Are you ever SHOCKED by how butt-ignorant *SOME* young people are?

[XemaSab]

Last edited Mon Aug 27, 2012, 01:27 AM - Edit history (1)

A few weeks ago I was at the Safeway. I always get help out to the car with the groceries because it gives someone a job and it's one less opportunity to screw up my back.

This girl was helping me out to the car and we were chatting. She asked what I had been up to over the weekend and I said that I had spent most of the weekend listening to Christian sermons.

SHE SAID, "WHAT'S A SERMON?"



Then today I was getting coffee on my way out of town and I went into a local coffee shop and I was chatting with the barista and she said "What are you up to today?"

I said, "Well, I'm going to Ashland to see a play about Lyndon Johnson."

SHE SAID, "WHO'S THAT?"




Both of these girls were white Americans who had graduated from high school.

What the hell did they do every day for 13 years? It sure wasn't learning anything.

[Posteritatis]

1. I know Apollo landing deniers twice my age. Plenty of stupid to distribute across the spectrum. (nt)

[WinkyDink]

97. NOT quite the same thing as complete ignorance of a PRESIDENT.

[a geek named Bob]

2. Why would a sermon be mentioned in a public school?

It's not applicable to anything.

[Posteritatis]

5. ... I'd kind of expect an HS graduate to be aware of things that aren't just on the curriculum. (nt)

[a geek named Bob]

7. What? with the No Child Left beind rules in place...

[Chorophyll]

13. Well, it's a fairly common word in the English language

that you might run into if you've read a book or a newspaper. Or a social studies textbook on American history, which would include a few public figures who were also ministers (like MLK.) A whole chapter of "Wuthering Heights" is about a sermon that the narrator was forced to listen to during a nightmare.

[XemaSab]

20. "The Scarlet Letter" would be another place

It's been a while since I read that book but I would be surprised if it wasn't in there.

[Lint Head]

15. Sermon would be a word learned in English class.

[a geek named Bob]

75. I've taught for 23 years

and I've NEVER seen the word "sermon" on any word list.

[Lint Head]

99. My had several excellent English teachers. The use of the dictionary and thesaurus was primary.

Comprehension was stressed and learning as many words of the English language to increase ones knowledge was also stressed. I don't think they necessarily used a 'list'. Seems like a strict list would limit ones knowledge.

[a geek named Bob]

124. On that, I would agree...

My usual rule is that (in the intro and developmental classes) they have to also come up with an extra 20 words...

[WinkyDink]

100. OFGS. I taught English. We, you know, read STORIES and BOOKS, not just "lists."

Broaden your teaching.

[a geek named Bob]

126. Okay...

When did I say we didn't read books?

I have my students read books, and quite often.

The word "sermon" doesn't seem to in any of the books.

Perhaps the books you read are closely concentrated/focused on a different field.

[eShirl]

299. no Moby Dick, then?

[a geek named Bob]

338. I asked my incoming students about that, about three years back

No white whale. (something about "perceived cruelty to animals, and negative stereotypes.)

[Honeycombe8]

302. Thank you. That was what I and others were thinking. It's a general word used commonly...

in short stories, novels, textbooks, and other materials students read in school or are assigned to read.

[enlightenment]

122. Are you really trying to defend this?

It is a common word in the English language. It is in many books, fiction and non-fiction. It is used every day, in both religious contexts and secular ones. That you have "NEVER" seen it on a word list is irrelevant, as any moderately well-educated adult - even a young adult - should be familiar with the term.

[a geek named Bob]

131. oh boy

WHY should a student be looked down on for not knowing a religious term?

That's kind of the whole point of separation between church and state.

If someone goes on about Sermons, I automatically know they aren't part of my culture.

The word simply isn't used often, at least in the parts of the world I travel in.

[enlightenment]

198. Where was the 'looking down'?

This has nothing to do with looking down on a student and absolutely nothing to do with separation of church and state. This is about learning vocabulary and the apparent failure of some recent high school graduates to do so. A rich and varied vocabulary is an important part of knowledge and if you are - as you claim - an educator, I am astonished that you do not grasp that simple fact.

Your 'culture' has nothing to do with knowing the meaning of a word. You obviously know the meaning of the word 'sermon' and it clearly doesn't impact your 'culture' at all. What a ridiculous argument.

[annabanana]

204. Because it is often used in other than literal contexts? . . .n/t

[Marrah_G]

211. I don't think it is very common at all

I hardly ever hear it and I can't even think of one time it was ever used in my house.

[enlightenment]

239. Did you have to look it up?

Or did you know what it meant when you read it? I suspect the latter - and that you could readily suggest secondary usages of the word, as well.

Whether or not you often hear it or if it has ever been used in your household, it is a common, everyday sort of word.
Not a specialist word (like galactophagous)
Not an unusual word (like mendaciloquent)
Not an obsolete word (like circumbilivagination)

Really.

[Marrah_G]

244. Well considering I was raised a catholic household, I did not have to look it up

However, my boys, neither of which are stupid, may well not know what it means because they were not raised in a household that would ever need to use the word. I'll have to ask them when they get home.

I think alot of this comes from what part of the country people live in and how they were raised and live. In my corner of the world it's not a common word.

[enlightenment]

246. If you insist, I'll take your word for it.

I think it is very sad that vocabulary is declining so very much.

[Marrah_G]

247. Vocabulary is ever changing

We have some words that are fading out in certain places and then new words that had no meaning at all a decade ago. Language is about communication. With the huge amount of christians in the country, I am sure the words sermon won't die out very soon, it just get used the most in places where it means something.

Also vocabulary, especially culturally specific vocabulary is not directly related to a persons level of intelligence. My son speaks physics, speaks computer, networking and communication while looking at me like he somehow expects me to understand it in the same way he does.

[OriginalGeek]

250. Without intending to look down at or argue with anyone here

I must say my daughter knows what a sermon is and she has never been to church service other than her grandmother's funeral. She wasn't able to finish high-school because of physical and learning disabilities but I guarantee she knows what a sermon is just from reading and watching TV. I find it hard to imagine a high school graduate wouldn't know what a sermon is but, since we are all speaking anecdotally here, I haven't met every high school graduate so I won't speak for them all.

[enlightenment]

254. I don't recall saying anything about intelligence.

I was discussing the richness of the language and bemoaning (to a degree) the loss of some of that variety. You're right; it changes all the time - but that doesn't mean that we need to voluntarily reduce it simply because we can't be bothered to develop our vocabulary.

I grew up reading the dictionary, for fun. Words fascinate me; their usage and their etymology. I think it is sad when people say they have no reason to learn and use vocabulary outside of what they already know. It doesn't make them less intelligent, but it does make me wonder where their curiosity has gone.

As far as the word 'sermon' goes - it can be used in ways that have nothing to do with religion, as you well know. The word simply means "speech", after all. Shakespeare used it in a secular sense in Taming of the Shrew, so that usage is hardly new.

IV.i.169
In her chamber,
Making a sermon of continency to her,
And rails, and swears, and rates, that she, poor soul,
Knows not which way to stand, to look, to speak,
And sits as one new-risen from a dream.

[Marrah_G]

365. LOL- I love to read but hated shakespeare with a passion

And I do understand what you are saying and I can understand with your love of language that you are sad to see a generation who may not put as much value in something you love.

My comment about intelligence was aimed not directly at you but at what seemed to be people's impression that one had to do with the other.

I learn new things about my kids every day. I asked today if my son knew the meaning of the word and he indeed did know.

[enlightenment]

370. The problem with Shakespeare is that

we've taken him from what he was - a writer of and for the people - and turned him into some high-falutin' personage for the upper classes. We study him to death when what we should be doing is embracing his funny, bawdy, brilliant insights into the human condition.

Give him another shot, Marrah - he's worth it!

Delighted - but not surprised - that your son's vocabulary includes sermon. Your use of language (even in this odd little forum of ours) is very good and kids learn more than language from their parents; they learn how to learn. Even if you never use the word, you have taught your kids to learn everywhere and that's the most important thing.

[Marrah_G]

372. Awww thanks!

As for Shakespeare... I don't mind it and even enjoy some of it on the stage, I just can't get into the writing style

[treestar]

269. But most people if they have read something - Hawthorne, Mark Twain

will run across that word

[Honeycombe8]

306. Do you read books & watch movies, too?

Sermon is a common, general word in the English language. Virtually everyone knows it. You read or hear the word in the context of history (our founding fathers use the word in reference to certain things), it's in famous books (Huckleberry Finn, Moby Dick). There are also, as I vaguely recall, some famous preachers in our history and in English literature, who have written some famous writings. These are studied for context of the times, as well as just because they are famous writings.

You could barely have learned anything about the Puritans without hearing the word sermon, since they were all about that fire and brimstone sermon thing.

Anyone who has seen the movie The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston, or any of the other myriad classic movies about religious topics, heard the word "sermon."

Anyone who learned about the Salem witch trials heard or read the word "sermon."

Anyone who has reached the age of adulthood and doesn't know a word that is so integral to various subjects taught in school, I'd say has not rec'd an education, as well as has not been introduced to the general world around him/her.

[Marrah_G]

366. We actually live in Salem, MA

And I asked him today and he did know what it meant. I wasn't surprised that he knew it, nor would I I have been surprised if he didn't.

He is a very science, physics, space oriented type of young man who has never believed in God or had much to do with religion except for going to mass with his grandparents a few times as a child. He was raised in a Wiccan home where religious terminology is very different.

When I said I have not used or heard the word in a very long time I meant it. Outside of some history books and movies, it's just not a word I come into contact with. I was just stating my opinion from my view of the world. I was not insulting anyone and I am baffled at the responses from some posters.

[Honeycombe8]

368. Some of the responses are in a tone of astonishment, because it's like saying you haven't heard

of the word "lecture." It means the same thing. It's such a common word. And for adults (not you, in particular) to not care whether their children know common English words is shocking to me and some others, I guess. One of those people is a teacher who didn't care whether his students knew the word, and he made no effort to ensure they learned vocabulary other than words on some list given to him.

I would very much care if my child didn't have a good, basic vocabulary. For one thing, communication is absolutely essential in every vocation and profession. If you can't communicate well, you can't do a job well. Whether you're a plumber, a scientist, a paralegal, whatever. (Of course a plumber wouldn't be expected to communicate at the same level as a scientist.)

The Reverend Wright debacle years ago, remember that? You may not have noticed, but if you watched any political programming on that, you heard the word "sermon."

I don't think the posts are hostile. Mine, at least, are posts of astonishment.

[Nay]

127. A WORD list? Pardon me, but all the vocab kids need to learn are on word lists? I beg to differ.

Kids learn words by reading, discussion in class, and looking stuff up in the dictionary when needed. At least, that's how I learned words. Yeah, you'll have to 'encourage' some kids to do the work, but for heaven's sake, not every word a kid knows comes off a word list.

The word "sermon" is used in many non-religious contexts as well, and I'm completely flummoxed that you have not run into it in your teaching. It is in "Little House on the Prairie" books, all sorts of history books that discuss the Puritans, etc. There's no excuse.

