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Written by Sherry
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Monday, 04 February 2008 08:44 |
And on a related note:
This editorial in today's New York Times about how German teenagers view the collapse of Communism. They don't.
“Communism? What’s that?” said Ricardo Westendorf, 17, a student at the Carl-von-Linné school in what was East Berlin. “I think we talked about it in a history lesson, but I was ill.”
Three other students, born in 1989 and 1990, emitted withering sighs, the kind reserved by kids for parents who can’t get computers to work. Their teacher, Heike Krupa, 45, who lived communism and its East German police enforcer, the Stasi, was taken aback: “I’m a bit surprised they seem to know nothing about it.”
Felix Blanke, 17, another student, said he spent up to 20 hours each weekend on his laptop, holding group conversations via TeamSpeak or using MySpace. These kids’ friends are scattered from the Philippines to Seattle.
“For our parents, it’s all East or West, but for us it’s Germany and the world,” said Pia Von Cossart, 17. “They don’t realize their stories about the old times are boring.”
Hopefully, they will learn, as they grow older, about those who sacrificed so much so that they might grow up ignorant of communism - but there will never have the existential resonance that it has for their parents. The computer age has changed their sense of time and space.
Another symptom of this reality: the last 100 visitors to Intentional Disciples included visitors from 20 countries beside the US.
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Intentional Disciples Blog 
