I'm a career high school teacher, 67, semi-retired as of this year but I still teach a philosophy course for the school's high achieving students. Based on that, and based on my own younger years (including as a high-achieving student at the same high school), I think that Maugham speaks truth here--most kids are very conflicted, striving in brutal competition to live up to the ideals they have been fed ("You MUST work hard so you can go to a top university or else you are screwed and none of your dreams will come true!"). They are immersed in that competition, as well as in the unavoidable teen struggle for identity, with mating pressures, and of course with family problems and the need to differentiate while part of a culture in which young people still need support from parents. I can look back on it and think, "Ah, wouldn't it be great to be young again!" But the truth is that, most of the time, I was miserable when younger, while most of the time I'm happy now.
It was a different time for Maugham I suppose. Books fulfilled a different role than they do now. The greatest lie I was told and it is still being told, is the myth of progress - that all this … this capitalism, democracy, technology etc. is moving us toward a better future. Quite the opposite I’m afraid.
You can only see the past from today. So you are writing about today. eg the treatment of aborigines in Australia today, we discuss the past with today's eyes.
I'm a career high school teacher, 67, semi-retired as of this year but I still teach a philosophy course for the school's high achieving students. Based on that, and based on my own younger years (including as a high-achieving student at the same high school), I think that Maugham speaks truth here--most kids are very conflicted, striving in brutal competition to live up to the ideals they have been fed ("You MUST work hard so you can go to a top university or else you are screwed and none of your dreams will come true!"). They are immersed in that competition, as well as in the unavoidable teen struggle for identity, with mating pressures, and of course with family problems and the need to differentiate while part of a culture in which young people still need support from parents. I can look back on it and think, "Ah, wouldn't it be great to be young again!" But the truth is that, most of the time, I was miserable when younger, while most of the time I'm happy now.
It was a different time for Maugham I suppose. Books fulfilled a different role than they do now. The greatest lie I was told and it is still being told, is the myth of progress - that all this … this capitalism, democracy, technology etc. is moving us toward a better future. Quite the opposite I’m afraid.
I don't know about anyone else, but the fairy tales and then the books I read as a young adult, were anything but rosy.
If there was a dark side to anything# I always picked it up.
You can only see the past from today. So you are writing about today. eg the treatment of aborigines in Australia today, we discuss the past with today's eyes.