[a geek named Bob]

136. Dude...

When was the last time that the "little house" series was often read?

You're dating yourself. Badly.

My students, and read quite a lot.

I'm happy they don't use the woord in school, as it means the separation of church and state is still standing.

[Romulox]

146. That's not what "Separation of Church and State" means. Add Constitutional Scholar to the things

you ain't.

[eShirl]

303. You sound like a great teacher.

Dude.

[Honeycombe8]

310. "That word" as you call it, is integral to learning about history and English lit.

Our founding fathers used it.

It's used in famous books commonly assigned for reading (Huckleberry Finn, Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, others).

It's all over the place in classic, famous movies, like The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston. That's not school, of course,but still, you'd have to be very uncurious or trying not to see at least one of those myriad classic movies.

You can't learn about the Puritans w/o learning about sermons of fire and brimstone.

Not to mention that it's a word that can have a different meaning, depending on context, so should be learned for the sake of communication skills. "Gee, Dad, don't give me ANOTHER sermon on that!" "Instead of presenting a short on-point speech at the meeting, she ended up giving a drawn out sermon, causing the audience members to start yawning an hour into it."

Dictionary.com:

ser·mon
   [sur-muhn] Show IPA

noun
1.
a discourse for the purpose of religious instruction or exhortation, especially one based on a text of Scripture and delivered by a member of the clergy as part of a religious service.

2.
any serious speech, discourse, or exhortation, especially on a moral issue.

3.
a long, tedious speech.

[a geek named Bob]

339. Honeycombe8,

In 8 years of being back in CT (reality-land), after escaping rural maryland (what I refer to as dumbfuckistan)...

I haven't heard the word used. Not once.

People talk about the cultural divide. I'm beginning to think part of it is based on programming, or something.

[Honeycombe8]

369. Not hearing a word often is no reason for kids not to know what it means. Reverend Wright...

if you saw the political programming on that, you heard the word "sermon." That was 4 years ago.

"Sermon" means lecture.

YOU aren't reading Huckleberry Finn or studying history or reading famous writers (some of whom in our history were pastors), because you did all that years ago. That's what your students are in your class to learn. YOU don't have to learn it. You already know it.

Whatever a kid does for a living, communication will be essential to be successful at it. Plumber, scientist, teacher, writer, paralegal, lawyer, doctor, salesman, computer programmer. Words. That's how we communicate. NOTHING is more important than that. EVERYTHING relates back to it. If a kid knows only words on a list, he is at a disadvantage in the world.

Even if the words are religious, they're worth knowing. It's called KNOWLEDGE.

[spayneuter]

164. I've used a word list for sixty years. It's called a dictionary.

[Honeycombe8]

301. Word list? What word list? We're talking general reading, English lit & grammar.

General words are used in general reading of normal literature...short stories, novels, textbooks....all those contain common English words, like "sermon." No lists needed.

[seabeyond]

311. spelling and vocabulary, i imagine. what kids do thru out their school years. weekly word lists.

that is how i interpreted this.

[Honeycombe8]

317. I think I had lists I had to learn in elementary school. They were for spelling tests, I think. nt

[seabeyond]

318. well... son in AP courses in high school and i still hear he does vocabulary. awesome words

but he does sheets that i can recall. dont know how regularly.

[Marrah_G]

207. I don't ever remember seeing the word anywhere but in relation to church

I'm not sure my children would know what it means since they were not raised with any interaction with Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.

[FrodosPet]

281. Why not?

For better or worse (usually worse), religion is a major part of the human experience.

Maybe I am just a knowledge glutton, but I cannot imagine not wanting the ability to understand what motivates people.

Is it REALLY better to keep kids ignorant about other people? Isn't that a HUGE problem already?

[seabeyond]

285. that is how i see it. i prefer to know everything i can, so i better understand for a number of

reasons.

it really feels like this little subthread is a different world. promoting ignorance. cheering it. i dont get that.

[Marrah_G]

363. I asked my son and his girlfriend today

They both knew what it meant. She knew from being raised in a catholic household and he knew from watching the history channel and from going to church with his grandparents a few times when he was young.

I've never kept my children ignorant, in fact I think they are pretty well informed, we just never had reason to discuss the details of other people's religious ceremonial practices. I would venture to guess most folks out there know little about what goes on in my own. Both my children view religion as each person's choice and they choose to be athiests despite being raised in a Wiccan home.

[XemaSab]

367. A big part of my original point is that not only are the schools failing

but there are a lot of incurious people out there.

I've been to a Wiccan full moon ceremony and I know what a handfasting is and I know what some of the main seasonal celebrations are (Beltane, Imbolc, Samhain, and Lammas, if I'm not mistaken.)

I've also been to a seder, and a mass, and the local whacked-out Pentecostal cult, and the Reformed church, and the Anglican Easter service at sunrise, and I blundered into a cathedral in Mexico on Ash Wednesday, and the contemporary service at the Methodist church, and the Lutheran church, and the United Church of Christ, and I went to an Episcopal school growing up, and I went into a Mayan church in Chiapas, and there's probably some stuff that I am forgetting about.

All this despite the fact that I consider myself an unreconstructed pagan/agnostic. (I don't know what's out there, but I know it's not the Christian sky-daddy.)

To me, being informed about what other people believe is an important part of being a citizen.

When some fundie says, "Asking people to pick between two evils forces people to determine just how far they are willing to live with the implications of the reality that they would rather vote for a pro-abortion, statist,pro-sodomite, Christ-mocking, anti-trinitarian statist who is a pachyderm, then [sic] a pro-sodomite, pro-abortion, Christ-mocking, statist, professed Evangelical who is a donkey," then that opens a window for me into someone else's thinking. It might be an ugly view, but it's still interesting.

[Honeycombe8]

312. Do your kids not go to the movies? Ever read books?

The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston comes on TV every year. Classic movie.
Elmer Gantry. Excellent, classic movie with Burt Lancaster.
Many other movies.

Literature:
Huckleberry Finn
Moby Dick
The Scarlet Letter

History - the Puritans; the founding fathers.

Grammar/communication skills: "Geez, Dad, you're not gonna give me a SERMON on that, are ya?"
ser·mon
   [sur-muhn] Show IPA

noun
1.
a discourse for the purpose of religious instruction or exhortation, especially one based on a text of Scripture and delivered by a member of the clergy as part of a religious service.

2.
any serious speech, discourse, or exhortation, especially on a moral issue.

3.
a long, tedious speech.


You might as well ask, "Where would my kids learn the word "lecture" from?" It's such a common word, how do they NOT hear or read it somewhere?

[Marrah_G]

364. I asked them today

They did indeed know the meaning of the word.

I wasn't sure they would and frankly it wouldn't have been a big deal to be if they had not. I think the commonality of the word might be regional. It's not something I remember hearing in conversation in a very long time. My oldest son was not a fan of the classics...he was always more of a science, scifi type of reader. He said he read the scarlet letter, parts of moby dick and parts of huck finn in HS. He loves math, physics, science etc and was never a student who liked literature.

[kestrel91316]

23. FAIL. Religion has played a major role in world and American history.

[customerserviceguy]

62. It's just that we don't talk about it anymore

The lack of knowledge of religion makes younger people susceptible to being dragged in by one, when someone finally teaches "their" version of it for the first time.

[TeamPooka]

46. it's called vocabulary. They used to teach it.

[a geek named Bob]

71. In the schools where I've taught

They teach vocabulary.

THey even explain concepts like "propaganda," and "encroaching doctrine"

[Honeycombe8]

313. I'm beginning to understand the complaints about public education.

You can't possibly create a list of words for people to learn. They should be getting general knowledge, which infers learning and reading too many words to list.

Then their parents should expose them to the world at large. They can't help but learn a lot of words just from movies, signs, prime time TV. (You drive down the street, see a church, sign out front says "Sunday's sermon: Jesus forgives.&quot Maybe you don't agree with the sign. Not the point. You are exposed to the words.

You don't have to be religious to know what the phrase "walk on water" means. It's used in various contexts to mean different things. "He thinks he's so hot, you'd think he walks on water."

[a geek named Bob]

337. that's another one

I haven't heard in a while...

Seems to be a bit of a cultural divide.

Maybe up here in CT, we have better things to do than endlessly talk about religion.

[lunatica]

53. That's an amazing statement

What do you think is "applicable" to what is taught in public schools? And why wouldn't the mention of sermons be applicable?

Wouldn't the word come up at some point like in a book or something? Or even the use of the word in a sarcastic way, such as, "Why do you have to give me a sermon about not doing my homework?"

[a geek named Bob]

70. Okay...

I'm finishing my 2nd master's degree, in New England. I've yet to hear the word sermon mentioned by anybody.

[lunatica]

72. Oh please!

I happen to work at UC Berkeley and have interaction with students all day long. I know you're making this shit up.

[a geek named Bob]

74. Really?

You might want to give your attempts at mind reading a rest. You're not good at it.

1.) at least here in the civilized and jaded East, kids get weekly vocab lists, and have to develop sentences that demonstrate context.
2.) I'm sorry to hear that your university experience didn't offer you education.
3.) I've taught for 23 years.

[lunatica]

96. As a teacher then you know it's your and your colleagues fault then

Snobbery is nothing more than an attempt to browbeat. If you can't teach the basics then you're in the wrong profession.

[a geek named Bob]

120. Bring it...

Teaching religiuos terms have few if any practical use.

Were I to be snobbish, I'd say something like:

"Of course, I don't expect you to understand... Given your limiting viewpoint."

"Sermon" is not in "the basics." Nor is it useful for most advanced areas.

I swear, Religion is THE most useless function around. Makes people fly into buildings...

[seabeyond]

121. sermon can be used in other manners, that is not about religion per se.

1. A religious discourse delivered as part of a church service.
2. An often lengthy and tedious speech of reproof or exhortation.

i have used it when not discussing religion, but had the feel of a sermon.

[madmom]

141. Really...

I am surprised that a "teacher" wouldn't know this..

[pscot]

194. Bob! Back up a bit.

I just consulted my 13 year-old grandaughter, who correctly defined sermon as religious preaching. This is a child who has never been inside a church. I asked her where she learned the word. There is, apparently a TV cartoon show called Coyote Ragtime. One of the characters is a preacher given to sermonizing. So the word hasn't completely died out of the vernacular.

[a geek named Bob]

195. Fair point.

and now I have a cartoon show to look up.

I need some mental floss, after writing that %^$# 70 page paper.

[WinkyDink]

98. Uh....IT'S A COMMON WORD, maybe?! Jeez.

[a geek named Bob]

123. Up here in Connecticut...

I've never heard the word uttered. Not once in 8 years, up here.

Now, down in dumbfuckistan, the word was mentioned a LOT. (so sorry... "God's country" AKA rural Maryland.&quot

If somebody started talking about "sermons" in public, it serves as a marker that said person isn't to be trusted.

[Romulox]

128. You are calling other people names--because of YOUR students ignorance? Stunning logic. nt

[a geek named Bob]

134. I lived in rural maryland for a while

The culture is about as dumb as can be, without failing the apgar test.3% incidence of Walleye.

