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enthusiast
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Our deputy head carried out an experiment today to try to prove her thoery that the average 15/16 year old doesn't read the papers, don't know about current affairs and are generally quite ignorant about literature. I'd always disputed this as I felt that most of my friends at least will have a fairly good dusting of general knowledge.
I was suprised, therefore to find that most didn't know most of the names of the leaders of France, Germany, China, Russia and Afganistan, didn't know who the IRA are, and responses to what I thought are well known pieces of literature such as Paradise Lost and Beowolf were met with either blank stares or a confused 'Huh? Beowhat?' and if I tried to explain one of the answers I was treated as some kinda freak!
Has anyone else had similar experiences when talking with people around my age(around 15/16)?
Maybe I'm just hopelessly out of touch and what I think should be common knowledge isn't?
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Joined: Mar 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I hate to say this, charming pup, but yeah. It is just you. But don't worry, you've just inherited a busload of aunties and nuncles, and we'll protect you.  Survey after survey show how ignorant kids are today. I have nieces and nephews around your age and they might know what the IRA is. But I'll shut up now and leave this to them what knows (Wordwind? JazzO?).
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Yeah, but have you ever tried to keep up with a group of teens singing fast-moving lyrics to pop songs? Their brains are filled with all kinds of lyrics that sound like machine-gun-fired syllables to me. And they know every episode of "Friends" backwards and forewards and inside out. They laugh at me for what I don't know. They're interested in boy-meets-girl kinds of things. They're interested in watching adults fall all over themselves. I'm not speaking about the intellectuals, but just the average kids. I teach summer school English classes to kids who failed during the year, and they really do look at me as an out-of-touch maternal figure. They try to fill me in as I take them through "A Doll's House" and "Oedipus Rex" and "The Wife of Bath's Tale"...all the while trying my best to beef up ample energy to get them interested in the story lines and human dimensions.
I ran into a past student from about twenty-five years ago--one who had complained that farmers didn't need to know squat about Shakespeare. I'd forced Shakespeare down their throats. Made 'em build a stage in the classroom. We had a curtain, too. And a fountain. We did everything to bring about a real production of "Romeo and Juliet." 20th century farcical interpretation. Many complaints. Lots of laughs. They even had to memorize all the lines. And the artistic kids hand painted purple programs with crossed swords dropping drops of vermillion blood on the front cover.
Anyway, this past student told me that after my class, he'd never read Shakespeare again and had never gone to a play. But he was smiling all the while remembering his one intense encounter with William S. in my class. He said, "I like how you sprung it on us at the last minute that the boys would have to wear tights!" I'd forgotten that. Certainly I lived and learned and didn't try that little trick again. Hey, I was a green teacher. But the cool thing was we had this very long conversation this summer about that experience from over twenty years ago, and he remembered a lot about the play.
What I'm getting at here is average kids--kids who aren't highly competitive about getting into top colleges--need a lot of prodding and enthusiasm and energy to wake up to the fact that there's a world that's actually connected--and directly connected--to the story lines they devote themselves to on television and in movies, and directly connected to the lyrics they consume in their kind of music. It's all connected. Everytime one of those kids makes the mental effort to learn some factual context about the adult world into which they'll soon be entering, it's a victory--even a name and context as poignantly sad and bleak as Malvo's.
You take 'em where you find 'em, and you learn from them and they learn from you. If nothing else--and there's a great deal more--your energy level will go up because their own is contagious.
I don't worry so much about the 15/16-year-olds. I worry more about the 55/56-year-olds who've dropped out.
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Joined: Jan 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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The kids today are every bit as bright as the kids of fifty or more years ago. They have a hell
of a lot more to learn than I did at their age. I had things in highschool my father had had in
college. My kids had in high school things I had in college. It must be still worse today.
Regrettably too much of their energy goes into being "street wise" instead of scholars.
I still remember the guys in the Army who were dismayed to find they could not be
candidates for Officer Training School because they had wasted highschool.
When they got out of the Army,thousands of them went back to school, and into college.
One of my former instructors in 1956 commented on how much harder the ex-GIs worked
than the students of my era. He leered at me: "If you were applying now, we wouldn't
accept you." Part of it also was the fact that with girls in the class, a lot of males
tried harder not to seem stupid.
