Rafał Nowicki

Generation gap – a real problem or just a human figment?

 The beginning of the summertime I spent on the meeting of the participants  of Grundtvig project “Young and adults for a better life”  in  Cyprus. It was the third  mobility within the project and the first one I attended. Before this meeting I’d had some view  on the problem of generation gap but thanks to discussions I took part and presentation I was able to watch in Cyprus ,  I learned a lot and had the chance to  understand my colleague’s opinion.

Most people think that generation gap manifests itself through differences in mentality, outlook and the perception of self. I strongly believe that generation gap is nothing more than unnecessarily invented term of differences in personality. I agree with the statement by by Richard C. Adelman “The generation gap is an immensely misleading term. It implies that people from different generations are inherently different whereas people within a generation are inherently similar.” This quote is from the book Aging Awakenings: Assisted Living Residents Teach University Students to Overcome Ageism.

It is indisputable that young and adults sometimes have  different point of view. Having own opinion and disagreeing with the others is a vital feature of personality  of  human beings and it is not connected with the age and so called generation gap. There are  a lot of conflicts among  people of  the same age group, for instance conflicts among  children at  school, workers and politicians. . Generation gap is basically created by the people themselves. They don't talk to their children and share their own points of views with the children.

The point is that the parents are just so busy with their work and jobs that they don't have time for their family and their children. And they realize it when there has a huge distance between the kids and the parents. The point is if parents give their children some time from their busy schedule then there would be no such a problem.

Many people state that there is  parents – children conflict  because the childhood of parents was completely different than their children. Partly it is true,  technology has changed our lives. Today, we take the Internet and the ability to communicate instantly with anyone, anywhere for granted. It is the norm for us. For our parents and our grandparents, this was not the case. While today's youth have grown up surrounded by computers, their parents did not. As a result, the young generation is more comfortable with technology because it has grown along with them. They don’t have  to learn anything new. From the end of the XX Century technology is developing as fast as ever. Unfortunately, a lot of middle-aged or elderly people think that they are too old to learn new technology what is nonsense. It seems to me that a lot of people don’t believe in their abilities. It  is not connected with the age but rather with their personality. I know a lot of people of my age with very low self-esteem, they are afraid of defeat. I strongly believe that life experience, not only childhood builds personality.

Looking for conflicts is a part of  human nature and it had ever been. Quarrels and conflicts caused by  different views have always existed but as I mentioned before it concerns people from all age groups without exceptions.

Ability to listen to others, being open-minded , patient  and tolerant  are  important to cooperate with the others  without conflicts. I had never problems with anyone caused by so called “generation gap”. There are four important conditions that I  mentioned above to carry on a cultural conversation. What is more, as everyone knows , children are  like                    ” a clear piece of paper” and a lot of their behaviour are  inherited from their  parents. Contrary to most people believe, I think that conflicts in human society depend on personality and the baggage of experience, rather than generation gap. If everyone gets involved to improve his  social skills and believes in  himself, there will be no conflicts.