Generations

I first read Generations around 1994 and found it to be an interesting explanation of how different generations of Americans react differently to similar events. The book concluded with predictions of what would happen in American in the near future.In 2002, I realized that things were happening very close to the predictions. So I read the book again to gain a better understanding of Howe's and Strauss' theory and realized that they had been even closer in their predictions than I had remembered.Some of the examples written in 1991 are"... by the year 2000, midlife women will surge into boardrooms, media anchor booths, university presidencies, and Congress-and will begin making plausible runs for the White House.""... the Boom may split along geographical lines-for example, with urban, bicoastal New Agers squaring off against heartland evangelicals."" no mistake: faced with crisis, this generation [Boomer] of onetime draft resisters will not hesitate, as elder warrior-priests, to conscript young soldiers to fight and die for righteous purpose... As Boomers begin endorsing global crusades, the 13ers [Gen X] will turn toward isolationism."Not 100%, but clearly better than other books I'd read in the past. I had this deja vu feeling I was experiencing Asimov's "psychohistory" that is the main theme of his Foundation series.The first hypothesis of the book is that each generation (cohort) is different than the one before and after it and reacts differently at the same age to an event than some one born in a different cohort. In other words, if you're born in 1920s , you'll be different at age 50 than you will if you're born in 1950s.The second hypothesis is that there is a four phase generational cycle of these cohorts that predicts each cohort's behavior, especially how society treats its members of different ages at different points in time.In addition, they traced these generation cycle from 1584 to the present and showed that the cycles repeated like clockwork, except for the shock of the civil war which caused the cycle to jump.They make the point that not everyone in a cohort is identical. The cohort defines themes that predict the overall reaction to events by each generation.They cycle occurs in this order: Idealist, reactive, civic, and adaptive.Civic Cohort: An example is the GI generation (born 1902-1924) that was raised in the depression where massive government programs were put in place to help them. As young adults, they fought and won WWII. After the war many of them went to school on the GI bill. They have a strong belief that government works.Adaptive Cohort: Following the Civics is the adaptive cohort which are referred to as the "Silents" (Born 1925 to 1945). They generally shared the GI's values. The "silents" work within the system. They are generally trustful of the leadership of previous generations.Idealist Cohort: This is my group, the "baby boomer" generation (born 1946 to 1960). In our youth there were unlimited economic opportunity, so we turned to spiritual matters, questioning and rebelling against the values of the GI and Silent generation.Reactive Cohort: This is "Gen X" (Born 1961 to 1981). They are viewed as expressing a cynical, world-weary attitude as young adults. Their life experience with government is exactly the opposite of the GI generation; at every stage of the Gen Xers life, government's resources have been directed to benefit someone else.The book is a useful way to think about history and is entertaining.

As an educator in the public schools I am always interested in how students learn. I'm especially interested in why a student reacts to an event the way they do. Sometimes positive, sometimes not, reactions are key to successful knowledge transfer. We have all had the experience of teachers that we related well to and those we did not. Trying to expand my understanding of our youth, I started thinking about "generations". We hear a lot about this in the news with generation "Z". Being a "boomer" myself has always labeled me in a way that helped define why I react the way I do to events. Caution must be applied here not to rely too much on this information as people are individuals and as such have unique views and experiences about the world that form their personalities. However, as a group, identifying a specific generation's traits does provide a window into how a person may react in situations. It also provides how those from other generations may view younger generations. This is key to the educator. I need to understand my students in order to provide them a valuable education. To expand on that, I am a Career and Technical educator. This is important in that I need to provide career direction to those students. They must enter the working world and will need to understand other generations to be successful.It is from this position that I was interested in the Generations book however I really was only interested in the most recent generations. However, I started the book and read it cover to cover and recommend others do the same as there is so much valuable information on how the "pieces" of this "puzzle" fit together. We have always heard the premise that "history repeats itself". The book shows this in detail. The major portion of the text gives a description of each generation as identified in the United States by the authors. I found the descriptions engaging. Have you ever heard the opinion that this "young" generation is lazy, dumber than the one before, or more troublesome? As it turns out, this situation is repeated throughout our history. What is important to generations is that these cycles will modify the views and ideals as new generations emerge.My goal was to learn about the differences and similarities between generations to better mold my educational transfer to students of another generation than I am in. The book was excellent in this respect. But there was more! Predicting the future! I did not hold much hope that this was a solid predictor of the future. If it was, then why would this information not be a required in all historic educational situations? So reading this section I had a lot of reservation. However, after digesting the whole book, this prediction process was not as impossible as it may seem. Clearly the book does not predict specific events but does identify general directions that could result. What I found interesting is that I'm reading this book in 2012. It was released in 1990. 22 years have passed since that release. The text identified events that may happen and more importantly, how that generation will react to those events. It was a little unnerving how close some of the predictions were in light of the 22 year span. It's a great book and exceeded my hopes.