Somehow, not using the word "sermon" makes my students ignorant?

Nice job promoting religious recruitment...

[Romulox]

137. Oh dear. Now you don't know the definition of "ignorance"? It means not knowing something.

Somehow, not using the word "sermon" makes my students ignorant?

No. Not knowing a word makes one ignorant of the meaning of that word. That's specifically what "ignorance" means.

[a geek named Bob]

138. okay...

it's obvious you're trolling.

You got me on this one.

I'm STILL glad my students don't consider "sermon" to be a common use word. It means religion is a lot less important.

[Romulox]

143. LOL. Keep being proud of your ignorance! nt

[a geek named Bob]

147. Right

We should all learn about the words and culture of a superfluous religion...

Yup... that's a good investment of state money.

[Romulox]

150. Again, that's what "ignorance" means. Maybe put that on a word list for your kids?

[RobinA]

186. It's Not Superfluous

if a huge majority of the population subscribes. Your students need the basic vocabulary to understand a person from rural Maryland, they might be there some day, or read a book about it, or meet someone who has actually gone to church in his or her life.

Part of the OP's point is that kids don't know ANYTHING that is outside their immediate experience, and more scary, don't care to. Not that this hasn't always been a problem, but it is getting worse.

[a geek named Bob]

189. sigh

1.) I would hope that my students never have to live in rural Maryland. The place is a cesspit
2.) OP's point seems to be he's worried about ignorance of a past culture.

[Marrah_G]

248. Language is all about communication

And that is something I think none of us are doing very well in this thread. It's like two people standing face to face talking right past each other.

I get what you are saying. It seems completely normal and logical to me.

Some others don't get what you are saying, and I think maybe we don't get what they are trying to say either.

Language, Vocabulary, Communication....sometimes it can be tricky.

[a geek named Bob]

251. In linguistics

There is a split in the term "meaning

Semantics: what a word means
Pragmatics: what it means to a particular listener

Example:

Mercenary...
from Semantics, it is a person who works for no other reason than to get paid
from Pragmatics, it is a person who takes great pleasure in killing people, for money (this definition is from one of my students... From Africa.)

[iemitsu]

202. we should all learn about religion whether we subscribe to one or not.

Last edited Mon Aug 27, 2012, 02:34 PM - Edit history (1)

religion is far to pervasive (a cultural universal) an aspect of human communities not to talk about. we all need to seek to understand the dynamics of what motivates others.
you can be sure that karl rove has studied religion and uses what he knows to manipulate those who don't give much thought to their own actions.
i have taught in a public high school for 20+ years and have had students in my classes who loved to read and those who would do anything to avoid it.
i won't say one can't be "smart" without reading but i swear that those who do have a huge advantage over those who don't.
the ideas of mankind are contained the pages of books. we need to access these ideas to figure out what it means to be human. many books deal with religion. our ideas are connected to what we believe and how we understand the world around us.
one can't begin to understand history without at least a basic understanding of religion and its role in the past.
public schools can't promote or denigrate religion but they can teach the vocabulary of religion. these words and their connotations and denotations will help the possessor in their everyday lives.
we need to expose ourselves to as many ideas as possible in our short lives if we hope to piece together the meaning of our existence (or have a positive impact on our communities and our existence).
imo putting one's words in a book the best/most likely method for a human to achieve immortality (not that that is my goal), the goal of many world religions.

remember, when bumping into someone who seems to know nothing about the world that half of humans have below average thinking/reading/computation skills. these people, like any others, can be wonderful, contributing members of a community, or they can, like others, be a drag on society (a shit).
it probably doesn't matter if someone knows what the word sermon means, really.

ed: for grammar

[FrodosPet]

283. Yes, we should!

What's wrong with understanding the motivators of other people?

Perhaps someday, in a few hundred years, religion will finally disappear. But not today, and not tomorrow, and not for the rest of the 21st Century.

Ignorance is NEVER a good thing.

[Marrah_G]

212. Bob- I think you just figured it out

I live in Massachusetts.... I am not Christian, haven't heard the word in a very long time and even then just as a reference to history. My 18 and 19 year boys could very well not know what it means since it is not something they would ever hear.

[a geek named Bob]

214. All of this exchange I've had here

is proving a point my wife made this morning, over tea...

The USA is no longer ONE culture. (The book America in our Time talks about this, I just didn't emotionally absorb it until this morning.)

[justabob]

220. it never was ONE culture

I am not sure how anyone could argue that. Even before the colonists got here, there were multiple cultures. Since then there are distinct differences north and south, east and west, black, white, hispanic cultures, city and rural cultures, rich and poor cultures.

[a geek named Bob]

223. there was agreat book that talked about this

The Nine Nations of North America. I forget the author's name.

It's somewhere in our bookshelves. ( I REALLY have to straighten out the books)

[iemitsu]

229. america is less dominated by one culture today than it was in the past.

which is a good thing in my opinion.

[a geek named Bob]

231. One of my students pointed out in a paper that the main thing uniting the USA right now

Is Football on TV, and sitcoms.

[iemitsu]

232. sadly, your student might be right.

we could be united by so many positive things and are only asked to be united on our imperialistic policies.
other than that, it serves our masters to keep us at each other's throats.

[a geek named Bob]

233. sigh... that student may be all too prophetic...

She stated that the Great football craze didn't really catch on, until around 1973.

The other big paper she wrote was on the ethical necessity of orgies... so take it with a grain of salt.

[iemitsu]

236. sounds like a dynamic thinker.

a gem to have in class.

[a geek named Bob]

237. errr... sort of

I dislike when students ACTIVELY try to creep me out.

On the other hand, she kept the class lively...

[treestar]

297. I thought it was a standard term for a protestant minister's address to his congregation

on Sundays. There are protestant churches everywhere throughout the USA.

[a geek named Bob]

335. Treestar...

I can't speak for your neck of the woods...

I've been back in New England for 8 years (Before that, we were living in rural Maryland, the area I call dumbfuckistan.)

I haven't heard the word mentioned in public.

Up here, we seem to keep matters like religion to ourselves.

[treestar]

355. To the extent you've never heard the word "sermon?'

You don't have to keep matters of religion on your sleeve to just know that's the word used to describe a Protestant minister's address. In fact it is used on TV a lot - characters will tell others not to give me a sermon. It has general use as a metaphor. You don't have to be religious to know it.

But you don't have to get far into American history or literature to hear it, either.

[a geek named Bob]

358. Okay...

1.) metaphors are culturally dependent. (When was the last time, during a drinking session, that you toasted someone by asking them "why are you fucking a cow?&quot
2.) I guess I'm just not reading the right literature...

[deutsey]

340. Yeah, it's not exactly an archaic word n/t

[gollygee]

119. You have to read books in public school

and the word "sermon" is in books kids would read. Isn't it in Tom Sawyer? It's probably in dozens of them.

[Romulox]

135. From Tom Sawyer: "They had been hid in the unused gallery listening to their own funeral sermon!"

This guy is PROUD his kids haven't read this book though!

There was a rustle in the gallery, which nobody noticed; a moment later the church door creaked; the minister raised his streaming eyes above his handkerchief, and stood transfixed! First one and then another pair of eyes followed the minister's, and then almost with one impulse the congregation rose and stared while the three dead boys came marching up the aisle, Tom in the lead, Joe next, and Huck, a ruin of drooping rags, sneaking sheepishly in the rear! They had been hid in the unused gallery listening to their own funeral sermon!

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Twa2Tom.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=17&division=div1

[a geek named Bob]

226. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn aren't much these days

[JI7]

222. MArtin Luther King Jr

[treestar]

268. You'd learn about it in history and English literature

Sermons were a form of early American literature.

You'd hear about the Great Awakening in history class.

[a geek named Bob]

277. treestar

I just finished a master's (all but thesis paperwork) in English. (second master's degree).

No mention of Sermon in any of the classes

[sweetloukillbot]

327. You managed to get an English degree with no mention of Jonathan Edwards or John Donne?

I don't have a masters in English, but I have a bachelors in English Lit with a minor in History, and I studied and read sermons in American Lit and English Lit. Because they are considered literary classics.

[sweetloukillbot]

276. "Sinners in the hands of an angry God" was taught as literature when I was in high school.

John Donne's sermons were taught as well. It is a literary form, regardless of the subject matter.

[a geek named Bob]

278. nope, not on any of the syllabi

[XemaSab]

284. Where are you getting your degree from?

What's your advisor's name?

Mind if I send him or her a link to this thread and find out what he or she thinks?

[iemitsu]

330. i hope you have not just read what is on the syllabi.

that is a sampling of what you should be reading.
sermons are an historically important form of literary address. their themes were not only religious but civil in nature.
we are only a couple of generations from a time when everyone in america attended church (some of us not even that).
though i have rejected the idea of practicing religion, i find it to be one of the most fascinating subjects to investigate.
religion was an organizing force for humans long before jesus ever rode a dinosaur.

[a geek named Bob]

336. I read

A lot.

The majority of the moving van we had to rent, was filled with books. (To the point that our homeowner's insurance can't cover them.)

The word "sermon" simply wasn't mentioned in my time collecting this degree.

You can parse that any way you want, but there it is.

Other words and phrases, like "narrative," "privileged voice," milieu," and such flew about in conversation, during my time collecting this recent degree.

Personally, I prefer people keep religious memes to themselves.

[iemitsu]

361. ok, seems odd to me that anyone with a college degree

would not have run across this word but i accept your testimony.
my advanced degrees are in history and anthropology and both incorporate the idea of sermons and sermonizing since both subjects focus on human relationships.
my wife is an english professor and is certainly familiar with the word sermon.
while it does not matter that you have not run across this term before it surprises me that you don't embrace the new vocabulary and thank DUers for introducing it to you.
why spend so much time and energy defending not knowing something?

[tblue37]

331. Nonsense. We studied early American literature, including such

famous Puritan sermons as "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." We studied the Reformation and Counter Reformation and also the impact on history of other religious events and concerns.

Religion has been an important component of art, literature, and history, so any decent education would deal with the role religion has played and the influence it has had in these subject areas. If you the study art, literature, or history of Europe and/or America, you cannot escape studying religion--nor should you wish to.

I am an atheist, but I studied a lot about religion during my high school and college years (both as an undergraduate and a graduate student). Because even now I avidly continue to read to learn, I also continue to read about religion. In fact, since I am especially interested in psychology, sociology, politics, and anthropology, I have a particular interest in studying comparative religion, because religion plays such an important role in all these fields of study.

[deutsey]

342. To understanding American history

The Great Awakening and Jonathan Edwards are pretty important and sermons were at the heart of their importance.

[a geek named Bob]

343. I know you guys aren't going to believe this

but...

It.
Wasn't.
Mentioned.

[deutsey]

345. And one wonders why, beyond the "presentism" that seems to define everything

Don't know if that's a real word, but I heard someone use it a few years ago.

[a geek named Bob]

349. Never heard that one either

For me...

When I think of religion, I think of the fanatics that burned the Library of Alexandria.

