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Are kids preparing for a future that will never come?

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posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 10:24 PM
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This is a subject I have thought a lot about over the last few years. Are today's children preparing themselves for a future that is never going to come? Going to school and college, to get a degree for a profession that isn't going to exist in 10-20 years? How probable do you think this is?

I doubt there is anybody on ATS that isn't aware of the dire straits that the US, and by default, most of the world is currently in. Most everyone is broke, the US, parts of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East are engaged in a pretty much never ending conflict.

The costs of food, medical care, energy, education, basically the cost to survive and succeed is skyrocketing, while the income rewarded to you for your labors is dropping at an ever increasing rate.

Things have changed drastically even in the short time since I was in school (~15 years) Back then, it was a pretty simple process. Do halfway decent in high school, get even a 2-year degree, and you were almost guaranteed an easy job that pays well enough to have a house, cars, family, etc. Even if you didn't go to college, you could get a blue collar job without much trouble that would afford you almost the same lifestyle, albeit with more physical work demanded of you.

This was the way my parents, and all my peer's parents had it. Everyone owned a house, some were construction workers, some plumbers, some managed warehouses, or had mid-level office jobs. They didn't have much education, but still had jobs that afforded them the ability to support a family and live in a pretty decent level of comfort, with one parent working.

Not now. Those same positions these days allow you to have the pleasure to support only yourself, and that's if you share a 2 bedroom apartment with someone else. The future of these jobs is most likely a pay cut, increased work load, or lay-offs. No bright future at a company that actually cares for it's workers, and rewards them for years of dedicated hard work. Not anymore.

It seems the education system is still preparing young people for a world that doesn't exist anymore. No longer is it easy to come out of college and score a high-paying job of your choice. Now you leave college with tens of thousands in debt, and then take a job at Wal-Mart of McDonalds because nobody is hiring in your field. Or if they are, but they aren't paying much better than Wal-Mart or McDonalds.

My nephew is 13 years old, and he's under the impression he'll go to college and get a job as soon as he gets out. He thinks he'll be a valued commodity in the job market. He's smart,and I love him, but I don't have the heart to tell him he'll most likely be worthless by the time he gets out of college. Am I wrong? Am I just being negative?

It honestly appears that things will keep going down-hill for quite some time. The education system is supposed to prepare young folks for their future, but in my opinion they are failing horribly, because they have had the same idea of what the future will hold for decades, and it just isn't accurate anymore.

They instill this idea that everyone is going to go to college, get some high-paid corporate job, and everything will be fine. They aren't preparing them for the reality, that things might NOT be fine. That maybe your WASTING money by going to college. Maybe your wasting TIME by going to college. Maybe the USA, and maybe the world might not even be anything close to what it is right now, by the time the current middle-school kids get out in the world.

I'm not going to get too deep into conspiracy theory as far as what the future holds. I'm not going to say the Illuminati are going to turn the country into a police state with slave workers. I doubt that would happen. But you don't even have to get that crazy to realize that the near future is going to be a lot different than yesterday, and even today is.

Anybody have any ideas? I just can't stop thinking about the future my nephew is going to have to endure. Total economic collapse? Or just a job market so poor that almost nobody has a job, and those that do can't even afford basic things in life?

Sorry if it sounds like I'm rambling, and I won't be surprised (or offended) if this gets moved to the rant section. I just thought I'd get some other people's opinions on the future, and how they think the younger generation of today should prepare for it.



posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 10:32 PM
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I suppose the real question is: Can we keep this level of industrial growth going? If not, then indeed, the future that children are being scuttled towards will not be there. I firmly believe this whole system is coming down one way or another. We can't keep burning fuels or killing entire species, and not expect it to catch up to us.



Google Video Link


Also, the video below.




posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 10:33 PM
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Being a sophomore in college, this article hits home pretty damn hard. Everyday I say to myself, whats the effing point man? Its a God damn shame what's happening.



posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 10:40 PM
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For me I was going to write books, I'm 15. I know I"m not going to get anywhere, without leaving the country, People are deluded. I'm heading to England or Canada, far away from here.
edit on 22-7-2011 by Heartisblack because: (no reason given)



posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 10:41 PM
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Tell him to go into the trades. Be a mechanic, plumber, things of that nature. If i had it to do all over again, i'd have been a medical office assistant straight out of the gate.



posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 10:43 PM
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This is a subject I've been thinking about a lot lately.
I have a two year AA degree from a community college but I'm reluctant to do further schooling as it's so expensive and there is no promise that there will be a good job awaiting me at the end.
I'm glad someone else is seeing what I've noticed. The future, I'm afraid, is looking bleak and the schools are not preparing us with practical skills.
I would like to think differently but at this point it seems almost unavoidable that the future is going to be harder one way or another.



posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 10:45 PM
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i think the world and the country are going thru a rough time right now . but i see a very bright future for the humane race. we will have bumps in the road but we will get over them. i know this might be a little bit off subject but you get chance you need check out "2001: A Space Odyssey". if you seen or watch this movie i feel thats what we could be doing with all this education. but instead the "elite" sort hold us back with this OIL based economy. hopefully one day we could we get to that level.... check out this link..



www.youtube.com...



posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 10:46 PM
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Reply to post by James1982
 


Im going to go optimistic and say that some form of gainful employment will always be available. For instance today the value of getting a college education has dropped some because a lot of people have them. However there are fields of study that are neglected and couls use more people. Outside of jobs that require a college degree a lot of jobs are open in the IT field as well as the medical field. We will always need police. Jobs in green technology are becoming increasingly available. Basically my point is if you want to make money you have to follow the money. If you go with your passion you deal with the consequences. As for jobs in corporate america well that has been going downhill for years now.


 
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posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 10:47 PM
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It's a very relevent point to make, and I think the same alo't.
You don't have to be a "conspiracy theorists" to see that the World (Civilisation) Is going down the pan. Simply, everything Is getting more expensive but people are just In denial that the system Is broken, even though very soon everyone will have to admit It.

As for the Kids, It actually breaks my heart. I see young 2,3 yr olds playing sometimes and I just feel sorry for them that they were brought into this broken corrupt World at this time.
Pregent Women really get to me, I get so close to saying something and giving a little reality check!!
Of course I don't, Who am I to do that?

But Yes, I agree, Pretty much a waste of time currently School and College but TPTB are simply trying to hold on to the current system as long as possible.



posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 10:51 PM
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Good post. Well said.

It basically comes down to this. It has become greed and corruption now. The rich keep getting richer while the middle and lower class gets shafted. All the big company CEOs care about is the bottom line profit to appease Wall Street, the banksters, fund managers, while trying to line their pockets with more money.

Case in point. Apple manufacturing their iPods and computers in China with slave labor. Why not manufacture it here? Oh no. They wouldn't get that extra $100 million more in profit.

How about Cisco Systems? They shipped a majority of their jobs oversees or hire H1B Visa workers. All the while Cisco has money stored in Swiss and Bermuda bank accounts allowing them not to pay any corporate taxes, yes, legally (just a little loop hole), and the CEO of Cisco is begging Congress to pass a tax holiday in the meantime, oh yeah, while they are laying off 10% of their work force.



posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 10:53 PM
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Education is just a conveyor belt into the system, school, college, uni get to work and pay your taxes.

The dream for many developing countries is to get a good education and move abroad. As an example 10% of the Philippines population works abroad, ask any Filipino what their ambition in life is and they'll say work abroad. This poses a massive problem for European and US countries, where there's less jobs and higher populations than ever before. You've got to feel and worry for the youth of today as making a decent living is going to get harder and harder.

Are kids preparing for a future that will never come?

They'll always be preparing, but for what kind of future is very uncertain.



posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 10:54 PM
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you are right but there is no point in crushing your nephew's dreams. And who know maybe it will work out for him. You can dream too. I have seen more than a few with 4 years of college out there digging ditches or flipping burgers. I dropped out in the 11th grade and I have been luckly on the job front so far. I am now 44 and when I look back I would have to say for me the right thing to do was drop out. You can not just drop out now days they have laws about that now. I have seen a lot of todays young that can not do even simple math without a machine. A lot can not even count money. Just like last week. I was at the store and the bill came to $9.05. All I have was $20s and some change. I gave her $20.05 and she locked up. I did not want a packet full of change. The 5 cent messed her up so back she called the manger over to help. I did not know if I wanted to laugh or cry.



posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 10:56 PM
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Originally posted by Ginga
Education is just a conveyor belt into the system, school, college, uni get to work and pay your taxes.

The dream for many developing countries is to get a good education and move abroad. As an example 10% of the Philippines population works abroad, ask any Filipino what their ambition in life is and they'll say work abroad. This poses a massive problem for European and US countries, where there's less jobs and higher populations than ever before. You've got to feel and worry for the youth of today as making a decent living is going to get harder and harder.

Are kids preparing for a future that will never come?

They'll always be preparing, but for what kind of future is very uncertain.


