Why Gen X parents are so painful
Susan Gregory Thomas writes a great article, ‘Teachers Guide to Gen X Parents‘. Possibly the best description I’ve read as to how Gen X parents are experienced in a school context by educators and administrators, and then why they are as they are? To be honest, as a Gen X parent myself, I found myself very sheepish reading it. Having been fairly proud of my activity and involvement in my children’s school, I suddenly found myself being exposed with the possible truth behind all that ‘involvement’.
In preschool, we’re the ones anxiously arranging developmentally appropriate playdates for our Siouxsie-and-the-Banshees-T-shirt-clad three-year-olds. In kindergarten, we’re frantic that other parents’ children are starting to read cat and rat, while our Ruby and Dylan are still having trouble identifying lowercase letters. We think the gold-star system and its ilk are archaic and punitive, and we want to have a meeting to present our suggestions for alternative achievement systems.
By grade school, we’re demanding to know why the math program is not challenging enough for our child. We email our complaints about the seating chart. We openly deride the arts instruction and may rally other parents to the point of a coup d’état. By middle school, our kids have schedules and professional support staffs that resemble those of corporate lawyers. Look out, high school: We’re coming.
Thomas suggests the reason Xers as parents, are like they are, is because of their own school experience. Because we didn’t have, in our opinion, a great education experience, we’re determined not to let that happen to our own children. It’s not that we have any evidence that this is in fact what’s going on, we’re going to make sure there’s absolutely no chance it will.
We’ve been taking care of ourselves since we started going to school, and we don’t trust authority figures, because they weren’t trustworthy when we were growing up. Our parents didn’t know what was going on at school, and our teachers didn’t know what was going on at home. We’re not going to let this happen to our children — not even for a second. We’ll do whatever we have to do to make sure our kids get what they need.
One of those great articles worth reading. Be warned if you’re an Xer. It may knock you, as it did me, down a notch or two : )



I’ve heard plenty of mechanisms to improve team spirit and boost office morale,
Aloysias Maimane asks what makes someone an African. Part of the answer relates to African celebrations. In this article, Aloysias explains what celebrations mean to Africans, and what implications this has for companies and leaders. Anyone who needs to attract, retain and inspire African staff members, whatever their cultural background, would do well to consider the importance of celebrations.
Older supermarket workers, at Britain’s Tesco, are being given a guide to youth slang to help them understand younger colleagues and customers, in the form of a pamphlet handed out to staff. The pamphlet is being tried out in some of Tesco’s 1 500 stores with a high proportion of employees over retirement age.
For those who travel regularly to different cultures, you know the nightmare of arriving in a new country and realising that you don’t know some important local customs. I’m not talking about the customs officials at the airport, but rather issues like do you tip the taxi driver, and if so, how much. Do you tip the porter at the hotel, or the waitress at the restuarant?
I have been black for as long as I can remember, yet it would seem of late with the introduction of technology, education and westernised worldview, that reality is consistently being challenged. I grew up in Soweto with the values of the struggle being continually reinforced along with those of simply living in community with others. I guess you can call that Ubuntu but that term is undergoing huge fatigue and is progressively losing currency.
In the past two e-zines, John Maxwell has
A great article in the latest Economist magazine looks at the issue of corporate locations, and where you place your key executives. The subtitle asks: “Does the location of a company’s headquarters matter any more?” Read the article, from the 8 March 2007 editiion,
One of TomorrowToday’s bright young stars, Aloysias Maimane helps us to understand some of the unique drivers and motivators of young, black talent. His insights will assist those who are battling to attract and retain these “black diamonds”.
A hot-off-the-press study by the UCT Unilever Institute and Research Surveys has found that 49% of Black Diamonds feel that they are misrepresented in the media by local marketers and advertisers. One respondent summed up the feeling of almost half of the respondents by saying: “South Africa has had the political revolution, we’re in the midst of the economic revolution, but we have yet to see a media revolution!”
While watching the first episode of Survivor South Africa last night, Sam and I wondered how the series would differ from the US version and whether we’d see a distinctly South African flavour come out of the tried and tested Survivor script and screenplay. At first we reckoned that we’d see how much more tolerant South Africans are of our fellow earth-inhabitants than those of our American compatriots.
The difficulty is that the starting point is within us. Most of us are not even aware of our discriminatory bias. Ask yourself: “when a taxi drives like a maniac and pulls in front of you, nearly cutting you off the road, who do you mentally picture is driving that vehicle?” Depending on your city, you might answer: Johannesburg: young, black male (unlicensed, arrogant, rude, and probably armed); Sydney: middle-aged, Asian (can’t speak English); London: middle-aged, Pakistani; New York: unknown origin, but “not from here” and can’t speak English (maybe even an alien?). In each case, we might be right, but we could also be hopelessly wrong. Yes, we can have a bit of fun with the issue of discrimination… But, lets be aware of our own latent prejudices. That’s the starting point, and its more difficult than we can ever know to overcome them.
Last week, the USA Supreme Court ruled on the matter of Burlington Northern v. White, a sexual discrimination case. Basically, the woman involved had been verbally harassed by a male supervisor in front of her all male colleagues. When she ultimately complained, he was discplined, but she was essentally demoted, and trumped up disciplinary charges brought against her (she was off work for 37 days without pay). For details of the case, 
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