which generation is this again?

The administration brought a guy to speak to the faculty about how to use active learning to reach this generation of students. He called them “generation NeXt,” which I think sounds like a computer store that’s going to go out of business pretty soon. Anyway, he didn’t get to the “how” as much as we would all have liked, but he spent a fair amount of time on the generational thing, which was moderately interesting, even though he himself was rather annoying.
Anyway, he started with the Depression-era generation, which he characterized as motivated by thrift, loyalty, and a tendency to value the group over the individual. Then, he described those famous Baby Boomers, and we all know what they’re like. Then he skipped over the dip in the birthrate during the late ’60’s and the 1970’s, and moved on to these kids, whom he described as having been protected all their lives from everything, and thus believing themselves to be invincible. So, my colleague raised her hand and asked about that group there in the middle that he skipped, and he joked that he was going along with the rest of society by ignoring them. He described “Generation X” as the kids whose parents got them up and out of the house in the morning because both parents were working, the kids who came home and did their homework on their own and maybe even turned on the crockpot so dinner would be ready when the folks came home from work. These are the kids who grew up with widespread divorce. He said that they made great students, because they had a “Just tell me what to do and I will do it” attitude. Apparently, they don’t seek promotion at work, and, as the boomers retire, they may well end up working for whippersnappers. He didn’t come out and call us slackers, but that’s what he was thinking. The fact is, we aren’t really slackers; we just have other things to do besides work, and we want to be with our families more than our parents were. That’s my vague generalization, anyway. The fact is, we have more in common with those depression-era folks than we do with the Boomers or these new kids. We don’t expect external gratification, and I don’t think we are particularly optimistic. I think that one could make some relevant comparisons between the 70’s and the 30’s; we also grew up with some degree of economic scarcity, rationing, and the threat of war. (How we ended up with Reagan instead of FDR….)
Anyway, this was on my mind tonight as I hemmed up my son’s uniform pants for school. He wears out the knees of his long pants, so I cut and hemmed them to make shorts. I worked on the kitchen curtains, too. Later in the week, I’ll cut and sew some jumpers for Miss Baby to wear to school; with a coupon, the fabric for the jumpers is cheaper than storebought. Now, my jumpers aren’t as fancy, but she’s going to wear out and grow out of these within the year, and possibly before Christmas, anyway. She wears hand-me-downs, and their school sweaters are mostly handknits.
Not sure how this is going to help me teach my students, unless I bring in a needle and thread and teach them how to sew buttons on their shirts.