So I'm VERY glad the people up here don't wear their fanaticism on their sleeve. (They did it in dumbfuckistan, on a daily basis.)

[deutsey]

351. I think an extreme example of "presentism" is "That's so five minutes ago"

The person who used it was an academic criticizing people who seem only focused on the current moment with no awareness of (or interest in) its historical context.

[a geek named Bob]

352. ah. Okay

Look...

obviously, there's a particular narrative going on here.

The culture I'm currently in, seems to place little if any value on religion, and markers for religion. I like that.

Personally, Whenever someone starts going on about Religion, I think of Hypatia, and the sacking of the Library of Alexandria. Also, There's Galileo's forced recanting.


I see little if any use for religion in a modern society.

I forget who said it, but the quote's pretty good:
"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."

[deutsey]

357. That's fine with me

I just can't figure out how anyone can go through life without being at least nominally aware of basic words, general history, etc.

It's hard for me to understand how someone can know that MLK, for instance, was a minister and not understand that part of being a minister is to write and deliver sermons. The larger significance of that is that he drew from his sermonizing experience to create his "I have a dream" speech and his "I've been to the mountain top" speech (among others).

You don't have to be a Christian or even religious to appreciate that this dynamic was at play in galvinizing a huge part of the population into supporting civil rights in the '60s.

I'll even go further to say that if people are aware of Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening (to cite my original comment), they may not be so mystified as to where all these crazy evangelicals in America come from.

[Speck Tater]

3. I have witnessed the same kind of abysmal ignorance in young people.

Of course that was back in the 1970's. Those ignorant kids I met back then are all in their 50's today. And chances are, they're still just as ignorant.

[frazzled]

4. Why on earth would you need to identify them as "white"?

The presupposition seems to be that white people should know better, while it might be expected that a young black person wouldn't know anything.

I've met a lot of butt-ignorant older people too. (I'm older; I see a lot of incredibly well-informed, intelligent young people ... of all races and ethnicities.)

[XemaSab]

10. You're right to call me out on that

I went back and forth on whether to include that descriptor, and I decided to use it as a shorthand for "Didn't grow up in an ESL household," but since there are so many recent white immigrants it's not really narrowing it down, is it?

(A friend of my grew up in an Asian neighborhood, and she had a classmate ask her what baptism was during a class discussion on the Scarlet Letter. )

In some ways, a young American black person not knowing who LBJ was would be even more appalling.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

238. You are never ever supposed to mention race here on DU.

Even if it's relevant in describing someone.

Never ever ever........

[otohara]

6. Who's That?

I got that from a couple of my sons friends..On Marie Antonette and Karl Rove...college grads

[Ikonoklast]

8. There are plenty of people my age who are dumber than a bag of hair.

Stupidity knows no age boundary.

[JI7]

9. Does Colorado have a Beach ?

a couple girls asked me that one time.

not sure if this is in the same category but when someone i knew was going to New Hampshire to visit for holidays close to the republican primary i mentioned the Primary to them and they had no idea what i was talking about.

[a la izquierda]

47. My sister thought all states had beaches (ocean/sea beaches)...

she also thought the moon and the sun "were the same person." Yeah, she's kinda spacey, but we love her.

When I moved to California in 2000, someone asked what part of New York I was from, after I'd told them that I grew up in New Jersey. I thought the person was insane: "It's a whole different state, and we even have our own capital," I replied.

[Gormy Cuss]

199. "The main part of what?"

Actual comment from a Californian when I said I was from Maine. After I explained it was a state in New England, I was asked where that was.

[alphafemale]

255. I had a person at work tell me that they knew it was the "End Times" because.....

They had just seen the sun and the moon at the same time the day before and that is something that had never happened before.

How to even react to a statement like that?

I said do you know what an eclipse is?

Of course! It's when the moon passes in front of the...oh yeah.....nevermind

[a la izquierda]

263. Oh, I know how to react.

I have a special face for my sister's witticisms. It's called shocked bemusement.

[TheDebbieDee]

11. Young people today aren't taught any meaningful history

in school anymore and they don't seem to be curious enough to do any research on their own even now that they can do their research on the internet instead of going to a library.

I'd wager that most Americans under 40 have no clue what WWII was about, they're unaware that it's estimated that between 20 and 24 MILLION people died as casualties in WWII. They no nothing about the civil rights movement or integration of public schools.

My daughter (she's 28) was kind of freaked out when I told her a couple of years ago that ALL forms of birth control were illegal in most states until the mid-60s.

ETA: When James Brown died 4 or 5 years ago and again when Donna Summer died earlier this year, my mind was blown when my daughter asked me who they were. So I pulled out all my cds and played their music for her.

Several years ago, we were watching Project Runway and one of the contestants asked Tim Gunn who the Beatles were? On hearing this, my daughter turned to me and asked the same question.

[XemaSab]

25. I remember that from Project Runway

Tim got the vapors, and rightly so.

[randome]

64. Anyone who watches 'Project Runway' should not be casting stones about one's education.

IMO.

[Demit]

83. Oh for heaven's sake. Aren't you the lofty one.

Once a week it's okay to take a break from reading Proust.

[randome]

87. Proust? Who's that?

Which is why I don't assume anyone else is dumber than me.

[FSogol]

95. While I usually skip age bashing posts, I can't resist posting my fav Proust quote:

"When from a long distant past nothing persists, after the people are dead, after things are broken and scattered, still alone, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long, long time like souls, ready to remind us, waiting, hoping for their moment amid the ruins of all the rest, and bear unfaltering in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence the vast structure of recollection." -"Remembrance of Things Past" by Marcel Proust

or as paraphrased by the Dead Milkmen:

"And when my friend and I were done
We went to rest upon the sun
Cause life takes from us the things we love
And it robs us of the special ones
And it puts them high where we can't climb
And we only miss them all the time

And we sing:
Life is shit, life is shit
The world is shit, the world is shit
This is life as I know it"

[randome]

184. Wise words.

[WinkyDink]

107. Well, la-di-da to ignorance! I watch PR and have a Master's-plus and am a world traveller.

Once on Jeopardy.

[Confusious]

45. Well, if you're only talking about soldiers 20-24 is right

Allies

Military dead:
Over 16,000,000
Civilian dead:
Over 45,000,000
Total dead:
Over 61,000,000 (1937–45)

Axis

Military dead:
Over 8,000,000
Civilian dead:
Over 4,000,000
Total dead:
Over 12,000,000 (1937–45)

[YellowRubberDuckie]

66. Your kid not knowing who they are...

...is a little bit your fault. Your responsibility as a parent is to give them a proper musical and literary education growing up.
I have a niece and a goddaughter. I'm already collecting books and CDs for their education. I take it very seriously.

[randome]

69. But don't forget the yellow rubber duckies, too!

[TheDebbieDee]

267. You know, I've been thinking about that alot since I posted yesterday...........

When I was in my 20s, I had heard of Ray Charles and Little Richard and other music notables, but I wasn't really familiar with their work either........

But, as far as I know, nobody thought badly of me for not knowing who these people were.

You know, the more time passes, the more history there is for people to learn, I guess. Along with all the other stuff young people have to learn today.

The stuff they're learning today will replace some of the things that needed to be learned before. My daughter has never learned how to tell time using a clock face because almost all timekeeping devices are digital.

Just something to think about.........

[YellowRubberDuckie]

272. Never learned how to tell time?

Wow. I wear an analog watch that looks like something an archeologist would have warn in Africa at the turn of the last century.
I really don't know how to take that...

[seabeyond]

77. i disagree. if a kid is willing to take the opportunity, it is there. amazed the classes in the HS

son has taken and the indepth study they go into. these are AP course, so you are expected to go further.

but, the classes are certainly offered. beyond what we had in my day.

both boys love history and use their free time reading history for their entertainment and knowledge.

[Aerows]

104. I'm under 40

I know what WWII was about. I know who the Beatles were.

I read books, though, so it probably won't surprise you that I know things.

[cyberswede]

157. My son's 5th grade teacher last year...

told me he was the ONLY ONE in class who knew what Paul Revere did for a living. I was quite surprised, to say the least. I figured they would have learned about that in school, but evidently not.

I know the school has to limit some classes to focus on literacy for NCLB - they have a couple science "units" each semester in elementary school, but no real science class, which is a bummer. Now that he's in 6th grade, he'll have a real science class - yay!

As an aside, he and I were just discussing WWII last night (and the Ottoman Empire and WWI, too) - I don't think they've studied it in school yet. He reads a lot, thank goodness.

(and he knows the Beatles, too).

[seabeyond]

165. history teachers love kids like yours, if they will talk in class.

the schools my kids went to always let me know how much the appreciated having my sons in class. they look for interaction and discussion and the kids sit there. they are teaching critical thinking. different perspectives. my kids were so fuckin knowledgeable on history and being about the only dems in the whole city, lol, the teachers loved kids speaking up in discussions.

[bhikkhu]

12. I don't mind the ignorance so much...

as there is such a great deal to learn to have a balanced education, and even then the specialization and compartmentalization of specific fields of knowledge leaves each of us, inevitably, ignorant about most everything beyond our field of study.

Lack of curiosity does bother me, and I see that quite a bit. The other day there was a study about how many books the average college student read after graduation, and the kicker was that 42% read no books at all - zero, while 80% of all US households "did not buy or read a book last year". Its not uncommon to hear kids say they don't read books...I can't even imagine what a life like that would be like, how there could be so little interest in the world we live in, and so little mental activity in a functional mind.

The other thing is the assumption that they know a great deal - which is also quite different from ignorance. Not knowing something is ok, and not caring about one's ignorance is sometimes ok, but the ignorant who assume they know plenty, or that they know enough to bullshit and bluster their way through any discussion, because that's all that's really important...

[kestrel91316]

22. After I got out of vet school and 8 straight years of college,

I pretty much went on a book-reading moratorium for a few years without actually planning to do so. It just happened. I read magazines, newspapers, and cookbooks, and not much else. After about 5 years of this I noticed something missing in my life (duh!), and started back in again.

One of the first books I read after picking it up again was "The Handmaid's Tale". I credit it, and GHWB's anti-abortion policies, with waking the sleeping giant that was my political heart.

[Lint Head]

14. Every day.

[darkstar]

16. No.

I teach at a mostly blue collar community college. I'd gues the majority of my incoming freshman know who Frank Sinatra was, along with The Doors and Miles Davis. They know how to store stuff in the cloud and upload videos to YouTube. They know how to navigate an f-ed up financial aide system and when someone is guilty of dog whistle racism or sexism. They understand the difference between median and mean instantly when explained to them. They are leery of advertising. My parents would have tracked on 1.5 of the above (my Dad would have gotten median and mean). And, hey, guess what else? They don't make faulty generalizations.

[Jakes Progress]

17. You must not know any republicans.

I know lots of SS receivers who plan to vote for romney. They proudly voted for mccain.

What the hell did they do for 65 years. It sure wasn't learning anything.

[XemaSab]

27. Shasta County is really red

I think these people are what republican spawn looks like.

