Funny, we were having this discussion at Happy Hour one night. One of my friends said...be prepared it will get worse. Just as proper English is no longer used, the English language will start to transform into something different with the use of the computer generation. I have a friend who teaches "keyboarding" (used to be typing class) and said she has the worst time getting kids to spell
y.o.u instead of u.
My husband works for the post office. He said he constantly gets teenagers in who have NEVER addressed an envelope. They don't know where to put the address, the return address or even the stamp in the right place.
I opened joint checking accounts with both of my sons when they started college,
then they enrolled in online banking. My youngest just asked me how he would go about physically depositing money in his account as he has never filled out a deposit slip or made a deposit in person. Oh brother!
As technology advances (and it will) this generation will not get UP to do anything that requires anything other than typing, clicking and sending.
Both my sons have cell phones and they seldom use it to CALL anybody, but they can text a dissertation while watching television.
Some of this is because their frame of reference to the world WE know is so different from ours.
My nephew came to my house and I offered him a soda and told him to grab some ice out of the freezer (we still use ice cube trays). When he asked where the ice was, I pulled out a tray and he asked " What is that?". I then realized that since he was a baby his parents had a frig with an ice dispenser in the door. He had never seen an ice cube tray.
When I was the manager of a Bagel Shop we employed A LOT of high school kids.
One of the young girls was doing dishes in the sink and said " I hate cream cheese, you can never get it off the pan!" I stuck my hand in the water and it was cold. When I told her that hot water cuts grease and the water needed to be hot to dissolve the cream cheese she said " Wow, I never knew that, we have always had a dishwasher."
So, there were alot of things I assumed kids would know, simply because I knew them. It never occurred to me that their exposure to the world was very different than mine and perhaps I needed to teach in a different way.
I agree about the education in our country Inferno, however I think the attitude toward education needs to change and I don't know you do that in a free society because our young adults (not all) don't value education the way other countries value their education. I would guess if it was something that was harder to come by, as in most under developed nations it would have more value in the eyes of those who want it. Throwing money at a situation never fixes the underlying social issues that create the problem.
In other countries education is an honor or expected for the overall wealth and success of your nation. In this country, we don't have to do anything we don't want to do, period. The honor of our nation is not "one thought" like in other countries with one vision, but with many different thoughts, many different visions.
It is an interesting topic......a problem Im sure we can all solve over a few cocktails on a Friday night... I will buy the first round! haha
