Are we raising a generation of nincompoops?
Are we raising a generation of nincompoops?
By Beth J. Harpaz
Associated Press Writer / September 27, 2010
Second-graders who can't tie shoes or zip jackets. Four-year-olds in Pull-Ups diapers. Five-year-olds in strollers. Teens and preteens befuddled by can openers and ice-cube trays. College kids who've never done laundry, taken a bus alone or addressed an envelope.
Are we raising a generation of nincompoops? And do we have only ourselves to blame? Or are some of these things simply the result of kids growing up with push-button technology in an era when mechanical devices are gradually being replaced by electronics?
Susan Maushart, a mother of three, says her teenage daughter "literally does not know how to use a can opener. Most cans come with pull-tops these days. I see her reaching for a can that requires a can opener, and her shoulders slump and she goes for something else."
Teenagers are so accustomed to either throwing their clothes on the floor or hanging them on hooks that Maushart says her "kids actually struggle with the mechanics of a clothes hanger."
Many kids never learn to do ordinary household tasks. They have no chores. Take-out and drive-through meals have replaced home cooking. And busy families who can afford it often outsource house-cleaning and lawn care.
"It's so all laid out for them," said Maushart, author of the forthcoming book "The Winter of Our Disconnect," about her efforts to wean her family from its dependence on technology. "Having so much comfort and ease is what has led to this situation -- the Velcro sneakers, the Pull-Ups generation. You can pee in your pants and we'll take care of it for you!"
The issue hit home for me when a visiting 12-year-old took an ice-cube tray out of my freezer, then stared at it helplessly. Raised in a world where refrigerators have push-button ice-makers, he'd never had to get cubes out of a tray -- in the same way that kids growing up with pull-tab cans don't understand can openers.
But his passivity was what bothered me most. Come on, kid! If your life depended on it, couldn't you wrestle that ice-cube tray to the ground? It's not that complicated!
Mark Bauerlein, author of the best-selling book "The Dumbest Generation," which contends that cyberculture is turning young people into know-nothings, says "the absence of technology" confuses kids faced with simple mechanical tasks.
But Bauerlein says there's a second factor: "a loss of independence and a loss of initiative." He says that growing up with cell phones and Google means kids don't have to figure things out or solve problems any more. They can look up what they need online or call mom or dad for step-by-step instructions
By Beth J. Harpaz
Associated Press Writer / September 27, 2010
Second-graders who can't tie shoes or zip jackets. Four-year-olds in Pull-Ups diapers. Five-year-olds in strollers. Teens and preteens befuddled by can openers and ice-cube trays. College kids who've never done laundry, taken a bus alone or addressed an envelope.
Are we raising a generation of nincompoops? And do we have only ourselves to blame? Or are some of these things simply the result of kids growing up with push-button technology in an era when mechanical devices are gradually being replaced by electronics?
Susan Maushart, a mother of three, says her teenage daughter "literally does not know how to use a can opener. Most cans come with pull-tops these days. I see her reaching for a can that requires a can opener, and her shoulders slump and she goes for something else."
Teenagers are so accustomed to either throwing their clothes on the floor or hanging them on hooks that Maushart says her "kids actually struggle with the mechanics of a clothes hanger."
Many kids never learn to do ordinary household tasks. They have no chores. Take-out and drive-through meals have replaced home cooking. And busy families who can afford it often outsource house-cleaning and lawn care.
"It's so all laid out for them," said Maushart, author of the forthcoming book "The Winter of Our Disconnect," about her efforts to wean her family from its dependence on technology. "Having so much comfort and ease is what has led to this situation -- the Velcro sneakers, the Pull-Ups generation. You can pee in your pants and we'll take care of it for you!"
The issue hit home for me when a visiting 12-year-old took an ice-cube tray out of my freezer, then stared at it helplessly. Raised in a world where refrigerators have push-button ice-makers, he'd never had to get cubes out of a tray -- in the same way that kids growing up with pull-tab cans don't understand can openers.
But his passivity was what bothered me most. Come on, kid! If your life depended on it, couldn't you wrestle that ice-cube tray to the ground? It's not that complicated!
Mark Bauerlein, author of the best-selling book "The Dumbest Generation," which contends that cyberculture is turning young people into know-nothings, says "the absence of technology" confuses kids faced with simple mechanical tasks.
