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Kids Today

Sounds like a nifty watch!! Funny thing is though, that if you click on the time at the bottom of the computer screen, it pops up with an analogue clock, or I suppose a digital version of an analogue clock. So they must still be used by somebody. I feel naked if I haven't got a watch on. I couldn't do with having to fish in my handbag for my phone every time I wanted to know what time it was. That would drive me mad!
And I'm WELL over 45 which is probably why I still like watches!
 
I've experienced a bit of this in recent years, primarily in my previous work in schoolbook publishing. As an editor, I was told by publishers that "kids don't know what a 'barber' is [wtf?] so we can't use that word" or "kids don't want to see pictures of old stuff". It was maddening. I know that my young relatives are indeed interested in the past, and I certainly was when I was young (and still am). That said, I've actually had seemingly intelligent young adults say things to me like, "Why should I know about World War II. I wasn't born then" (as if *I* had been born then. Cheeeeesh!)

The Mrs asked me to come into her workplace to help out a couple of weeks back, I found myself working with a nice enough 20 or so year old when he came out with "****** says you used to be a groupie for The Beastie Boys!!" .. me : "Erm .. I was once a roadie for The Beastie Boys ... a groupie is someone who has sex with the band." him : "Oh!, OK .. well you've lived a life!." me "Hang on, I'm still living one!" ... the whole exchange was friendlier than I'm making it sound ... he spent the rest of the evening grilling me about raves I'd been to before he was born and stuff so I did feel obliged to give him the routine 'drugs are bad mmmkay' advice .. and I wear a white cheap CASIO watch.
 
Yeah, this inability to read analog clocks is pretty widespread among kids today. :)
Really? Are they no longer teaching it at school? All my older kids can read them and my 6 year old is learning at current.
 
They are still teaching old-fashioned clocks, but most of the clocks that kids encounter are digital.
 
The Mrs asked me to come into her workplace to help out a couple of weeks back, I found myself working with a nice enough 20 or so year old when he came out with "****** says you used to be a groupie for The Beastie Boys!!" .. me : "Erm .. I was once a roadie for The Beastie Boys ... a groupie is someone who has sex with the band." him : "Oh!, OK .. well you've lived a life!." me "Hang on, I'm still living one!" ... the whole exchange was friendlier than I'm making it sound ... he spent the rest of the evening grilling me about raves I'd been to before he was born and stuff so I did feel obliged to give him the routine 'drugs are bad mmmkay' advice .. and I wear a white cheap CASIO watch.
Well that's another thing isn't it? Music these days isn't what it was! (I'm sounding like a grumpy old git aren't I?). How many of today's musicians will still be rocking in their 70's like the Stones?????? Today's lot are legends in their own lunchtime!
 
Well that's another thing isn't it? Music these days isn't what it was! (I'm sounding like a grumpy old git aren't I?). How many of today's musicians will still be rocking in their 70's like the Stones?????? Today's lot are legends in their own lunchtime!
I hope Green Day and The Prodigy are still going into their 70's to name two bands with hopefully lasting talent huddsy, I struggle to name many more though ..
 
I taught all my kids to read the time on a 'hands' clock before they started school, because I hadn't mastered it at 11 when I went to secondary school. We must've been taught it but It hadn't 'stuck' with me. Possibly, I think, because I was horrifically shortsighted and couldn't see what was going on and partly because numbers are not my friends.
 
I taught all my kids to read the time on a 'hands' clock before they started school, because I hadn't mastered it at 11 when I went to secondary school. We must've been taught it but It hadn't 'stuck' with me. Possibly, I think, because I was horrifically shortsighted and couldn't see what was going on and partly because numbers are not my friends.
The last bar I worked in had one of those annoying 'comedy' anti clockwise clocks on the wall ... I can tell the time old school style and count but I'm also not a fan of numbers .. or salad now I think about it but I do both ..

 
I LOVE numbers - but not foreign languages!!!!!!!!!! Utterly hopeless at them. Not too keen on salad either!
 
