I enjoyed reading both your posts... Your generation is interesting and often misunderstood, and the economic & societal challenges you face these days are nothing short of monumental. I'm very thankful I didn't have to grow up in your era. As far as not being able to get into Tech, you're quite right that many of us couldn't get in if we had to apply today. Georgia Tech was once a school that served regional and national needs; today it's an institution of major international import. Was talking recently with a Millennial friend who's finishing up med school (he got his undergraduate degree at Tech)... an incredibly smart guy in the top 5% of his med school class, and he said he wouldn't be able to get into Tech today if he were coming out of high school now. As for me, I got in largely as a legacy and barely survived to graduation. My dad got his undergraduate and masters at Tech and donated regularly to the alumni association. Those sorts of things once carried a lot of weight on the Hill. If he hadn't gone to Tech, the only way I'd have gotten on campus was to buy a ticket to a football game. Going into the military before college might have helped, too.
What's unusual about your generation is that many among the top percent are incredible achievers who can hold their own against (or out-compete) just about anybody from any generation. Yet there's empirical evidence to suggest that it's also the least knowledgable and capable generation as a whole, despite the promises of technology inside and outside the classroom. Not your generation's fault, but partly the fault of an educational system that's cheated young students for decades, robbing them of creativity, basic math and reading skills, and critical-thinking skills. This process was well underway at least since the early '70s, adversely affecting us Gen-Xers as well.
The educational needs of a sovereign nation like post-Sputnik America were quite different from the needs of today's globalist society, which requires fewer and fewer knowledgeable and well-rounded citizens; just an elite core. In recent years, there's been an over-emphasis on computers and technology in the classroom in lieu of books, memorization, and time-tested learning off the blackboard. According to news reports, many of the top Silicon-Valley CEOs and engineers won't let their kids near the technology they've created, stating that it's addictive and has negative effects on brain development and cognitive ability! It's a dirty secret that's not spoken out loud to the general public very often.
On the whole, it can probably be said that the Boomers are the best-educated generation top to bottom, perhaps in history. They're perhaps the most literate overall, and they've also inherited a lot of improvisational and problem-solving skills passed down from their fathers and grandfathers (no multiple-choice tests in those days). The Boomers are the generation that designed and built many of the technologies that in turn enabled the technologies we depend upon today. Whereas Boomers did a lot of home experiments as kids using household products and items from the hardware store, I grew up with science kits that contained everything you needed to solve the problems, instructions included. While trying to find a suitable electronics science kit for my young nephew, I was surprised to see that they'd been significantly dumbed down from the time I was a kid.
A recent test was conducted to find out which generation coped best with everyday technology. One of the problems was to return an incorrectly shipped item from a fictitious online retailer and have them ship the correct item, using the retailer's web site. Of the four generational cohorts tested, the Baby Boomers scored the best, followed by the Gen X-ers, then by the Millennials, and finally the WW2/Silent generation. Though having grown up with ubiquitous technology, the Millennials as a group didn't possess the reading comprehension skills or reasoning abilities to solve the problems, while the oldest generation understood the problems but had difficulties managing the technology side. The groups that fared best were those who were educated without technology but learned to use it later on in the workplace. Don't know how all this bodes for the future... Not very good to have an elite few who are extraordinarily capable, yet large masses of those who lack skills and intellectual curiosity.