But Bauerlein says there's a second factor: "a loss of independence and a loss of initiative." He says that growing up with cell phones and Google means kids don't have to figure things out or solve problems any more. They can look up what they need online or call mom or dad for step-by-step instructions
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Marklar on
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Susan Maushart, a mother of three, says her teenage daughter "literally does not know how to use a can opener. Most cans come with pull-tops these days. I see her reaching for a can that requires a can opener, and her shoulders slump and she goes for something else."
Teenagers are so accustomed to either throwing their clothes on the floor or hanging them on hooks that Maushart says her "kids actually struggle with the mechanics of a clothes hanger."
I'm betting that if Susan Maushert spent as much time teaching her daughter as she does complaining to AP staff reporters her daughter would pick things up quick enough. If you want to blame the kids for being idiots I guess you can blame yourself for being an idiot who doesn't know how to button a pair of spats or use a sextant as well.
If your kid is an idiot you have nobody else to blame but yourself. Next time, instead of working overtime to buy your kids the $250 basketball shoes the've been whining for, stay home and teach them to tie the Kmart sneakers you bought them instead. Who knows, by spending more time with them you might even have the chance for them to teach you how to program your DVD player.
It's not the kids that are stupid, it's not technology that is letting them down, it's all you.
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Permalink Reply by james on
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oh i agree but this article is referring to the goverment is dumming down the children at a young age
Marklar said:Susan Maushart, a mother of three, says her teenage daughter "literally does not know how to use a can opener. Most cans come with pull-tops these days. I see her reaching for a can that requires a can opener, and her shoulders slump and she goes for something else."
Teenagers are so accustomed to either throwing their clothes on the floor or hanging them on hooks that Maushart says her "kids actually struggle with the mechanics of a clothes hanger."
I'm betting that if Susan Maushert spent as much time teaching her daughter as she does complaining to AP staff reporters her daughter would pick things up quick enough. If you want to blame the kids for being idiots I guess you can blame yourself for being an idiot who doesn't know how to button a pair of spats or use a sextant as well.
If your kid is an idiot you have nobody else to blame but yourself. Next time, instead of working overtime to buy your kids the $250 basketball shoes the've been whining for, stay home and teach them to tie the Kmart sneakers you bought them instead. Who knows, by spending more time with them you might even have the chance for them to teach you how to program your DVD player.
It's not the kids that are stupid, it's not technology that is letting them down, it's all you.
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Permalink Reply by docsavage96 on
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Charlotte Iserbyt - Deliberate Dumbing Down of America (& the World)
an introduction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDyDtYy2I0M&feature=player_embedded
Charlotte Iserbyt: The Subterfuge of America, an interview in 3 parts:
1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vJK85PgOuE&feature=player_embedded
2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bvqkpSCt-k&feature=player_embedded
3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoqRLVWe-bw&feature=player_embedded
her book, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America," is available, free, in PDF form, at her website... http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
she was a national policy advisor on education, and, i believe deputy director of dept of education--that is all spelled out at the website above, and other places, s well...her book is recommended reading and research...
peace...
doc
btw, this is just one of the Big Secrets of the NWO --> http://ning.it/8ZJdN8
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I don't see where the article mentions the government at all, just technology and the kids. If it means to blame the government it does a pretty poor job of making that case.
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Permalink Reply by Lawrence Edward Calcutt on
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At Greg
RE :
By Beth J. Harpaz
Associated Press Writer / September 27, 2010
Second-graders who can't tie shoes or zip jackets. Four-year-olds in Pull-Ups diapers. Five-year-olds in strollers. Teens and preteens befuddled by can openers and ice-cube trays. College kids who've never done laundry, taken a bus alone or addressed an envelope.
Are we raising a generation of nincompoops? And do we have only ourselves to blame? Or are some of these things simply the result of kids growing up with push-button technology in an era when mechanical devices are gradually being replaced by electronics?
Its very funny, when I read this piece by Beth J. Harpaz I said to my self, I read this before, but I had not. I heard it, on CFMJ 640AM radio three days ago in the afternoon as part of her callin talk show. What bothesr me is she pretended it was her prose and never once indicated that she read it from some other source. The same thing happens often and the 99ers who listen to these NWO lovers don't really see what they are up to.
enough..
Larry
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Permalink Reply by XhackedbyNSA on
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I think that the point is, in fact, that questions like these are being raised on the MSM ('AP', in this case).
If you wish to go further, then accept the fact that 'technology' as we see it today, is usually funded by the 'government', as far as 'breakthrough stuff' goes, in order to give the MILITARY an 'advantage' over its' supposed 'adversaries'.
