"Kids today!"

From a Facebook post:
"Children are dissociated from the natural world due to focus on internet, Xbox and TV"


I disagree. My child watches TV like I used to read, voraciously (and knew the top ten dinosaurs on one show, by Latin names and classification, I mean, memorized) dances for hours on end to her Wii game, Dance Dance Annoy Daddy(and learns some odd songs. She loves hopping around to Bohemian Rhapsody, A song about a tractor, and Sympathy for the Devil) and uses her Ipod to access information and interact with her friends on a level the teenage me envies mightily. She is fully engaged in the world, and is sharp as a tack, with a wicked sense of humor honed by watching endless Nick at Night classic sitcoms when she can't sleep because of ADD(the best I could do when that happened was stare out the window and estimate how big the Junebugs banging into the screen wire, or if lucky the Braves were on the coast). She's growing up in small-town America, or what's left of it, and using technology to kick the world's ass right now. She still jumps on her trampoline for hours, and twirls a baton for days on end, like a champion. She twirls a 1/2" x 1/2"...staff for lack of a better term, like a modern day Maid Marion, beats people senseless, just in case she "ever wants to do Flag Corps". I have no clue how representative she is of "kids today" but based on her friends that I have met and my friends kids, they are bright, engaged and informed in a way I could have never been in middle school. They have access to the best medical treatment, both mental and physical, of any generation, as well as seeming endless choices in all of their consumer goods and services; and are by and large, doing great things. Challenging Michelle Bachman to a history test, standing up for religious freedom against an entire town in Louisiana, and using technology as a voice like never before, kids today are actually pretty cool. I'm not worried. Kids want to learn, you pretty much have to beat it out of them like it was with me. Only in the last 2 decades have I really started to enjoy learning again, and I hope that The Child and her generation never have that sort of weight put on them. I'm looking forward to the future.