

I’ve been a College and University prof for the past 6 years. I’m in my young 40s, and I just don’t understand most of the people in their 20s. I get that we grew up in really different times, but I wouldn’t have thought there would be such a big clash between them and me. I teach about sound and music, and I simply cannot catch the interest of most of them, no matter what I try. To the point were I’m no sure I want to keep doing this. Maybe I’m already too old school for them but I wonder who will want to teach anymore…
Yeah, I’m not sure I agree with this. I’ve always said to myself that I didn’t want to fall into this old-versus-young rhetoric, but I think the situation is different. The world and technologies are changing faster than our ability to integrate them. The world in which my father lived wasn’t that different from his father’s, and neither was mine. But young people, born into the digital age, have been the guinea pigs of social media and the gafam ecosystem, which seems to have radically altered their ability to concentrate (even watching a short film is a challenge), as well as their interest in learning. They see school, even higher education, as a constraint rather than an opportunity. I have the impression that they don’t see the point of learning when a Google search or ai answers everything, and that retaining things is useless. That’s my 2 cents…