Canadians Show Growing Support for Military and Defence Spending

[Halifax Tar]

The young people in 1930s Canada lived in far worse conditions than ours do now. Most young men lived at home with their parents until well into their twenties and thirties when they could finally afford marriage and accommodation of their own. The depression still had a lingering effect.

It's not the conditions; it's the expectations. Post WW2 the nation changed. It was a lengthy boom period. As a 60s Boomer there was never a question of "will I find a job?" it was "which job do I want to take?" Houses kept getting bigger and more numerous in big city made possible by the high number of post-war European immigrant labour. They built houses and didn't run 7/11s or nail parlors.

If the message hasn't been clear yet, the current generation contain a very high percentage of whingers who social mediaize and wonder why things aren't falling into their hands. What else could one possibly expect from the children and grandchildren of the "Me Generation." It's not so much that their conditions are so terrible, it's that their unfulfilled expectations are unrealistically high.

 

[lenaitch]

I used them to pay for a history degree

And that is part of the problem that can be rightly laid at the feet of our (Boomer) generation. What did you realistically expect to do with a History BA?

We encouraged our kids to go to university without clearly understanding why. Very, very few of my generation went to university. We had shop wings in high school. Most companies were willing to train or carry apprentices. Some of us born in the '50s took advantage of the emerging (in Ontario) of community colleges which were essentially (small T) trade schools. None had residences - you went to a local one (admittedly, I grew up in a city so, choice).

Then industry decided they wanted undergrad degrees for pretty much everything to get 'better people'. School boards closed shops. Industry increasingly expected applicants to 'come trained'. Graduates had debt (both tuition and residence). It's a lot easier to get an 'entry job' when you aren't piled in debt.

Our daughter (Millennial) started out in a BEd program but very quickly decided she didn't want to be a teacher so flipped to a History major. She did manage to parley that into an actual history-adjacent career.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

We went the university route for both my daughter, for a few reasons. They are both really smart, the system is stacked against those without degrees. Neither of my daughters are really into trades work, although one likes to tinker on cars. My youngest still wants to be a deck officer in the CCG or a CAF officer, but with the diabetes, those are not likley to happen, which is a shame.
With computerized systems handling job applications, people without degrees are discriminated against, as the systems are generally poor at judging "other experience" in lieu of. No way would I have gotten the job I did now, I would have been screened out. The majority of jobs that ask for a degree, do not actually require it. It's only because the people writing the job description, can't fathom any other form of education and learning.