The values judgments of today's kids appal me, but I know that they will grow up when
they have to.
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Joined: Dec 2000
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old hand
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> Is it just me?
I'd agree with AnnaS. You can't expect those younger than you to learn all the same things that you learnt - or do we really want to be treading water. There is, as Bill points out, so much more information at our finger tips now, and turning that into knowledge is pretty daunting. I don't think everyone needs to have read Shakespeare to find his or her way. I'd even say (cynical as I am) that many people who *have read canonized literature gain little more from it than the ability to sound in-the-know when Milton comes up in conversation, rather than actually finding any depth in it - see WordWind's former student's comment.
There's little point in studying thousands of books fleetingly in my eyes - they will often yield less than the prolonged study one book. Studying very little material can bring much wisdom. Alternatively studying too much makes idiot savants. If one supports the teaching of the Canon one should remember who made it, who is included, and more importantly who isn't.
Isn't it Beowulf, btw?
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I had a similar problem when I was your age (which was merely 12 years ago ). I remember when a Geography teacher told as that she would be asking questions about current political situation in the world so we'd better watch 9 o’clock news. In the end I was the only one who had been doing this anyway and on a break before the geography lesson I told my classmates what’s happening. I remember girls in my class being mad about a boyband and had a vague idea who the boys were and when I heard their music I decided not to be interested. I actually red “War and peace” and “Crime and punishment” instead of skipping through a “Russian Literature guide (8th form)”. I was treated as a freak or nerd, which I think I was. It’s a timeless problem of choice between being like a crowd and fitting in and being a white crow. If you choose former you fell OK for a while but than you realise that you are stack in an dead-end job till your retirement. If you choose the latter you are a doctor, you are a lawyer, you are a director of the film they all pay to see. I always knew that it would happen as it had. My “know-nothing-about-Shakespeare” classmates came back to my native town and are paid 100S a month. I have a degree, I am a scientist,I’ve been to Paris and London, I speak English – I am really happy that I didn’t waste my time in high school. As belligerentyouth said I don't think everyone needs to have read Shakespeare to find his or her way. but reading define what way will be yours. To know soap operas backwards and forwards and inside out ( Wordwind) is something as valuable as gossiping about one’s neighbours – kills the time and it’s a topic of conversation. But a true value of it is 0 I am “Friends” fun . you can chew a gum but you can not run a mile if you didn’t eat something more nutritious. P.S. I find that women in general are less intellectual *because they are more interested in soaps and gossips than in news and politics. [w] will I be bitten for this statement?
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I find that women in general are less intellectual *because they are more interested in soaps and gossips than in news and politics.I think this is a bit of a sweeping generalization. There are plenty of non-intellectual men, too, but they are interested in blowing things up, drinking beer, and watching sports, rather than soaps and gossip (if you want to continue with the sweeping generalizations!). It only takes one counter-example to disprove a theorem, right ? Here you are: (1) My brother won the prize at his high school graduation for being the biggest gossip in a class of 300. (2) His favourite TV show in high school was Days of Our Lives (a soap opera) (3) He got an Honours degree in Economics and is now doing his Master's. (4) If you ever talk to him you'd realize he's a very intellectual type (he's not just doing his Masters because of delusions of grandeur) So I don't think gossip and intellectualism are mutually exclusive, nor is gossip just the domain of women.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Vika,
I fully agree with Bean that your statement is a sweeping one. And her point about men, sports and beer is so true. Most of the men in my community have anything but purely intellectual interests. They talk sports, farming and hunting. And even the farming, which could easily become intellectualized, isn't.
I've only lived out on the family farm for a few years of my life, but the time I've spent there has been getting to know the land and the wild plants that inhabit it. Most I can figure out with the help of books.
However, this summer I came across a beautiful weed, couldn't track it down in either books or online, so I went to the men at the feed and grain store where they advise farmers about how to get rid of certain weeds. The "expert" in the group made two suggestions, both of them incorrect. What I learned is that they had only a passing interest in names of weeds, but a practical grasp of which poisons would kill them effectively.