[Jakes Progress]

209. My point is that ignorance isn't just for the young.

[kestrel91316]

18. I thought young people were only that stupid here in SoCal.........

[bananas]

19. I'm SHOCKED by how butt-ignorant they are of the proliferation problems of nuclear energy

Hard to tell if they're butt-ignorant or willfully ignorant and in denial.

[Hey Jude]

21. Why can't they be like we were

Perfect in every way...

[1monster]

59. Or as Socrates said

"Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers."

(way back in circa, 469 – 533 B.C.E.).

[OriginalGeek]

257. I played Harvey something

in our 8th grade production of that in 1977. It was just a tiny part but I got a big laugh singing badly.

Which is the only way I can sing. And what the part called for.

[99Forever]

24. Someone very wise...

.. once told me that you know you being a crotchety old fart when you started blaming things on "the young."

[Ikonoklast]

28. Might have been this guy...

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”

- Socrates c. 469 BC – 399 BC

[XemaSab]

29. When I was in high school about 15 years ago

this chick in my history class didn't know about Pearl Harbor.

She couldn't name either the war or the enemy nation.

I thought that was butt-ignorant.

[99Forever]

102. At vitually every ...

... Teabagger rally there are many old geezers saying, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare." Does that make every older citizen an idiot?

Yet you generalize butt-ignorant from "some chick in high school"? ("chick"? Did you really say that?)

[seabeyond]

105. ya... i am thinking the scorn

as he uses "chick" to demean. brilliant, i am tellin ya. lol

[XemaSab]

151. I'm a she

[seabeyond]

155. ah... you are one of the ones

that confuse me so. i checked. blank. i go back and forth on this one, with you. pounding into head to remember. i think you had to tell me one other time, also.

sorry

[FSogol]

125. We had a history teacher (back in the early 80s) who showed us

some photos he had taken of Lenin's tomb, prompting one girl to exclaim, "John Lennon is buried in Russia?"

[sweetloukillbot]

328. My third grade teacher told the class that the Pilgrims landed in Virginia

That was when I lost respect for public schools.

[Sick of the GOP]

26. What a great way to win over any young people who might read this!

Not knowing what a sermon is ought to be a good thing. I used to carry out groceries and would just shake my head at what people said, both girls probably weren't even really listening to you.

[JI7]

35. why do you think she is trying to win over anyone, and it's very unlikely people like that

are on this board or would even think to come on something like this.

[WinkyDink]

106. since when do elders need "to win over" the young? Let the young LEARN SOMETHING.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

240. I'm glad kids are staying out of church these days.

Christian churches, to be exact. I'm a Unitarian Universalist which is different. UU is a non-creedal religion.

Christianity is irrelevant and inadequate to deal with the problems of the 21st century. It was inadequate for the 19th and 20th centuries as well.

Why anybody would listen to the morals of a bunch of nomadic illiterate goatherders with no knowledge of science and no curiosity, beats me.

[LeftyMom]

296. She explained it upthread, she's doing research for a book about an obscure religious movement.

Somebody has to listen to this nonsense so the rest of us will know what mischief is afoot.

[liberal_at_heart]

30. we were all young and dumb at some point

My daughter who took an advanced history class last year and who is very engaged in the political debate can be pretty ditzy sometimes too. All young people are lacking something. It's called life experience. Cut them some slack. I am thirty six so I am not a teeny bopper but I still get a little annoyed when people criticize young people for the clothes they wear or the way they speak or the music they listen to or the fact that they are not up to date on all the latest world news. I guarantee the generation before you thought the exact thing about you. I hear people say that today's generation is addicted to electronics. Well guess what this generation has done that none before it has done? They have started revolutions with those electronic devices.

[JI7]

36. who LBJ was is considered "latest world news" ?

[liberal_at_heart]

38. I was just giving some examples

of what every generation thinks of the previous one.

[a la izquierda]

48. They're so addicted to those electronic devices...

that all sense of respect goes out the window. I actually had to write in my syllabus that texting with one's phone in one's lap is incredibly disrespectful and is grounds for expulsion from class for the day. I wrote this FOR COLLEGE KIDS.

And I'm only 35.

[liberal_at_heart]

190. and you have every right to kick them out

It is your classroom. I just don't think people give young people enough credit. They have used those mobile devices to connect the world. We see atrocities in parts of the world that had no voice before. Young people share this information and boom before you know it, a revolution is in full swing. To me, that is amazing. And I think every generation has griped about the previous one. My generation(the 80's) was very promiscuous. We had big hair, very little clothing, listened to very misogynistic music, drank too much, and did too many drugs. Once I had a family I cleaned up and started paying attention to how politics and world affairs affected my life. Same goes for every generation.

[a la izquierda]

242. Oh, don't get me wrong...

my students are smart as hell, and much more advanced technologically than I. And they do great things with that tech. They can-I think- leave their phones in their bags for 50 minutes. If they wouldn't do it in their bosses presence, why should they do it in mine? I'm not on a power trip, either. This is basic policy in most classrooms in the university in which I teach.

My niece is 16 and her teachers make them keep their phones away.

[laundry_queen]

191. Oh please

before the electronic devices, it was writing notes and passing them, or reading books under the table like when I went to school. Or writing on your books/erasers/supplies because you are bored out of your skull.

Now that I'm back in post-secondary I'm glad my college profs aren't like you. We all keep our phones (on silent) on the desks. If my daughter texts me asking me if she can go to a friend's house afterschool, I'm able to reply and know where she is, when she left, and when she gets to her friend's house. My profs are just as bad for having their phones go off in the middle of class. Silent texting doesn't disrupt the class, I don't see the problem. Some students do other things like knit. The typing from taking notes on a laptop is more irritating than the texting is.

I'm 37 BTW, with a 15 year old daughter who is very respectful, if a little ditzy at times.

[a la izquierda]

241. My students cannot use laptops either

And that is not just something I thought up to be a huge bitch. Most of my colleagues do not allow laptops. Or cellphones. Too much of a risk of cheating, and it annoying and distracting. Since you're not a professor (perhaps you're a teacher though), you've no idea what is distracting and what is not to individual people. I find texting in class to be disrespectful and rude. Why come to class at all?

Riddle me this: would you text in a meeting with your boss? No? Would you knit? I'm dying to know how one knits, texts, and takes notes all at once.

[laundry_queen]

273. My program requires laptops.

And somehow the profs make it work!

And working is not the same as school. At all. I'm paying for my education and if I want to sit and knit while listening, and it's not bothering anyone I don't see what the issue is. When you are at the office do you get to tell everyone to stop typing and taking calls so you can concentrate?

[a la izquierda]

275. Ahh, not worth my time.

Have a nice night and get a stellar education, laundry_queen. Buh bye.

[laundry_queen]

326. Did you forget people can see edits?

No, what I call it is respect for students. And I get pissed when I see profs making rules for their own convenience forgetting that there are people behind those faces they teach everyday. So far, I've had great profs who get what it's like to be a single mom back in school 20 years after high school, and understand that I need to have contact with my kids' schools. As I mentioned in another post, one time that contact meant me having to go pick up my bleeding daughter from school and take her to the hospital. Another time it meant that my daughter, who missed her bus through no fault of her own, was able, through me and texting, to arrange to have her grandparents pick her up so she wasn't stuck walking in -40 degree weather.

And I have taught. Not kids or teens however. I did teach childbirth classes. Thanks for equating me with Rick Perry. That was a nice touch.

[a la izquierda]

333. I wouldn't know, because I thankfully have no children,...

but I'll guess that one does not have need for a laptop, knitting supplies, or a phone in birthing classes. My guess is your clients can keep those things in a bag if they need them. That is precisely where my students can keep those things.

Your attitude is: I'm paying for this class, therefore my professor can go scratch, and I can do what I want. Rick Perry has turned-or attempted to turn- college into a business whereby students can "take their business elsewhere" if they get pissy, or don't get an A, or whatever. That is precisely your attitude. I didn't call you a Republican politically. I don't know or care about your politics.
And as for the edits, I actually forgot about that.
And now, to attempt to trash this thread. I've wasted an enormous amount of time on it.

[Igel]

290. No, it's different.

When I hung out with friends and we all sat around passing each other notes, it was to be weird.

Now I run across groups of students "hanging out" and I've actually seen them text each other rather than speak--they could include others not there in the conversation. The point being that they were with friends that they had little to say to.

Instead they hung out with A, B, C, and D while A spoke with his friends, B with her friends, C with her friends, and D with his friends.

They use their phone the same way. Overheard by a student violating the rules:
"Hi, it's me." ...
"Nothing. I'm here." ...
"You know, here." ...
"Where're you?" ...
"Oh. In class. I should do that now, too." ...
"Well, okay." (click)


The guy he was calling was sitting in my classroom. He was calling his friend to let him know he was about to sit down next to him in class.

Some people have facial tics. Others have verbal tics. This guy had a cell-phone tic. Cost the guy the fine when he went to retrieve his phone from the main office.

BTW, silent texting does disrupt the class. "Mr. Igel, I'm sorry, can you repeat the last 3 points? I missed them." "Mr. Igel, I did my lab wrong. I didn't hear you explain the directions. Can I do the lab in class tomorrow?" "Mr. Igel, how did you do that problem? I wasn't paying attention." And when I let a student in my class waste 3 minutes for each of 28 other students, I'm fairly sure that the recipient is doing just about the same for some other teacher's class.

And I do let my phone ring during class. Today it was to let me know that my mother, for whom I'm court appointed guardian, was taken to the hospital and I had to give permission for treatment. For my students, it's so John can tell Pete that John's girl was talking to Sue's boyfriend. I can see how they're similar.

[laundry_queen]

325. How old are the students in your class?

Jesus, half my class is over 30. Maybe we're an anomaly. We have kids and elderly parents we have to make sure we are there for. One day I got a call from the school that my daughter had a large map fall on her head (the metal hanging kind) and she needed to be taken to the hospital for stitches and checked for a concussion. I'm pretty glad I didn't have some instructor with a rule against phones that day (I'm a single mom, so no spouse to take her). I find it depressing you think that nothing your students may need to talk about is as important as your stuff.

And, I find, in my classes anyway, the adult students who do have the phone turned on, or text, are usually ahead of where the instructor is in the material anyhow. It's pretty rare we sit and text during important explanations and then ask for clarification after we are done. But, again, most of us are mature students. The young students in my classes that text and facebook the entire class don't give a shit anyway and don't ask questions. I guess as someone who went to school in the 80's and 90's and university in the 90's and now university in 2012, I don't see any difference in interruptions now versus back then, even with phones in the class, hence I don't get the panic about them.

[WinkyDink]

103. Nope, no can "cut." I had heard of ALL the presidents preceding my own 17 years.

[Zalatix]

31. Bashing and potentially alienating young people...? WHY???

I've been a bit of a fan of yours for a while... I'd like to ask you to self-delete this.

Outsiders will see this and conclude that either you, or Democrats in general, are divisive and overly judgmental.

