Perhaps in a past life. 
Cecil has been fighting ignorance for four more years than I’ve been alive.
If you think college kids today DON’T read books for fun and aren’t politically involved, you haven’t recently been to a college campus. From what I can see they read everything they can get their hands on and are as aware of politics as you were in the 60s (and you spent less time at it than you now remember.)
The capacity for people to continue deluding themselves into this kids-are-dumb-slackers bit is just amazing. I cannot believe anyone actually believes this. You all understand they said the same thing about you, right? And that the kids you’re deriding will say the same about kids when THEY get old and bitter?
What a gigantic load of horseshit. And you seriously trying to convince anyone that the college students of the 60s DIDN’T spend a lot of time sitting around their dorms listening to shitty LPs and trying to pick up? Or that the kids who didn’t go to college - which was a greater percentage of kids then than today, by the way - didn’t often spend all their time at crappy hangouts babbling about their cars? Or am I supposed to believe no kids today are politically involved? Then why do I hear about a political demonstration every frickin’ week at every local university? Who do you think it is are going to the anti-globalization protests? Why do universities have stocked political clubs?
People in the 1960s were just a much a bunch of shitheads as anyone today. A few were interested in issues like discrimination and the latest illegal war. Some were smart and some were dumb. Most were primarily concerned with getting stoned or laid and listening to cool music. In other words, it was just like today.
Folks, if you’re OLD, you may want to consider the shocking possibility that you’re just like your parents were when you were a kid. Remember what they said about you then?
We’re cheating ourselves of the richness of life? Bull. Shit. Poverty only seems like a great idea when you don’t have it. My wife’s got two much younger sisters. The 19-year old is as smart as a whip and as literate as Jefferson and is a tremendously successful student at a good university. She’s been all over the place. She’s an experienced and skilled outdoorsman (outdoorswoman?) She’s been going away from home to work every summer since she was 15. She plays, with a high level of proficiency, the trumpet, the trombone, and the piano. Is she an exception? Folks, she wasn’t even top 25 in her class in a run-of-the-mill public high school.
Sister 2 is a star athlete, and like her elder sister is a fantastic outdoorsperson. Plays the trumpet, piano, and violin. Highly skilled artist. By the way, both are fantastically good kids. And they’re really not particularly unusual. I could tell you about many others.