However, these men and their sons have keen interest in sports and hunting, and that's fine with me. But I have yet to have a single conversation with any man there that bordered on what is purely intellectual other than those conversations with ministers. A couple of ministers I've known have an interest in reading and ideas. One of them, in fact, is an intellectual. But those two ministers are the exception to the rule.
I am not criticizing these farmers' lives at all. But I again have to agree with Bean that you just cannot put men generally into a different realm of being more intellectual.
There is a place in which both men and women dwell and talk about history, science, literature and art with interest in facts and refinement of ideas. If there happen to be more men in that realm, then the only reason I can see for that being so is more men have been educated and have gone on after formal education to refine their education.
I teach hundreds of young children each year. And I've been doing so for over twenty-five years. I don't do surveys, but I can tell you some of the girls exhibit great alertness to ideas, even on an elementary level. I would never place one sex above the other.
So, take your pick: soap operas or sports and exclude nearly everything else. You're gonna have fun and you're gonna find a lot of kindred spirits. That's fine. That's just the way people are.
But you'll also find many men and women who enjoy intellectual exchange if you look in the right places--and sometimes there is that wonder of finding them in places you least expected to find them.
Your command of English, by the way, is impressive. You write here on AWAD much better than you did when you first appeared.
Best regards,
WW
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Carpal Tunnel
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What I'm getting at here is average kids--kids who aren't highly competitive about getting into top colleges--need a lot of prodding and enthusiasm and energy to wake up to the fact that there's a world that's actually connected--and directly connected--to the story lines they devote themselves to on television and in movies, and directly connected to the lyrics they consume in their kind of music. It's all connected.
WW, how I love you! Bless you, and all teachers. I have to say that my kids kind of stand out, too, bonzai. My daughter is a senior in high school, and has a long history of can't-get-any-higher academic achievement. She is having a very lucky high school experience: she's in the Advanced Program, and ever since she was a freshman, her teachers have raved about what a great group of kids this AP class is. Her counselor sent out a letter saying they are quite likely to be "the best class ever to have come out of" her school. On conference day last week, her Spanish teacher told me they encourage each other, challenge each other, and help each other. She does know the names of world figures, and thanks to her course in D.C. last summer has developed a real interest in U.S. government.
My son is one year behind her. He chose a different high school, because of its "magnet program"--kind of like an early college major. He does not do as well academically, but his intelligence and different interests make him stand out. He started reading a Shakespeare play in 4th grade (about age 10); he didn't finish it, but that's typical of a child with ADD. He voluntarily read Beowulf as a freshman. (Both of these are thanks to the influence of his father.) This is the first year he has seemed to begin to take school somewhat seriously, and he is beginning to earn the respect of his classmates for what he knows. Yet still, I hear from his teachers that often he is the only one in the class to "get" something humorous. (He gets that from me, I think!) He has been invited to be a Presidential Scholar, and will study U.S. law enforcement (his chosen "major") in D.C. next June.
So, bonzai, perhaps you too will find yourself "fitting in" better as you get older, as my son has; or, more than likely, it will be that your classmates finally catch up to you.
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Bean, I agree with you that men have their own hobbies to waste their time on but still your brother's example does not invalidate my idea - it takes one counter-example to disprove a theorem but in biology one needs to have statistics and one man is just one vote  For example, I know two women - Nobel prise winners in physics (incidentally, mother and daughter) but in general Nobel prise winners in physics are men. Wordwind, all activities that you've mentioned can be quite intellectual : - sport trains ones memory. I know men that remember the score of all soccer games of the last season and all winners of last 20 years. - farming well, you know better. I find that hard labour degrades both men and women. - hunting trains ones attention and concentration ------ There is a place in which both men and women dwell and talk about history, science, literature and art with interest in facts and refinement of ideas I know the name of the place! Valinor! If there happen to be more men in that realm, then the only reason I can see for that being so is more men have been educated and have gone on after formal education to refine their education . I don't know about States but this is not true for former Soviet Union. for example, we had roughly equal number of boys and girls in my class. Only one boy’s got a degree and approximately 10 girls. The ratio varies but roughly it is 1:1. some of the girls exhibit great alertness to ideas, even on an elementary level.before the puberty. after that we become more interested in clothes and boys than in ideas and facts.
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