There are plenty of smart young folks. My eldest, grade school-aged daughter knows what a sermon is, and has quite often caught the inconsistencies between Right Wing Christianity and what's in the Bible, without my help. She is, however, racially ambiguous.

[XemaSab]

34. Clarified

[SheilaT]

32. People have been complaining about the ignorance

of the younger generation absolutely forever. When I was 17 or so, there was an incredible lot I did not know, really could not know, had not had time in my life to learn.

I am not terribly surprised that a young girl did not know the word Sermon. BFD.

As to not knowing who Lyndon Johnson was, keep in mind that in high school history has ALWAYS been badly taught, and at least since the first quarter of the twentieth century, recent history (within the past twenty-five to fifty years) is almost not taught at all. It's an honest problem of a young country. My mother was in high school in the 1930's. I was in high school thirty years later. My two sons, after the turn of this century. That mans seventy more years of U.S. history since their grandmother was in high school. How do we accommodate that and do justice to the full arc of American history?

I'm one who has always been interested in history and paid attention to it. I also, in the 1980's, started reading old Life magazines, starting with the first issue. I'm sure you all know off the top of your head when that was.

















You had to look it up, or scroll down, didn't you?

Well the first issue was in November, 1936. I had the amazing good fortune to be attending a university that had bound issues, starting with the first one back in 1936. I was able to read them sequentially. It took a surprisingly long time, because there were often articles of genuine substance. In addition, the ads were absolutely amazing. I can go on and on, and sometimes do. But my essential point here is that not only am I personally interested in history, but because of my Life magazine project, it's as if I remember the events of the late 1930's and into the 1940's. I was able to read through the first quarter (Jan, Feb, Mar) of 1945, and it's obvious that the war in Europe is nearly over, but equally obvious that the war in Japan -- we're clearly going to have to invade the Home Islands and at a great cost of life to both sides -- will last at a minimum another year.

I keep on wondering how it all turned out.

I also have the advantage over the 17 and 18 year olds of sheer time on this planet. I was born in 1948, and so I remember all sorts of things. On the other hand, I'm totally hopeless about popular music since about 1985 To a young person (to my own sons) I'm hopelessly ignorant.

The other thing to keep in mind is that, despite No Child Left Behind, high school graduation standards are pretty low, since our goal in this country is to graduate as many students as possible. It's my opinion that the goal is both laudable and reachable, but we go about it the wrong way. But that's another discussion entirely.

[DontTreadOnMe]

33. So you told a young person you spent "most of the weekend" listening to sermons...

No offense... but that sounds creepy to me. I bet that girl has a whole bunch of life experience that you have zero knowledge about... because you are too busy listening to sermons.

[XemaSab]

37. I'm taking one for the team

AKA doing research for a book about an obscure fundamentalist sect.

[DontTreadOnMe]

40. Oh thank God you aren't one of the crazy nutjobs...

pun intended

[XemaSab]

42. Depends on who you ask

[sakabatou]

39. Ignorance lives in every age.

Doesn't matter who.

[deutsey]

344. That's my take on it

I know plenty of people my age (late 40s and older) who are pretty damn ignorant.

[jobycom]

41. I'm more shocked by remembering how ignorant I was when I was young. nt

[liberal_at_heart]

43. my husband likes to point out to me

that when we were first married right out of high school I was an optimist and now I'm a skeptic like he has always been. Life experience changes a person. That's for sure.

[Initech]

44. I took a political science class and I was the only one who knew the significance of Nov. 22, 1963.

[Brigid]

215. How long ago was that?

I've got to ask my teenage nieces and nephews if they know.

[Initech]

227. About 2005 - 2006.

[Capt. Obvious]

356. 49 years

[Brigid]

362. Wise guy.

[cemaphonic]

216. Unless you're old enough to have lived through it, the date itself is unimportant,

and a useless way to approach history. Do you know offhand what day Garfield was assassinated? McKinley?

[Initech]

230. Yeah true but my mom's side is very liberal.

And when I had to pick a president to report on in middle school it was JFK, and that date was important.

[joeglow3]

221. Who cares about the date?

I was able to guess what you were referring to because Kennedy was elected in 1960. However, it is not like my grasp of history is somehow stunted because I do not know the exact date this happened, but know the facts surrounding it.

[mainer]

49. College students once told me the Supreme Court was elected

So giving Obama another four years wasn't all THAT important because we could just kick out the bad Supreme Court Justices.

[theHandpuppet]

50. I have a niece who was an honor student at her high school...

She had no idea which countries we fought in WWII (or even which countries were our allies). When I offered her the name "Hitler" as an obvious clue, she just gave me a blank stare and shrugged. I was gobsmacked. Certainly made me wonder what kind of history books young folks are studying down in NC.

[seabeyond]

80. we live in texas. i had a niece not able to identify and differentiate new mexico from mexico

i really cannot believe anyone that stupid. i think it is more a game for some. my boys, about 10 and 8 rolled their eyes.

[Nay]

145. An adult at my workplace did not know there was a difference between NM and Mexico. Mr Nay and

I went to New Mexico for a vacation (we hike around to look at old Indian ruins), and when I told this 40-something coworker where we went, she wondered how we did, since everyone speaks Spanish, weren't we afraid of being kidnapped by drug cartels, etc. I stood there for a minute, wondering WTF she was talking about, and realized she thought New Mexico was the same as Mexico. I explained to her that NM was a US state and was perfectly safe, and Mexico was the country to the south of the US, and they were different places.

Her reply? "Thanks! I did not know that!"

[seabeyond]

154. omfg.... see, that was the conversation i had. lol. and we live in fuckin texas.

i said, hey, kids. west is a state, new mexico. south is a country, mexico. got it. wow. both bordering us.

i just swear the two girls were trying to be cutsey stupid.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

210. Too many star students have zero retention

They study to get a good grade on their tests, then forget it all and move on. Good grades are not a perfect measure of how smart a kid really is.

[geckosfeet]

51. ...

[1monster]

52. A few years ago a test for graduation from a nineteenth century farming community school was

making the rounds. It asked students to figure how many wagon loads it would take to carry their grain to market if the so many acres of grain had been planted and each acre yielded so many pecks, bushels, etc. Even with our modern maths and calculators, most of us would have failed because they used measurements that we would find difficult to translate into modern measurements.

Today's kids learn maths that didn't even exist when I was in high school. They learn sciences that were barely in the realm of SciFI sixty years ago. And they have to cover History from prehistory to today. They get two years of U.S. history in those thirteen years of school. In sixth grade, they study world history, in seventh, they study world geography, and in eighth they study US history. In high school, they get world history again for one year and US history for one year. They have to study however many more years of history than you did when you were in school.

The amount of time spent on the more recent history is very scant. Lyndon Johnson's period of history is more ancient to them than WWII was to us and, I think the history books give three or four paragraphs to the Vietnam War. The whole eara is given very little time and space.

As for the word sermon: like homily, it is not used much anymore, generally it is only associated with church services. And other words, such as lecture, have taken the place of sermon.

Give the kids a break. Their curriculums are dictated by ignorant politicians who have their own agendas and they have so much more to learn than in the past. Teachers have to cover more ground in less time than you might realize. So our kids only get a thin surface of information that covers a huge area.

[KitSileya]

86. And history itself has expanded not just time-wise,

but from the narrow white Western men focus it had back before we feminists got our token women into the history curriculum, not to mention people of color. And, you know, the rest of the world's history. There's a lot more debate too, as we don't just accept the version delivered from on high - except American school pupils who have shitty Texas-approved history books. (See "Lies my teacher told me: Everythin your American history textbook got wrong" by James Loewen.) I can very well imagine that LBJ has been 'minimized' - after all, he made it illegal to stop African-Americans from voting!

[kentuck]

54. Children learn from their elders.

Us.

They are not born with the knowledge. They must be taught. We cannot assume they will learn stuff without it being presented to them.

[lunatica]

55. It sounds like you're blaming the girls for being ignorant

about things they should have been taught by their teachers and parents.

[XemaSab]

163. There's blame to go around here

What are the schools teaching?

And are these girls doing NO reading or other learning in their free time?

The nexus of the two, of course, is that the schools are turning out incurious people who don't even know how ignorant they are.

[Fla_Democrat]

56. no more than I am shocked by some butt-ignorant old timers.

[graham4anything]

57. they were probably whining about the black socialist communist president

yet probably don't even know the definition of socialist, socialism, communist and communist

[On the Road]

116. You Know, it Never Really Occurred to Me

But when Republicans win points with their base by calling Obama a communist or socialist, the listeners probably have no idea what those words actually mean.

[graham4anything]

174. if the 99% of republicans were smart...

If the repubs were smart-they would be democrats enthusiastically supporting Obama because it is to their benefit everything democrats like (like unions, better school money, etc.

why they support the Mitt Romneys is beyond me.

[flobee1]

58. Not suprising

In my line of work, I talk to high school students on a daily basis. It really shocks me what they don't know. It is up to those of us who know the past/history to help them. I also try my hardest to be neutral and let them decide for themselves how they feel about different topics.

Lesson number one-(my personal mantra) With Google and a good set of tools, you CAN do anything!

they need to know who Assange and Manning are.(most don't)
they need to keep up on whats going on between Israel and Iran.
I had one kid look up fracking overnight and tell me what it was the next day.
(a really awesome discussion started after that-lasted most of the day)
they need to know about the sources of the news they see, hear, and read.
and why it all needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

[1monster]

65. The Internet is changing the way we learn and store information. In the bad old days,

it was difficult to find information. We had encyclopedias that had an inch or two of information on each subject, and if it wasn't in there, we were screwed because we had to then look in text books, magazines, the card catalog (remember those?) newspapaers, and magazines.

It was easier just to learn and remember things.

Today, we have the Internet and Google. All we have to do to find information is make a few keystrokes and hit "enter" and we are given more information than we could possibly process. It's not as important to remember so much information because it is literally at our finger tips.

Those of us who existed before the Internet, organize our minds and learning differently (but we are changing too!) from the younger ones who have always had reams of information in 0.032 seconds.

[Igel]

292. That's foolishness.

They have a calculator to let them know the answers to arithmetic. Then when they punch in 0.5 x 9.8 x 3^2 and get 216 instead of 44 they don't flinch. "The calculator said it." They haven o sense that the answer has to be less than 45.

Yes, they can look up order of operations in Wikipedia. They don't know that they have to. They're high school students. Some of them failed to learn this stuff 4 or 5 years before.

Rule 2: You have to be tolerable at higher order thinking these days.

Rule 1: If you don't know facts, you can't engage in higher order thinking.

If you don't know anything, you have no idea what questions to ask. You don't know what kinds of facts are out there. You can't think intelligently about something you know nothing about. You spend all your time learning the basics and as soon as you get to rung 1 of the ladder you realize you don't know squat.

Learning is knowledge integration. Everything else is built on that.

[XemaSab]

295. Unless you know that in 1963 people were killed in the US for registering black people

the fact that a black man is currently THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA is meaningless.

How do you know this without knowing something about ol' LBJ?

