Comment by like_any_other
21 days ago
For all we know Socrates was correct, and the attitudes did change during his lifetime. History is turbulent, and there is not a straight line from his time to the present. There's plenty of examples of people, children included, behaving differently through a change in time and place. E.g. the difference between a Victorian boarding school and a typical US high school, or the difference before and after the Cultural Revolution in China. Or the difference in behavior between meth addicts and non-addicts.
If meth became widely used, and someone noted the effect this had on how children are behaving, would we also just quote Socrates at them as 'proof' that nothing has changed, because people have been complaining since forever?
Even if we pretend the quote is real (it was invented in the 1900s), then as you suggest, Socrates might have had a point: Athens was pretty much done for as a meaningful political or even cultural entity within a couple generations of Socrates.
Socrates two most prominent students took power with help of the enemy state, dismantled democracy and installed fairly cruel tyrantship. Socrates himself was against democracy, altrought did not participated nor directly supported the tyranny.
For all we know, his quote refers to these political conflicts where he preferred hierarchy and young preferred democracy.