The education system is just as corrupt as the government or big business. The education system, colleges have become a big business. Give me your money, we will provide you with a decent education, no guarantee you will ever make any money or get a decent salary out of college. But lets have our administrators and staff make $150,000 to $500,000 a year. Just like a big corporation. Same goes with corrupt greedy churches out there as well.
edit on 22-7-2011 by Stargate2012 because: (no reason given)



posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 11:00 PM
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To the person who suggested that I tell him to get into a trade-

That, in my opinion, is really the best option for young people right now. I don't really want to tell HIM as I feel it's not my place, not being his parent, to tell him stuff like that. But I have suggested it to his mother. but she is still stuck in the old paradigm of not wanting her kid to be a blue collar worker. She things, like a lot of parents, there is something "wrong" with that, and wants him to go to college, get some desk job, when that opportunity probably won't be available to him, and if it is, won't be anywhere as easy as she thinks it is.

People will always need someone to fix their car, to fix their sink, trade jobs like that can't be outsourced or replaced by machines (not for the nest 60 years at least) and since not a ton of people are into this type of work, competition isn't huge compared to a lot of other jobs.

It seems like society being brainwashed yet again. Looking down on tradesmen and blue collar workers as if they are inferior to paper pushers for some reason. Why does she want her son to sit at a desk instead of work with his hands? Especially when trade jobs will probably be more secure in the future than desk jobs that can easily be outsourced.



posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 11:06 PM
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I really think that we are the last generation that can do something before we jump to the cliff of mass extermination. Things are accelerating at a faster pace than ever, and we are just watching how everything falls, i hope that in place.



posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 11:07 PM
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This is an excellent post. I thought so hard about this, and felt it to be so true, that I pulled my children out of school last year and homeschooled them. They know all the old ways of doing things...how to grow their own food, process it, catch it, how to save seeds, raise wool, spin it, make herbal medicine, stay safe, cut wood, build fires, etc. etc. etc. But, the world has such a pull to it. It is hard to remove oneself from it.

They ended up going back to school 1/2 way through the year and finishing it out...as we 'live' a homeschool life, here on our farm, without even having to homeschool.

I worry CONSTANTLY and it keeps me up at nights about this very topic. The world has changed so much in the past 10 years.

Is college really the answer? I'm not so sure anymore. I think real skills are. In fact, I'M SURE OF IT. I look around me and I see people in America that are fat and mushy and their hands are perfect...no hard work. If it all went crashing tomorrow, they'd be in a chaotic hysteria. Do any of these people know real common sense skills? Do people care to learn common sense skills anymore?

Ipads, ipods, etc. etc....are just time wasting gadgets in the grande scheme of things. Can you keep your family safe? Does your son know about fires, and smoke and carbon monoxide and the difference between a coal burning stove and a wood burning stove? Do your daughters know that beeswax candles give the whitest light and that elderberry syrup cures 13 known flu viruses? Do your children know how to survive outside? Do they know where food, wool, cotton, clean meat, and clean water come from? Do they know what causes Ecoli 0151H7? Do they know how to pasteurize milk or how to keep raw milk clean? Do they know how to change a tire, run for a couple of miles, survive in the hot sun without ac? All these things...LOST SKILLS.

What good is Shakespeare and Physics if you pass out from sunstroke and type II diabetes??? I ask you.

If America doesn't wake up, oh...this place is gonna look ugly. Ugly, I tell you.



posted on Jul, 22 2011 @ 11:42 PM
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An education might / might not help with getting a job. When I went to school / college many years ago it was the intentions of using it to help get a job which it did for 30 years. What I've learned since then is I really didn't know important stuff. I'd helped out at home canning, pickling and preserving vegetables and meats but it wasn't something I knew how to do on my own. That is something I've tried to correct. I didn't know how to make basic things like tools, preserve skins, recognize plants, build simple machines to make work easier and thousands of other things. I worked in medicine long enough to know more than advanced first aid, some trauma care and advanced life support.

Basically, if everything stopped working tomorrow what would you do? Can you build a fire, find water or something to eat? Could you build a shelter? If you are with others, what can you contribute besides eating? Would you be valuable to keep around? Can you hand card wool, use a spinning wheel and a simple loom? Can you take care of horses / mules, plow a field or drive / build / fix a buggy. Maybe the Amish Mennonites have it right. If I was going to colonize a planet I'd want some of them there in case the technology didn't work or broke down.

