the best commencement speech ever?

[trevorp]

Next you'll be adopting the American spellings as the standard!

Matron writes: Please desist from making these provocative posts. I've just had to put Trevor to bed in a darkened room. It's touch and go...

[Conor Dary]

In Britain there was little coddling. For one, there was no graduation from high school at all. Possibly this has changed in the 20 years since I left.

Oh, Daisy, it's changed more than you could imagine - and had probably started even before you left. Coddling is rampant and has had the predictable results. Every real or imagined achievement, no matter how trivial or undesirable, is certificated and celebrated. And we've even started calling them High Schools!

There have been high schools in the UK for quite a while. The best school in Nottingham, Nottingham High School, has been known by the name for decades.

As for coddling in Britain they should bring back the 11 plus exam. That will put them in their place...literally.

[catson52]

In Britain there was little coddling. For one, there was no graduation from high school at all. Possibly this has changed in the 20 years since I left.

Oh, Daisy, it's changed more than you could imagine - and had probably started even before you left. Coddling is rampant and has had the predictable results. Every real or imagined achievement, no matter how trivial or undesirable, is certificated and celebrated. And we've even started calling them High Schools!

There have been high schools in the UK for quite a while. The best school in Nottingham, Nottingham High School, has been known by the name for decades.

As for coddling in Britain they should bring back the 11 plus exam. That will put them in their place...literally.

Age eleven (+) is a bit early to determine the academic capabilities of kids. Whilst in general agreement with your views, and having gone through that system, 13-14 may be a better age for such a test.

I note that at least one person (who has posted on this thread), has gotten the most from his "Ivy League" education.

[Conor Dary]

I don't know if I was clear, but I was joking on the 11+ exam. It was a pretty dreadful thing in its heyday, from what heard when I was in England.

[Conor Dary]

Previous generations (certainly including me to my seniors) were merely "difficult"; these blessed ones truly believe they own the world.

Pego, if your grandchildren have escaped this, my kudos to you and your children for actually passing on some real values.

gh, you should like this!

With the exception of the imperial offspring of the Ming dynasty and the dauphins of pre-Revolutionary France, contemporary American kids may represent the most indulged young people in the history of the world.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/b ... z1zrVx53uV

[gh]

see you and raise you this one: yoga instructor fired by Facebook because you aren't allowed to say "no" to their employees!

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/articl ... 694293.php

[DrJay]

I'd support the yoga instructor. If you can't put your toys away for an hour, you shouldn't be in the yoga class.

[Conor Dary]

Another great story for gh in today's NYTimes.

MEGAN MURPHY SCHWAB, a marketing executive in suburban New Jersey, was seven months pregnant with her second child when a friend asked if another friend, who had just arrived in New York, might spend a night at her home to escape the summer heat. Ms. Schwab had met the woman, who seemed nice enough, so she and her husband, Jeff, an accountant, agreed to put her up.

That one-night invitation was immediately interpreted by the visitor, an architecture student in her early 30s, to mean two nights, a surprisingly common error when the weather is steamy. And her first words, upon arrival, were that the color of the roof (gray) was wrong for the house (which was also gray). She drank most of the bottle of wine she had brought for her hosts, then made her way through “multiple” bottles of theirs, Ms. Schwab said.

Overnight, the Schwabs’ 2-year-old son got sick. He cried much of the night. The guest, coming down the next morning dressed in her hostess’s clothing, which she had found in the guest room, complained that the crying had kept her up. She also complained that the clothing did not fit. Mr. Schwab’s suggestion that she might want to wear her own clothes fell on profoundly deaf ears.

When Ms. Schwab returned from taking her son to the doctor and told the guest, who wanted to go sightseeing, that she could not accompany her because her son was ill, the guest responded like a surly teenager, slamming doors, driving off in a huff. This did not prevent her, later that evening, from telling her hosts that she was enrolled in a 12-week program in the city and planned to spend weekends with them.

“My husband and I just look at each other,” Ms. Schwab says. “I don’t like confrontation. My husband says, ‘You can’t stay here for the next 12 weeks; my wife’s having a baby and we have summer plans.’ She says, ‘Well, can I have a key to your house when you’re not going to be here?’ ” Mr. Schwab, thinking creatively, tells her that as a homeowner he is not comfortable with that. If something went wrong when a guest was there and the homeowners were not, he is not sure their insurance would cover it. The Schwabs do, however, give the guest permission to park her car in front of their home for the summer. On Sunday, Ms. Schwab drives the guest to the train station.

“As she’s getting out she says to me, ‘Oh, yeah, I didn’t have time to get to the cash machine, so I went to your purse and took some cash,’ ” Ms. Schwab says. “It was basically everything I had taken out of the A.T.M. the night before, $100.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/garde ... nted=print