A former academic used her experience transcribing the disciplinary records of university students in 18th century Scotland to rebut an article describing millennials as “a generation that I just can’t teach.”

In a viral Twitter thread on Saturday, Jenny Bann, who has a PhD from the University of Stirling and is now a civil servant with the Scottish government, responded to an article in the Times Higher Education by Vieno Vehko, a pseudonymous assistant professor at a Midwestern university.

The article, entitled “Millennials: the age of entitlement,” is a screed against what Vehko describes as a generation that does not read, cannot use a dictionary, is incapable of critical thinking and uninterested in learning.

She says that she has compassion for overwhelmed students who work a full-time job and take extra courses each semester so they can graduate early and incur as little student debt as possible. But then she berates them for their “obligatory” hours spent on Netflix and social media.

“American millennials do not view college as a place to learn; rather they see it as a place of ‘I’m certified and intelligent’ tattoo that entitles them to start their pursuit of the American Dream,” she writes. “They have lost respect for knowledge, rigour and hard intellectual work.”

Bann vehemently disagreed with Vehko’s assessment of millennial students.

She pointed to a range of offences for which students at Scottish universities were disciplined in the 18th century: sword duels, making “obscene toasts” while drunk, breaking furniture and failing to keep a promise to pay for its repair and fighting with a “dancing master” after being told not to dance with a girl at a dancing master’s class.

Vehko claims that her millennial students “do not view college as a place to learn.” Bann counters by noting that a group of 18th century students would have agreed with the millennials, having argued “at the university debating society that the university is a ‘dusty shop of logic and metaphysic’ and students would be better off just going to the theatre.”

Bann counters by noting that a group of 18th century students shared a similar view, arguing “at the university

Students were also expelled for more serious offences, Bann notes, ranging from trapping a servant girl in a dormitory and scaring her, drunkenly arguing with a lecturer and beating an innocent passerby with a tavern fireplace poker.

While it may be “annoying when your undergrads don’t do the readings and plagiarize their essays from SparkNotes,” Bann tweeted, she was struggling to understand how they could be part of “the Worst Generation Ever.”