So, although I think education will still be important and will help get a job, a general grounding in "How It's Made" / "How Do They Do IT" would be a helpful if it all goes to hell.



posted on Jul, 23 2011 @ 01:27 AM
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Originally posted by SmokeandShadow
I suppose the real question is: Can we keep this level of industrial growth going? If not, then indeed, the future that children are being scuttled towards will not be there. I firmly believe this whole system is coming down one way or another. We can't keep burning fuels or killing entire species, and not expect it to catch up to us.



Google Video Link


Also, the video below.



Of course we can, clean pure energy, hydrogen, browns fuel, and energy devices, such as TESLA, or wind and solar for the conservative ones. HEMP and Vegan resins, like Ford used for some of his cars, oh and ethanol fuel made from hemp. My latest thread is on making HHO fuel at home!

The spirit I got from your words is that you're looking forward to a collapse of civilization.

The only ones who want a reset and serfs are the bloodlines and their minions.

People have never had to go down the dirty, fossil fuel, ripped off the by the corporations route.

They stole everyone's progression thinking that those with the science weren't a part of a specialized human race, each doing different tasks, SO THEY STOLE THE PROGRESSION FROM THEIR FAMILY, form the cooks that fed them, the mechanics that fixed the cars the nurses that tended them, and the farmers that fed them. OBSCENITY.

And ripped eveyrone off and hurt this planet.

THEY ALONE BEAR THE KARMA.

Now, we're not being reset. They don't get their negative evil world.

We are going to progress with unity, and clean highly advanced, ever progressing clean technology into a wonderful future of equality.

Never ending education and upgrades.



posted on Jul, 23 2011 @ 02:43 AM
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The children will survive and bring forth a new order of humans on this planet.

It is those alive now who were born at a lower vibrational frequency who will perish.

The children will just be bystanders to this battle that is beginning to take place and will climb out of the rubble and carry on.

Those that are alive and aware, realize what is actually taking place now,will see the signs and instinctively know what to do.

I personally have passively sat by and observed what has been taking place world wide for most of my life.

I became aware at a very young age and spent my entire life learning not in a established facility of indoctrination but in a building where there was no limitations to what one could learn.

It was a library. Andrew Carnegie gave Americans the greatest gift they could ever receive and used his immense wealth to help build these places of learning all across the land.

As long as an individual can read they can learn anything.

When I was first in school that was the priority of the teachers I had.

Today there are young people that are graduating from school that are functionally illiterate.

Those that are attempting to take control of this world DO NOT want people to know how to read.

They have created many ways to distract a person's mind,to keep them preoccupied and apathetic to the situation.

We must keep our minds clear and do not yet ourselves succumb to peer pressure,of any kind.

There is a difficult period before us all.



posted on Jul, 23 2011 @ 03:59 AM
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I have felt for several years that something is coming. What exactly "it" is, I do not know. I have spoken to many, many people. Some my age, some a little older, some MUCH older. Some my friends, some my family, some that are pretty much strangers to me. All of us have "felt" something on the horizon, something approaching that hasn't been seen in generations.

I don't know what this is, economic collapse, massive social enlightenment, there are any number of things that it could be, but personally I am convinced that something "big" is coming, and somewhat soon.

THIS is what I worry about, with regards to my nephew. A few people in this thread have talked about various survival skills. Farming, animal care, water treatment, shelter building, just basic things that most people in our current civilization have no idea about. These things make me worry. I'm not really old, but I'm not extremely young either. I'm almost 30, and in theory my life is just getting started, but something in my heart tells me I don't have a whole lot of time. Maybe I'll live to be 50, possibly 60. I just don't feel like I have a whole lot of time ahead of me. It's not because I'm in poor health, I'm definitely not in the best of health, but still strong and robust.

There is just some nagging feeling in the back of my head, in the pit of my stomach, that tells me something is coming. And because I have lived a decent life so far, even though I've not been on this Earth nearly as long as most before they pass, I don't think of myself. My thoughts drift towards my nephew. I have no children of my own, so the closest thing I have is him, I care for him as if he were my own. I just fear for his future more than I fear for my own. I want him to have a long, and comfortable life. And my greatest fear is that this world will fall apart before he has a chance to experience all the wonders that life has to offer.

I'm not worried about some crazy Nibiru planet destroying earth, or 2012, or Elenin, or any of the more "out there" theories. I just worry about the more real and present dangers of economics and war, I don't want him to grow up in a world so far disconnected from joy and pleasure.

I'd like to be a positive force in his life, to guide him towards a better future. But with the future being so incredibly uncertain, it's incredibly difficult to decide what would benefit him the most, which is why I come here to ATS, to get other people's opinions and advice.

I think I'm rambling again, so I'll stop, but I hope that you will understand where I'm coming from, and what I'm hoping to accomplish.



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