On the present generation..

I have a dilemma on which I would like to open a discussion using this entry.

I come from a middle class background where education has been my ladder to achieve what i wanted to. The top priority for my parents was to provide for my good health and education. I went to the best school in Jaipur and managed a rank at JEE which gave me a phenomenal exposure to meet all sort of people at IIT.

I always thought that a lot of hunger to succeed inside me came from a fact that there were a lot of so called small things which I wanted to achieve for myself and for my parents. I always felt that someday a time would come when I would go back and give back to my family and community. When I go to IIT these days, I feel one difference as compared to my days there. Today, everyone there has a cell phone, money to pay for a computer in the living room and numerous other expensive things which I could not have afforded( In hindsight, I feel lucky for that). As such all this is great and in some way is a natural progression which reflects on what is available in the market and improvement in general standards of living. The negative incidental impact, which a lot of us do not realise, is that a kid has no clue of what he might achieve beyond what he has already. I wanted to buy expensive goggles once i started earning money. Today's kid has been derived of such things by the very nature of being.

In two ways, this is causing general harm. A lot of things which a child is getting in inheritance is reducing his fighting instincts for the outside world( which naturally hasn't and would never change). The comfort zone which the parents are building around him is just postponing the shock of imminent reality of the real world.
Second, the bar for what qualifies as achievement is going high everyday. When you couple it with the fact that the kid is anyways less equipped to fight harder, this bar is even higher.

I think that a lot of responsibility of this scenario lies with the modern day parents. At the same time, the solution which they can find is also not very simple. They want to share the comforts of their efforts to their most loved ones but how to weed out the bad effects they have on their wards?