[1monster]

332. No. That's science.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/20/internet-brain_n_1441393.html

[intaglio]

60. Shocked? no, because I remember how dumb I was

Back then I thought Rab Butler (who founded the NHS) was a Labour politician, probably did not accurately know what a seminar was and probably believed that Captain Kirk was a role model when it came to attracting women.

[customerserviceguy]

61. I mentioned the death of Neil Armstrong

to a couple of younger people on Saturday night, and I got asked about doping while bike riding.

I guess it's why I'm not a big fan of the educational establishment these days.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

113. OMG did they take Neil Armstrong's medals away before he died?

However, if a young person doesn't know what a sermon is, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's like not knowing what "leg irons" are.

[SmileyRose]

63. Most people know only what they have to know.

There's a reason why that Ozzy commercial "What's a Bieber?" is so funny.

[JHB]

67. Not nearly as much as how butt-ignorant some older people are...

...particularly the ones quaking over "socialism" like letting the Bush tax cuts expire and undoing some of the deregulation that has done so much damage.

People who talk like that and were adults back when top marginal taxes were much higher and when regulation of the financial sector and anti-trust regulations (i.e., preventing corporate consolidation and concentration by buying up competitors) were in effect and considered common-sense policies. Who remember that we still had rich people back then, and that people still did get rich.

Or, given the OP topic, people who know what the term "jet set" meant, but seem to think having any modernized version of the tax structure from back then would produce a gray Stalinist wasteland.

[no_hypocrisy]

68. My God, they'll all Bristol Palin.

Nowhere to run . . . . .

[Shankapotomus]

73. Oh boy

I haven't read any of the other responses to this thread yet but my guess is you've landed into some deep doo doo on multiple levels. Am I right?

[XemaSab]

166. I wouldn't say that

I would say that the response to the OP makes me want to go post ANOTHER, even more strongly worded OP.

[seabeyond]

167. lol. nt

[Shankapotomus]

176. I don't want to be difficult, we all have personal moments of thoughtlessness

But a hapless teen helps you to your car (saving your back) because it's their job (in other words, they really have no choice in the matter and probably are paid like dirt, as well) and in return you post online how stupid they are because they didn't know a word you thought they should know? And you want to double down on that?

Come on, Xema. I know the people of DU are better than that and that should include you too.

Why not just admit it was insensitive and move on? There's no shame in admitting when you screwed up. We all screw up.

[XemaSab]

177. I'm not wrong here

I'm just disappointed at how many people on DU seem to be just fine with these examples of ignorance.

[Shankapotomus]

179. Aww crap

Xema! I still have hope for you!

You'll come around. Just not today.

[seabeyond]

76. some kids like to play stupid. they think cute and sexy. i know stupid adults, too. i know some

really smart kids also, that dont think stupid is so sexy or cute. can kick a lot of adults ass in knowledge.

[Mariana]

144. Lots of kids have been given grief for acting smart.

Not just from their peers, but also from ADULTS who get angry when they see that a kid knows something that they don't.

And, of course, there are plenty of older adults who just don't like young people, period, and who will complain about them no matter what they do or how they behave.

[laundry_queen]

192. And that's the truth. nt

[seabeyond]

193. so true. my oldest was so very fuckin perceptive and so very nice.

he was so articulate and clear at four and would speak in complete sentences. just who he was. someone ask a question, and they would expect a normal 4 yr old answer. he would think and give them a more adult like answer, with 4 yr old knowledge. not to be a know it all. not to irritate or waste an adults time. yes... never ya. very precise.

there would be adults here and there thru out his younger years that would get their back up. they would make a jab thinking they were oh so clever and he wouldnt notice, but they felt better. he noticed. lol. he would look at me, like why? but manners didnt allow him to say anything. i would smile and shrug. then explain how he inadvertently challenge the adult in some manner. and some adults just do not like kids.

me? i love a thinking kid. right or wrong, i love a kid that thinks and express and i encourage them to go on and on and on.

you are right.

[hlthe2b]

78. If you watch those segments by Leno and other comedians, it isn't just the young....

We have a REAL problem with willful ignorance in this country and what is really horrifying is how the RETHUGS glorify it.

But those segments where Leno or Letterman or others send someone out to ask general questions of the public are just horrifying in showing how totally ignorant is a wide swath of our population--and proud of it. And, it is not limited to one age group.

[OneGrassRoot]

79. Forget knowledge of history, check this out:

A young woman's older sister was about to have a baby, and she posted on FB:

"I can't wait to see if my sister has a boy or girl so I know if I'm an aunt or an uncle."



Though it's obviously sad, too.

[seabeyond]

82. truly laughing out lout. lordy. nt

[Aerows]

115. LMAO

Oh my.

[Nay]

153. Mr Nay and I are on the floor laughing. Christ on a crutch, that's funny.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

81. Here comes the shrimp story

Friends of mine have a 21 year old son who is as dumb as a stump, totally clueless, and to compound that he is always high on weed (he's also a dealer), and is becoming a heavy drinker too.

A couple of weeks ago he took a 2 inch high frying pan, added about an inch and a half of oil, heated it on high, and dumped in about half of a two-pound bag of FROZEN shrimp.

Oil EVERYWHERE. Stove, countertop, everything COVERED with sprayed oil.

This is one of his milder incidents. How he ties his own shoes and wipes his own ass is a complete mystery to me. He's just a fucking idiot in every sense of the word.

[Aerows]

117. He could have set the damn house on fire

Wow. Stupidity is dangerous, isn't it?

[Amerigo Vespucci]

132. One time he was making some kind of Rice-A-Roni "creation"...

...and apparently needed something from the market, so he LEFT THE FRYING PAN ON THE STOVE ON HIGH HEAT, unattended, and drove to the market. He is stupid, reckless, and he fuels his inherent weaknesses with substances that only make him weaker and more stupid. He recently brought home a puppy without asking permission first...he snuck the dog into the house and a day later said "Here's my dog"...and his parents buckled. The puppy is not trained. It shits and pees all over the house, daily. Every single day, multiple times a day. Their home now smells like pee, shit, and the spray cleaner you use to clean up pet pee and shit.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

206. Maybe it's the kid spray shitting and peeing

He just got someone else to blame.

[Mariana]

148. The thing is, being 21 isn't what's made this son an idiot.

It's highly likely he'll be just as stupid when he's 51. If he lives that long.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

170. I'm a pretty direct person, and that can be a good thing, or a bad thing. Depends...

...but I was having a conversation with his mom and she told me that she "consistently prays that he'll wake up and turn his life around."

I'm not going to bash her praying...I'm a Christian too, and I've prayed for more than a few long shots in my life.

But what I said to her in response was something like "He's not just going to wake up on his own. Something will have to happen to make him WANT to change, and that could be a GOOD thing that happens to him, or a BAD thing, and maybe NOTHING will happen to him at all. Maybe the guy you're looking at right now will be the guy he is when he's fifty."

And she looked sad for a moment and said "I know."

And that's the point where I back off, because I know I've already crossed a line...he's their son, not mine, and his life...and their parenting...is none of my business. But that's the funny thing about friendship. Sometimes we say things we know we shouldn't say because we care about our friends.

I agree with you...this has nothing to do with age. He's the youngest of three brothers, each separated by a year or two. One son is a 100% straight arrow, just lucid and bright and so skilled socially that it is a shocking comparison. The other son is somewhere between the two extremes without the really low "lows" of the youngest son. He's a little more self-absorbed, a little more selfish, but he has a job and meets his responsibilities.

And not having kids or my own (also not wanting to be a parent), I'm the last person on Earth who can claim to have even a minimal understanding, beyond being a bystander, of what it means to be a parent. I can see the pride in the good kids and the pain from the bad ones and all points in between but it is just not hard-wired into my DNA at all to have any interest or desire in being a parent myself. It's one of a few areas in my life where there has never been a dust speck of interest on my part, ever, not for the time takes me to blink my eye.

[AnnaLee]

84. If students graduate ignorant,

it is usually the fault of the adults and rarely the fault of the child. The good new is that ignorant is not stupid and it is never too late to learn.

I might note that people have differing interests and talents. It could be that the younger person could bring up a subject and show knowledge that would make me, an older person, look ignorant too.

I have been lucky, I guess. The young people who were joining my workforce before I retired were awesome - smart, quick, knowledgeable, independent, continuous learners and more.

[Waiting For Everyman]

85. I agree with you, both of those examples are shocking.

I will say this... back in the early '90s I took both of my kids out of high school in the first year because it was so violent. With no diploma, both of them place-tested into college with nothing but a good reading list which they mostly covered (themselves, with no tutor etc., occasionally a little discussion from me if they wanted it). So, kids today who don't want to remain ignorant can do something about it, all on their own. Add to that now, the internet.

But if kids are as ignorant as those you cited and don't mind continuing to stay that way, then that is even more shocking.

This is what comes of making education subservient to resumes. Content doesn't matter anymore. It's nothing but a door-opener, which means nothing beyond that.

[seabeyond]

88. my 14 yr old says... ya, that would be the "grown up" discussing honest, legitimate, forcible rape?

he was not thrilled with the title, but does get the "some"

[DonCoquixote]

89. NO

But while the "kids today" will always frustrate the older ones, there is a special element to today. We are the ones that let the GOP turn education into a joke, so these kids are often buried under layers of thick, deep bullshit. You can't blame hungry kids for eating garbage when it is the only thing they can get their hands on, but history will blame us for allwing that to happen.

[Hydra]

288. This! So much this!

I grew up in the Reagan and Bush Sr. Era. The stuff I learned in school beyond science and math ranged from whitewash by omission to blatant propaganda. I'm honestly surprised I graduated to being a looney lefty, but I took pride in finding the best answer for problems and I dislike being obviously lied to. In a word, I ask "Why?"

"Why" do we have such horrid education? Because people wouldn't be as easy to lead if they knew certain sacred cows aren't so sacred.

[XemaSab]

289. My point exactly

We're all responsible for this, and it's not ok.

[piratefish08]

90. i am far more hopeful with the youth of this country than the collection off asshats we've assembled

in the last 40 years.



for the record, my child may not know what a sermon is either.

not everyone goes to a building have stories read to them on the weekend.


we just do it at bedtime here.

[reflection]

91. The girl who asked what a sermon was

may have simply misheard you, or not heard you at all.

[Mariana]

152. No, no, she must be an ignoramus

because she's young. There can be no other explanation.

[XemaSab]

168. No, she heard me

We actually had a talk about what the word meant.

She was a very nice girl, but her vocabulary? Not so big.

[ropi]

92. not really...

I can say that I am not surprised that the two young people did not know what you mean by referencing a sermon or LBJ, but both of them asked you a direct question: (Sermon) "What is that?", and (LBJ) "Who's that?". This gave you an opportunity to tell them and to steer the conversation into a learning moment. It would only have taken a few sentences to explain it to them. You'll find that most will look it up later if you sparked their interest. If I look back at when I was 19, I can honestly say that there were many topics that I did not know regarding history, word definitions (yes, even some easy words), and other subjects. I later learned many wonderful answers when I went to college, and by working and getting to know many other amazing people outside of college who taught me a lot about life in general. I would not be so hard on the schools or teachers. While these young people may not appear to be savvy because they appeared to be educationally and intellectually impoverished, you might be surprised that there are a number of young people who do know what you meant and if they do not, they'll go look it up later or use the ever favorite WIKI to help them out.