DARPA is a major concern in developing, for example, the INTERNET.
The original application was called 'INTELSAT', and it was funded by the CIA, and developed for the most part by Hughes Aircraft, Northrop (before Grumman Aviation bought them), and N.A.S.A., in the early 1970's (while the computer geeks like Bill Gates were still working on learning how to make a computer play 'Chess' in their parents' garages in Redondo Beach).
My Dad helped my brother build a simple binary computer from some toggle switches, a 'Heathkit', and a cardboard shoe box (wrapped in aluminum foil), which won him the first place prize at the school science fair, back in '72. Guess which entity my Dad worked for, and you get the 'prize' for the most uninformed comment so far on this subject...
YOU are MISSING the POINT, here.
OF COURSE the MSM cannot make the links between the 'techno' and the 'government', because there would be a dead fish, or a horse's head, on the doorstep of this reporter, the next morning...
I hope that you take this response as it is meant (NOT 'critically')!
There are so many things involved, and you seem to be just now scratching the surface, and I hope that I do not deter you from the INTERTWINING aspects of the Military-Industrial-Financial Complex that we have come to know as the 'Cartels' that RUN this WORLD (including the 'good old USA').
I KNOW some stuff, and what I state is factual, and FIRST-HAND.
I WISH that I didn't KNOW what I do, sometimes, as this is not a pleasant thing, but if I can be allowed to make comments, this will be a chance for me to make this stuff known to as many as possible...
Marklar said:I don't see where the article mentions the government at all, just technology and the kids. If it means to blame the government it does a pretty poor job of making that case.
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yep uh huh
XhackedbyNSA said:I think that the point is, in fact, that questions like these are being raised on the MSM ('AP', in this case).
If you wish to go further, then accept the fact that 'technology' as we see it today, is usually funded by the 'government', as far as 'breakthrough stuff' goes, in order to give the MILITARY an 'advantage' over its' supposed 'adversaries'.
DARPA is a major concern in developing, for example, the INTERNET.
The original application was called 'INTELSAT', and it was funded by the CIA, and developed for the most part by Hughes Aircraft, Northrop (before Grumman Aviation bought them), and N.A.S.A., in the early 1970's (while the computer geeks like Bill Gates were still working on learning how to make a computer play 'Chess' in their parents' garages in Redondo Beach).
My Dad helped my brother build a simple binary computer from some toggle switches, a 'Heathkit', and a cardboard shoe box (wrapped in aluminum foil), which won him the first place prize at the school science fair, back in '72. Guess which entity my Dad worked for, and you get the 'prize' for the most uninformed comment so far on this subject...
YOU are MISSING the POINT, here.
OF COURSE the MSM cannot make the links between the 'techno' and the 'government', because there would be a dead fish, or a horse's head, on the doorstep of this reporter, the next morning...
I hope that you take this response as it is meant (NOT 'critically')!
There are so many things involved, and you seem to be just now scratching the surface, and I hope that I do not deter you from the INTERTWINING aspects of the Military-Industrial-Financial Complex that we have come to know as the 'Cartels' that RUN this WORLD (including the 'good old USA').
I KNOW some stuff, and what I state is factual, and FIRST-HAND.
I WISH that I didn't KNOW what I do, sometimes, as this is not a pleasant thing, but if I can be allowed to make comments, this will be a chance for me to make this stuff known to as many as possible...
Marklar said:I don't see where the article mentions the government at all, just technology and the kids. If it means to blame the government it does a pretty poor job of making that case.
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Permalink Reply by george on
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Dont laugh at this -I know of a 38 year old that cant work. WHY becaus ehe thinks welfare is better and he doesnt have to work. He figures that it costs x to drive and if you take it off of what they give you he is ahead. These so called LAZY kids or Nincapoops as yu would call them are smart. They can get anyone to do their bidding they will. I say STOP and let them figure it out on their own. Dont do a thing for them- Some will get thin - gee there is a NEW concept and some will have to walk wow there is another. Some might have to work to eat - well there goes all the jobs at BURGER BOY ---Free food. Some will stink until they figure out its time to shower but then there will be the one who says lets go to the beach and that will only last a second cause no-one has wheels. YUP a BUNCH OF NINCAPOOPS. ----LAZY is a better word-- Get used to it--I have no sympathy for those who use people. I do help those who need it - like the elderly and crippled - diseased- and the like- YUP old fashioned is what they call it- WORK ETHIC is another and yes IT IS THE PARENTS FAULT----NoApologies accepted-Ed
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