By Danielle Galvin
STUDENTS at Nossal High School in Berwick put the adage ‘every generation lives better than the last’ to the test with a series of academic challenges last week.
The Year 9 students were given one week to prepare a presentation and essay about whether they were the lucky generation and why.
Topics for discussion included education, technology, society, economics and health.
Elle Nguyen and Emma Luong put together two canvasses comparing how medical advancements have changed each generation’s attitude to health.
“Hospitals were smaller and patients weren’t treated as well,” Elle said.
“Nowadays, we have a lot of medical advancements so people should be healthier.
“But we put in more McDonald’s on the canvas that represents today, considering how much junk food we are exposed to.”
Another group of students worked on showing the difference between relative wealth of each generation.
“Our generation grew up with the Global Financial Crisis,” Year 9 student Victoria Ear said.
“That’s why our side of the project shows part of the New York Stock Exchange in ruins. It’s up to us to rebuild it.”
The group’s unique styrofoam display shows buildings in New York on one side and the ruins of Wall Street on the other.
It’s hard to believe the gifted students had just one week to put together their presentations.
Another student who worked on the project said that the styrofoam characters in the display had “big heads to represent inflation”.
“We’re not the luckiest generation at all but we have the facilities to fix the problems,” Year 9 student Mariam Abdulle said.
Students from Pegasus House worked on the idea of education and resources by putting together a whiteboard and blackboard and listing the differences between each generation.
“On today’s side, we’ve put the smart board to show that teachers use electronic whiteboards today,” Year 9 student Anika Kaur said.
The projects will be judged this week by lecturers from Monash University.
“The students have been to lectures about the concept of generations and they’ve had to do their own research,” Director of Curriculum and Pedagogy Jennifer Callahan said.
“It’s been really good for their house spirit, although they are not convinced they are the luckiest generation.”
