raping girls, then we have a real issue. How dare you even say something like that? Last time I checked, saying, “Shoot those damn cops, nigga!” in real life would get you a nice jail cell. You have freedom of speech in this country, yes, but only to a certain extent. When you threaten the life of another human being, you can get arrested. Yea, no joke, so stop the bull shit already.

Finally, again, I want to add something to my point about being arrested. Kids nowadays think that just because they are kids nothing can happen to them. I don’t mean, “Oh, I won’t get in a car crash.” I mean when one kid stabs another kid, they should immediately be tried as an adult. Why? What if they are only 14? If you have the guts to stab someone else, not in self defense, but as an act of aggression, you obviously know the difference between right and wrong. If not, then you should be locked up in a psych ward, because something clearly isn’t right with you.

Well, that is how my generation is failing. But the true issue isn’t the problem; it is finding a solution to the problem. Unfortunately, you can’t change everyone. And unfortunately, I have no solution to this problem. All I can do is hope.