2003 Year in Review

Millennial Generation

Recently I listened to a speaker during a college visit that gave me a new viewpoint. I was in a room with other parents of graduating seniors when the Associate Provost of Student Affairs at Bradley University, Alan Galsky, spoke of a new term I hadn’t heard before. “Millennial Generation” is the term being used of the generation born between 1982-2000. It’s the young people becoming adults in the beginning of the third millennium.

I work with a lot of young people and have been told that what we do can affect and shape the next generation but what I was told pulled that together even more.

He quoted from Millennials Rising – The Next Great Generation by Neil Howe and William Strauss, they called this the next great generation. Tom Brokaw wrote the book, The Greatest Generation, about the World War II generation being the greatest but these authors said the next great generation will be the Millennial Generation.

There was a list of reasons behind the authors’ theory and after each reason the professor asked if this applied to our graduating seniors. Almost every hand shot up. (I might add that this was a private college with some of the best students looking to go there.) This theory seems to apply more dramatically to the upper middle class.

One of the qualifications of the greatest generation was something catastrophic had to happen. Well that happened on 9/11. This book was published in 2000, a year before the attack. Other reasons included: they are technologically smart, they volunteer more, they care about grades and education, they are more involved in religion, and they have a better relationship with their parents.

Professor Galsky has taught at the college for many decades. Each year he asks incoming freshman if they have heroes. In the 60’s every hand shot up and everyone in the room knew those heroes: John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. In the 80’s and 90’s the number of hands dropped and the students had less and less heroes. Recently the hands are starting to go back up again. And who are the heroes of this “Millennial Generation”? My first thoughts went to sports heroes or television and political personalities, but their heroes are their parents. We all thought we were giving our children too much but one thing we gave them was our time. We are coaching, volunteering in the schools, and helping with anything we can. There are a lot of great parents involved in youth sports like Little League and Junior Tackle. I don’t remember having parents in the school volunteering except for holiday parties when I was a kid but now hundreds of parents are involved. Parents are very focused at helping their children succeed.

“According to Howe and Strauss, this group is poised to become the next great generation, one that will provide a more positive, group-oriented, can-do ethos. Huge in size as well as future impact, they're making a sharp break from Gen-X trends and a direct reversal of boomer youth behavior. Why? Because, as a nation, we've devoted more concern and attention their way than to any generation in, well, generations.‘They will rebel against the culture by cleaning it up, rebel against political cynicism by touting trust, rebel against individualism by stressing teamwork, rebel against adult pessimism by being upbeat, and rebel against social ennui by actually going out and getting a few things done.’” From Lesley Reed in an Amazon.com review.

As a parent of a high school senior I see these kids are more involved, more active, and better than my generation and it makes me hopeful for the future.

by Barb Benson, theCity1.com
December 11, 2003