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Re: The drinking age:
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I would like to address the challenges of preparing students for civic responsibility and leadership in a few moments, but first I would like to note what has increasingly been identified as an impediment to our reaching those goals. Just as the literature about higher education is replete with the kinds of names I have mentioned in reference to our students, there is a new set of names being given to their parents. These are the so-called "helicopter parents" -- those who tend to hover over students and to intervene in all manner of issues that typically students would have dealt with themselves in consultation with their advisers. In the article to which I earlier referred about navigating roommate relationships, incidents were cited in which parents, rather than students, called the prospective roommate to “work things out.” Other examples have appeared recently in publications like the Wall Street Journal, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and local newspapers across the country. Here are some of those examples: From the Washington Times, (‘College Aims to Ground Helicopter Parents, September 29, 2005 ) “One parent recently demanded to know what Colgate planned to do about the sub-par plumbing her daughter encountered on a study-abroad trip to China.” From the Wall Street Journal: (Tucking the Kids in – in the Dorm, August 1, 2005) “At the University of Georgia, students who get frustrated or confused during registration have been known to interrupt their advisers to whip out a cellphone, speed-dial their parents and hand the phone to the adviser, saying ‘Here, talk to my mom. . . .The cellphone . . . has become the ‘world’s longest umbilical cord.” Just this year here at Frostburg, I had the experience of hearing from a grandparent who wanted to come to my office with his attorney to protest a field assignment that his granddaughter, a graduate student, had been given as part of her studies. Fortunately, the young woman’s mother intervened and he did not appear, but the incident simply illustrates the challenges that we are facing with some parents, and even grandparents. The situation has become so bad at the University of Vermont, where recently at an orientation session for students and their parents, parents attended in greater number than students. That institution now employs “parent bouncers” – upper class students who are “trained to divert moms and dads who try to attend registration and explain diplomatically that they are not invited.” (Wall Street Journal, ibid.) Even the federal government, given the FIRPA regulations that prohibit us from sharing information about grades with parents unless students over eighteen sign a release, underscores the notion that students should be ready to take responsibility for their lives and their academic careers.
I do not intend to be insensitive to the concerns of parents as their children leave the nest for the first time. Even now I remember vividly my own trauma when my two children, fourteen months apart in age, went off to college. My daughter attended school in Boston, and when my son and I set out for Maryland after having navigated the nightmarish traffic of that city, I began to cry and could not stop. By the time we reached the New Jersey Turnpike, we ran into a torrential, unceasing downpour, and my son, wise at the age of sixteen, said to me, “Mom, if you don’t get off at the next exit and let me drive, we will never make it home alive.” I did that, and we made it. The following year, I took my mother with me when my son went to college in North Carolina. That time, we both cried all the way home, but at least the weather did not complicate matters. I have read of other parents who have responded dramatically to empty nesting: the mother who went home and painted her kitchen grey; another who refused to get out of bed for a week after her child left, and so on. And so I sympathize. But I also know, as all of you know, that these are the years in which teenagers grow into adulthood, and they need to begin to take responsibility for their decisions. Parents who want to make every little decision for them need to realize that they are cultivating a Peter Pan syndrome in which their children will never really want to grow up. They should understand that, if they have provided strong roots, their children should be ready to try their wings. We have known about (or think we have known about) IQ's for a long time -- the intellectual quotient that measures intellectual maturity. More recently, psychologists have begun to measure EQ's, the emotional maturity of individuals, now considered a major factor in determining success in adult life, both personally and professionally. It would be regrettable if we were seeing a group of students who, because of over-protectiveness, will grow up to have EQ's that limit their true intellectual capabilities….
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Convocation Remarks
[Emphasis added] Catherine Gira, PhD, of Frostburg University made a nice summary of some problems the “millenials” face when starting university during her convocation address in 2005. I believe that the protective restrictions on the drinking age further perpetuate the “Peter Pan” syndrome of newer generations and retard their development of emotional maturity. They need to learn from their mistakes rather than being overly protected by their "helicopter parents". Consequences are often indelible teaching tools.
Of course, because of this phenomenon, a decrease in the drinking age initially would be disastrous, IMO. Bottom line though, I am in favor of a change to 18 years old.
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I am an American. That's the way most of us put it, just matter of factly. They are plain words, those four: you could write them on your thumbnail, or sweep them clear across this bright autumn sky. But remember too, that they are more than just words. They are a way of life. So whenever you speak them; speak them firmly, speak them proudly, speak them gratefully. I am an American. ...a tradition
Last edited by Si modo; 10-27-2007 at 11:44 AM.
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