There is never really a "win" in a debate. I think that's a poor notion in society to have. There is no right or wrong answer to an open ended situation and I feel it's wrong to say someone won a debate.
I believe a debate in its essence is one of the best ways to obtain new perspectives and knowledge. What Heretic is saying could be true or not, and what Blizz could be saying could be true or not. It doesn't matter. Hell, it doesn't even matter what the article is saying. What matters is what you take out of it and every person will differ in this.
Even if a debate gets emotional as in the case of Heretic, I think that's fine. Emotions help emphasize points and establish connections because we as human beings can sympathize with emotions and can understand them.
My original point of a poor education system still stands, and that is my contribution to the debate. Reading over what Blizz and Heretic have been saying has just simply made me re-analyze my education point and refine it. It's not right, nor is it wrong, just a different way of thinking to expand the boundaries of human knowledge.
So to further add to the debate, I believe that education is a pretty powerful thing. But I believe the proper type of education is what is needed. In this day and age, I strongly feel like educating yourself in academia can only get you so far because I do agree with Heretic that the economy is facing a very very poor reality right now and our kids will be the ones who suffer the most. What I believe is that Gen Y had very poorly directed education from their parents. It was a push into academia; something that would have helped their parents, but not necessarily themselves. Right now our world revolves around social structures and hierarchies more so than ever before. In this era of digitalism, almost everything you do is made public. So my firm belief is that educating people into how to build a credible and presentable persona, and how to properly fit into the social structures and hierarchies is what needs to be done. People need to be taught respect, responsibility, accountability and ambition. People need to be taught the importance of putting on a suit. The importance of first impressions and a hand shake. The importance of putting off your own desires for someone else's as an investment (Having an influential person owing you a favour is always a plus). All these basic social skills are vital in today's age and to be perfectly honest: not a lot of people know how to use them.
If we're going to do personal stories, I'll throw one in. I love studying people. I adore understanding patterns in humans and why we do what we do. I'm currently majoring in Social Psychology.
My grades? Not that great, honestly. My relationship with my parents? Mediocre. My friends? Best I could ask for.
I was pretty much alone growing up. My parents tried educating me and pushing me to excel in school, but I just hated school. Shoot me, but I HATED going to it and forcibly learning concepts. I liked learning everything on my own and picking up everything for myself how I saw fit. I had a rough few years in terms of relationships, schooling, finances and just regular teen angst. Lots of people thought I'd amount to nothing because quite frankly I was a lazy piece of shit who had no fancy grades to show. I just sat and gamed all day. But, honestly, I believed in my skill set and I believed in my ability to do something with my life, despite all the negativity and all the harsh words other people told me. I took every lesson from my failures to heart, and even if I did repeat my mistakes, it did affect my personality. Hell, I'll even bring one close to home in CP. I was picked up my Blizzard to map for Lexima Legends THREE times. I did a few maps for him and then I let him down all three times simply because I couldn't find the time to do his requests anymore. You can guess how disappointed he was. I took that harshly, and now I've gotten a lot better at managing what I can and can't do.
So, all in all, I'm almost 20 and currently a Manager at a large retail chain in my country. I have no post secondary diploma or fancy grades to show, I simply had the correct social skills to climb the ladder and the ability to push through and meet a challenge.
In conclusion, that's why I feel having strong social abilities is key now. So I stand firm on the fact that today's generation Y is so miserable is due to the issue of not being educated properly about the world they're about to enter. This is most likely due to a gap between their parent's understanding of how they grew up and the world they faced to the world that their child will be facing.