Students are “less mature” victims

I have having breakfast with a group of friends and there was this girl I haven’t really
seen before whining about the 40 she got on her major-course final examination. While the
other girls tried to comfort her and make her get over the issue, she was still blaming and
accusing the instructor. But when I finally asked her about the reasons behind her grade, she
answered: “I was devastated. I wasn’t able to read or think, and the instructor didn’t even care. I
wrote him on the examination booklet that my boyfriend had broken up with me the night
before”.
This is one example of many that reflect the recklessness and immaturity contaminating the
students nowadays. In her article “Students are different now”, Linda Bips stresses on the fact
that students have drastically changed and provides logical reasons explaining this
phenomenon.
The author successfully gives a reflection of the reality we’re living in our society, but forgets to
mention that in some cases, the students are victims themselves.

In her article, Linda Bips states the fact that students are nowadays “less mature” and
provides several explanations afterwards. She finally gives a set of suggestions in order to
attenuate this problem. The relevance of the article is accentuated by the fact that
contemporary teenagers are far more “relaxed” and less rigid than the ones before.

Having a 25-year experience reflects the author’s professionalism and makes her even
more trustworthy and reliable. She is arguing out of experience and not chaotically. This
strengthens the accuracy of the information she is providing. Nobody can actually deny the fact
that students are nowadays more fragile than ever and their “coping strategies” are rarely
present.
Bips includes several strong words and expressions – backing-up her position – that are at the
same time far from being emotionally-loaded: “less mature”, “not ready”, “unable to function
and persevere”, “students lack resilience”.
The text is well-organized and coherent. The writer starts with an introduction and clearly states
her viewpoint from the beginning: “… students now are less mature and often not ready for the
responsibility of being in college”. Her text can additionally be divided into two major parts: the
problem roots (in which Bips analyses the causes of this phenomenon) and the suggestions part
(in which she provides solutions to it). In the first part, Bips clearly states her arguments in a
persuasive tone and backs them up with examples. For instance, in her argument dealing with
“lack of resilience”, she gives examples of difficulties that students often consider as dramatic:
“failing grade on a test, a cut from the team or a romantic breakup”. In her second argument in
which she shows how parents’ contribution is weakening their children’s coping strategies, the
author gives less significant examples to illustrate her point. She indirectly mentions that
“writing admissions essays” and “picking college courses” are kinds of “life’s obstacles”. The
coherence and organization also appear in the second part of the article, since the writer first
gives suggestions to “faculty and staff” and then to “parents, teachers and coaches”.
Linda Bips uses another efficient way to back-up her position which is sarcasm: “We, as society,
don’t want out children to “suffer””.

I strongly agree with the writer since I find that today’s generation is really “spoiled” and
lacks both responsibility and resilience. It is funny how parents start getting concerned about
their children’s “psychological state” at the age of 5 or 6, as if youngsters at that age are aware
of what “depression” means.
It is accurate that “the current economic and political realities” might play a role in all of that,
but our ancestors have also faced these difficulties and are far stronger and more resilient. What
could be worse than living during a civil war as brutal as the Lebanese one? Our parents have
been through it and it gave them strength and resilience rather than spoilness and recklessness.
It is understandable that parents do not want their children to live what they’ve been through,
but this can be done without nurturing the sense of irresponsibility in their character.
The writer forgets to mention that there are some realities in the 21st century that were not
present before. The increase of the divorce rate, the increase of violence and other social
problems have caused children to suffer from insecurities. In all cases, the coping strategies
have to be nurtured in order to face life’s obstacles.

In a nutshell, the author points out at the fact that students have a declining ability to
face life’s obstacles, but takes college as a specific example.
Bips presents her ideas in an organized and coherent way, even though she disregards some
major phenomena affecting students’ coping strategies.