In my efforts to try to remain up to date with technology, the changes happening all around and my students, I’ve spent most of my free time (which actually just starts the moment Mateo goes to bed) surfing the net doing all sorts of catching up.

I read blogs, check out new technologies, games, read the latest Friendster updates, emails, and even entertainment news. But no matter what I do, I can’t seem to close in the gap in generation between me and my students. No matter how much of today’s ideas I assimilate or simulate, I can’t seem to understand them, nor can they understand me. Does this mean that we are really that far apart?

Back in our days, fear was an integral part of high school lifestyle. We studied because we feared failing exams. We dressed up because we feared getting humiliated by those more dressed up than us. We practiced and exercised because we feared getting left behind even in PE games. Everything we do, we had fear as an additional form of motivation. Well, of course we wanted to excel too, but fear is almost always part of the reason for doing things the way we did. Even in the way we communicated with others, we were, most of the time, careful with talking to fellow students and teachers because we feared offending them.

Today, however, fear seems to be one of the things that students have very little of. They don’t seem to fear a lot of things… like failing, getting left behind, offending others, or getting offended themselves. They don’t seem to care about the consequences of their actions. And no matter what I do to instill fear in them, nothing seems to work. It really looks like our generations are that far apart.

But is it bad? Does it mean that the young generations are inferior? or that ours is simply outdated? I don’t know. From our perspective, maybe. But from theirs, I don’t think so.

Perhaps this is the reason why more individuals right now are willing to break rules and limits, because fear can not hold them back from doing the things that previous generations were scared of doing. Maybe this is why they show more promise than any of the previous batches, because they’re willing to imagine things that previous batches would not even dare to consider. I don’t know. Maybe fear or the lack of it is the price for ultimate progress. I’m not sure. All I know is that this generation is way apart from ours. And between them and us, it’s a generation gap that will be almost impossible to close in.