I taught all my kids to read the time on a 'hands' clock before they started school, because I hadn't mastered it at 11 when I went to secondary school.

One day at primary school we had to make our own clocks from a paper plate. I wasn't listening when the teacher explained how to mark off the 12, 3, 6 and 9 at quarters around the clock face so I got a massive bollocking for having the 6 o'clock mark at around 4 and the 12 at around 9. Leaving a space of about 4 hours unmarked and unaccounted for.

She was a poor teacher, prone to fits of rage. Probably dead now. Time is an illusion anyway.
 
Oh heck! This sounds like we're heading in the direction of discussing the space-time continuum! Don't ask me about that. I get baffled listening to science these days and I did well in science at school. But that was a loooooooong time ago and its all moved on since then. In any case, you need a way to measure the illusion and the best way is with hands on a clock!
 
I was surprised when, on a reddit, I encountered someone who declared that a particular piece of 'old-fashioned' (from the 1960s) cursive script was unintelligible and asked for help deciphering the writing. This person, judging by the writing style, seemed intelligent and an adult, and I expected some bizarre cryptic penmanship style, or perhaps terrible writing like my own, maybe even something in code. When I checked out the writing in question, I saw beautiful standard handwriting that was very readable. I was kind of shocked.
 
One day at primary school we had to make our own clocks from a paper plate. I wasn't listening when the teacher explained how to mark off the 12, 3, 6 and 9 at quarters around the clock face so I got a massive bollocking for having the 6 o'clock mark at around 4 and the 12 at around 9. Leaving a space of about 4 hours unmarked and unaccounted for.

She was a poor teacher, prone to fits of rage. Probably dead now.
I know how it is, about the teachers. And reading a clock isn't all that easy, anyway. What finally got it through to me (about age 6) was my brother - being a film student at the time - put me to work making his time lapse films. He didn't want to do the boring work of standing there clicking the shutter every few seconds, so he had me do it instead. :rolleyes: But that's what finally made me understand the clock.

Time is an illusion anyway.

That's what I tell myself every birthday.
 
I'm not concerned about a decline in 'intelligence' among the youngest generations, mainly because I don't think there is one, and mainly because a good deal of what is thought to be intelligence by the general public is nothing of the sort.

What concerns me, and what I do believe we are seeing, is a decline in curiosity--more specifically a decline in the desire to look beyond the walls of one's own life.

And it can hardly be a surprise when the rest of society is going in the same direction.

Geography is the shocker for me--although history is pretty bad: a decline in interest about the particulars of the planet we live on? And the lives of every person who lived before now?

If you've seen thousands of clocks in thousands of locations and have written them off as an old fashioned idea you don't need to concern yourself with, then there's a problem.
 
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I was surprised when, on a reddit, I encountered someone who declared that a particular piece of 'old-fashioned' (from the 1960s) cursive script was unintelligible and asked for help deciphering the writing. This person, judging by the writing style, seemed intelligent and an adult, and I expected some bizarre cryptic penmanship style, or perhaps terrible writing like my own, maybe even something in code. When I checked out the writing in question, I saw beautiful standard handwriting that was very readable. I was kind of shocked.
Maybe its a bit like us having to read handwriting from 200 years ago. I enjoy doing family history and old wills can be fascinating but I struggle to read them. Eventually after practice you get an eye for it, and it all becomes much easier, but to begin with it seems impossible. Maybe this is what more recent handwriting looks like to today's youngsters!
 

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I transcribed a chunk of a handwritten 1944 war diary for an artillery regiment last year and it really was hard going, but with constant comparisons and context I got three months down to fewer that six unknown words.

But the point isn't that it's hard to make out, but the idea that you could not possibly expect to be able to figure it out: lack of curiosity.
 
Wonder where this lack of curiosity comes from? Is it a by product of an electronic age where there is an app to do everything - or is it lack of parental interest in teaching anything? I know this is a generalisation and I'm sure there are lots of youngsters out there who can read clocks and handwriting and a host of other tasks too - but for the ones who can't do these things and lack the curiosity to try, how has this situation emerged? Babies are born naturally curious so what stems that urge?
 
i dont think its lack of curiosity as much as expectation of immediacy ...we used to wait a week between episodes of the professionals, today everything is on demand (equals, we re going to ram it down your throat until it means nothing anyway) ... i only found out a week ago that if you pay for spotify you literally have access to all recorded music !

someone tell me ive been misinformed ...
 
I'm not concerned about a decline in 'intelligence' among the youngest generations, mainly because I don't think there is one, and mainly because a good deal of what is thought to be intelligence by the general public is nothing of the sort.

What concerns me, and what I do believe we are seeing, is a decline in curiosity--more specificically a decline in the desire to look beyond the walls of one's own life.

And it can hardly be a surprise when the rest of society is going in the same direction.

Geography is the shocker for me--although history is pretty bad: a decline in interest about the particulars of the planet we live on? And the lives of every person who lived before now?

I agree, curiosity matters, the pleasure of finding something out for it's own sake, rather than a point-in-time need, which is served (for many) by the google strapped to your psyche. A 'young' on my recent academic humanties foray said to me; "How do you know so much stuff?"

But there really could be a problem coming and here's why:

It is axiomatic that IQ is pretty heavily influenced by your parents' so a decline in IQ is unlikely. However, intelligence (i.e IQ) is generally considered to separated into fluid intelligence 'Gf', that is, the ability to solve new or novel problems without acquired knowledge and crystallised intelligence 'Gc', is the ability to solve problems based on already acquired knowledge.

As one ages, the former declines and the latter increases, so one's IQ remains fairly constant until some kind of age related cognitive decline sets in.

Gf starts to decline quite early in life as it happens. It can happen at 35, but you or no-one else might notice as you've learnt so much stuff. Most academic's best works come before they are 35, there's a reason for that.

If we have a generation of people who don't care to learn stuff at all, their compensation for declining Gf, the Gc us oldies had to learn, will not be there, so we're storing up a great wadge of people who will become steadily dumber as they age...which is going to be tricky for them at the very least. :bored: :willy:

This also undermines the notion that 'rote learning' is bad, because without stored knowledge we're all heading for stupid. :headbang:

For those of you (oldies) that knew this, you probably also know that exercise and 'using it' are the two best defences. It's also why I keep a notebook - not because I ever look at them per se - but I know that if I read/listen to something, take stock every now and then and write down what I just covered, three to four times more information stays in my head. I could be watching "Bromans" instead though...

(....and now you know why reality TV is bad for us) :cool2:
 
Reality TV: As Billy Connolly once said "People sitting in houses watching people sitting in houses"!!!!!
 
I'm guessing a lot of the posters here are oldies as the spelling is all correct, and the punctuation is all correct too. And NOBODY has so far confused "have" and "of". That winds me up when you see people writing "He must of"........
I want to scream at them "HAVE!!!!! IT'S HAVE!!! MUST HAVE NOT MUST OF"
Argggggggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:wtf:
 
John Steinbeck uses "must of" in Of Mice and Men, I think George says it, so by no means a new phenomenon.
 
We did some stuff as kids that with hindsight were a bit silly, but this latest craze is downright dangerous. Don't these kids have any idea how much pain and anguish they will put their families through?
 
We did some stuff as kids that with hindsight were a bit silly, but this latest craze is downright dangerous. Don't these kids have any idea how much pain and anguish they will put their families through?

Or.... parents could make a fake web page ‘Selling Your Children For Medical Experiments’ and leave that laptop accidently open.

Fire with fire.
 
They only have to vanish from their parents view for 48 hours. Vanishing from social media would be a step too far!!!!
 
That should be the punishment for running away like that - 48 hours locked in a room with no computer, phone, or electronic device of any kind. That would make them think twice about running off again! Better still - make it a week!!
 
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