I was shocked one day to learn that a good friend of mine who recently returned from a tour of the UK came home with some lovely photos, souvenirs, and other items. During her time over there she discovered the history (wives) of Henry the Eighth and the History of the Church of England, The Interregnum, the history of Charles the First and Second, and as she told me I remember thinking: "How did you -not- know this?" She was white, graduated from high school, had 2 years of college, runs a successful business, and she is close to my age (late 30s). Rather than feeling like I wanted to beat my head into a wall, I counted myself fortunate that I was able to know what she was speaking of, and I shared in her enjoyment of her ability to share with me what she learned.

I find it more disconcerting when my older relatives, who by all intents and purposes, benefited from high school, college, some with post-graduate work, seem to have forgotten history and vote against their own well being and needs because they have been conditioned to be afraid and choose to be willfully ignorant.

[scheming daemons]

93. yeah... but 70% of them will vote Obama while a majority of geezers wont

I have much more tolerance for the young, than I do for the geezers.

[Liber T. Anjustis]

188. Not with the OP's attitude they won't

.

[XemaSab]

266. 50% of them won't vote at all

and there is part of me that thinks that maybe it's a good thing that low-information voters aren't out there punching the ticket for the teahadists.

[oneshooter]

94. I have had collage aged students tell me that

"If it happened before I was born it doesn't matter"

[Jennicut]

101. I am a substitute teacher and most kids I come in contact with are very intelligent.

They just learn differently then my parents or I did. They are completely immersed in technology but they still do the same math, spelling and reading I did as a kid. The truth is that some kids fall through the cracks and don't get the extra help they need. Schools do the best they can with limited budgets. But I really do dislike putting down anyone under the age of 25 as stupid simply because they may lack some knowledge of history. We need the younger people of this country to get involved and to vote as the over 55 age group votes more conservatively as a whole. Younger people are more open to women's rights, gay rights, less prone to racism, care more about the environment, etc. Younger people are pretty open to new ideas and that is not a bad thing at all. I try and pass on whatever wisdom I can to my 7 and 8 year old daughters. My kids didn't know that my parents only had black and white tv. I taught them that. They learned about slavery in school and asked about it at home. Instead of putting them down for not knowing something, teach them about it.

[NNN0LHI]

108. The young are our future

And I agree with everything you wrote.

Don

[WinkyDink]

109. It is precisely "knowledge of history" that makes sense of current events.

Is this a generation who will not know the names "Clinton" and "Bush"? Rwanda? Bosnia? Hussein?

Facts are so darn facty.

[Jennicut]

111. My 8 year old knows who George W. Bush is.

Because I taught her that. She knows who Hillary Clinton is too. They still teach history in middle school and high school and they still teach it in college. But parents are a big part of making history come alive to their children. They didn't live through it so why not talk about it with them? It's what I do with my kids.

[seabeyond]

110. the expectation that a kid will learn all things in school is foolish. i never expected the schools

to be the only one to impart knowledge to my kids. discussion and thinking has always been a priority and a must in my house. nothing less.

parents ought to take part of the responsibility.

i see lots of smart kids, myself.

[WinkyDink]

112. Of course, this is true (I once shocked a class by informing them thusly). HOWEVER,

having taught for 30years in a public high school, I can tell you that factual contexts that would help the young MAKE SENSE of their times have been abandoned (I'm of the opinion that too many teachers hate knowing facts themselves) in favor of "concepts."

Soon we'll scrap even "Social Studies" and "Language Arts" (yeah, really) for "i-Tech 101: Learning How to Use the i-phone, i-pad, i-....."

[seabeyond]

114. i havent seen it. and as i said in another post, both sons have a passion for history and have had

excellent opportunity in getting classes that go way beyong what we learned and the amount of classes we took in high school. same with the english. what the schools have done in the english course, having kids do so much writing, has helped both boys, for college and the term papers they will have to do.

now... i am having an issue with what i am seeing about the tech world taking over. but, kids are mostly thru and it is encroaching only last couple years.

i had a huge problem the other day, looking at colleges with son, and hubby told me a lot of these schools allow degrees on line. for me, to pay all that for a degree, and someone get a degree on line, that shows the same as all kids, i think is bullshit. i see total cheating on that and do not like it at all.

[tama]

118. Shocked?

Can't deny having had that reaction and showing it, but instead of getting shocked or even worse, starting to ridicule and humiliate, I try to be as patient and kind as I can and share what I know.

[XemaSab]

172. I was perfectly patient and kind

It was only afterwards that I was like

[Ter]

129. I would have asked what a sermons was too at that age

Even today I'd have a problem giving a definition. It's like a church meeting/speech. That's the best I can come up with in my 30's.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

130. She's a grocery cart pusher, not a computer engineer. Because she's ignorant or worse. nt

[steve2470]

133. I'm happy to say my 16 year old son is not one of them

Except for porn, he has free range of the internet. I've educated him about America, Democrats, politics, history, etc.

I'm very very proud of him. /parental pride off

[seabeyond]

159. yea... good for you.

we gotta stick up for the kids. lots of smart ones. way beyond our day.

[doc03]

139. To be fair I am shocked by how butt-ignorant some old people are. Just yesterday

a guy about 70 said the Republicans started SS and Medicare they are trying to save it. Believe it or not
he thought FDR was a Republican and Nixon started Medicare.

[Bertha Venation]

225. That's sad. n/t

[Pool Hall Ace]

140. I was shocked when I mentioned David Bowie to one of my young co-workers

(born in 1990) and he had no idea who he was.

She was homeschooled by conservative Christian parents (she believes the creation story), so that could play a role. Either that, or David Bowie is not as big of an icon as I thought.

[cemaphonic]

228. He's a pop star whose popularity peaked ~15 years before she was born?

I'm in the younger Xer cohort, and most people I know around my age very familiar with 60s-70s rock, even though it was before our time. But the post 1980s generations mostly aren't all that interested in music that old. Except for the Beatles, they still keep picking up new generations of fans.

But Bowie? The highest-profile things he's done since 1990 were touring with Nine Inch Nails, and playing Tesla in a movie.

[JHB]

142. Had a thought: did she recognize Johnson's name after you answered her?

I spent most of LBJ's presidency as not-here-yet, infant, or toddler. When I learned about him, he always had three names: Lyndon Baines Johnson, and usually had "President" connected to it somewhere. Even today, I might not make the connection at the name "Lyndon Johnson" all by itself immediately. And events involving Johnson were a lot closer to my time than to hers.

Since Johnson was president it's not quite equivalent, but it's a lot like someone of my age knowing about 1940s politicians. For example, if it weren't for Bugs Bunny, I'd never recognize the name Wendell Wilke.

[seabeyond]

160. i was wondering too. i learned johnson. lbj later in life. nt

[steve2470]

149. To be fair, there are things I learned from DU and still don't know...

I have two degrees, but not from Ivy League or first-tier public universities. My high school was in central Florida.

I've learned that ignorance is not necessarily a bad thing. Willful ignorance is. Refusal to admit ignorance is not good. Refusal to educate oneself is not good.

Our problem, as a nation, is that willful ignorance has become accepted. As long as young people don't fall into the trap of willful ignorance, I'm fine with them.

We (meaning we adults) need to very slowly change the culture of willful ignorance to one of acknowledged ignorance and willingness to learn.

[Honeycombe8]

314. Reading is the best way to gain general knowledge, IMO. It's never too late to read. nt

[Warpy]

156. Aw I was just as pig ignorant when I was 18

I'd read plenty of books across many disciplines, but the gaps were there and some of them were alarming. High school in the 60s had been a wash except for some of the AP classes, mostly stifling boredom trying to bring all kids up to the same level of ignorance and obedience.

People always talk about wishing they could go back to their youth. While it might be nice to have a body that worked better, it would never compensate for having so much left to learn in order to be a competent human being.

[steve2470]

158. excellent points nt

[Romulox]

162. The person in the OP has to go through all of that TOO. And still doesn't know the definition

of common words.

[ieoeja]

180. While "sermon" is not an incredibly esoteric word, this thread is the first I can recall ...

... encountering it in years. It is a word that has largely fell out of disuse outside religion.

I recognize none of the reading material my kid has used in K through 10. Schools are forward looking, after all. Just as he receives knowledge that did not exist when I was young, he reads books that were not yet written when I was young. On subjects more pertinent to his time.

So, no, I would not be at all surprised to learn that he does not know what the word means. In fact, I just texted him to ask. Given that it is only 10:20 where I live, I imagine he is still in bed.

"Texted," for my fellow old farts means to send a typed message to another person via a hand-held, portable telecommunications device that communicates via specific radio frequencies reserved for that purpose. These devices are quite common nowadays. If you need to know more, I suggest you contact a young person whose ignorance on what you learned as a child may surprise you, but shouldn't.

And I sent the message at 10:20. Not a quarter past. Because "quarter" and "half" have fallen into disuse in the digitial age leading to weird looks from teens when I use it.

[XemaSab]

234. This is actually a favorite sermon topic of the people I am researching

They're opposed to the idea that church needs to be "relevant" and instead they believe that churches should teach the whole bible, even the parts that do not seem relevant for modern audiences. Their thinking is that the push for relevance has led to a loss of members and a decline in biblical literacy.

Books that were written fifty or a hundred years ago or more may not cover all the joys of texting and playing video games, but nevertheless they may teach the reader about universal truths. Books like 1984, The Scarlet Letter, Lord of the Flies, Little House on the Prairie, and Romeo and Juliet teach universal truths. Maybe Twilight and The Hunger Games teach universal truths, but not only are they poorly written, but they're not even close to being classics yet.

Similarly, historical events that took place more than 40 years ago, such as the assassination of JFK, the message and mission of MLK, the deaths of civil rights workers in the South, the escalation of the Vietnam War, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the career of J. Edgar Hoover, are all vitally important for today.

A few days ago, this thread said that our ignorance is a real sign of decadence:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021192104

I think it's a sign of decadence not just how many people are ignorant but how many people in this very thread are making excuses for said ignorance.

[Romulox]

249. Now "quarter" and "half" are too difficult for a *tenth grader*? You can't make this stuff up. nt

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

161. Butt-ignorance is not limited to the young.

I've run into college-educated people my own age who were astonishingly uninformed about a whole lot of things.

[BOG PERSON]

169. constantly shocked by young people

by their relaxed morals and effrontery. every generation gets progressively worse. i wish we could put them all in jail!

[Posteritatis]

187. And the lawns - the *lawns*! (nt)

[steve2470]

171. One more point about ignorance....

I must admit, I'm VERY ignorant when it comes to rural and farm things. I'm VERY ignorant when it comes to mechanical things. I'm VERY ignorant when it comes to many foreign countries/cultures.

The difference is, I'm willing to admit it and be educated. People who know all those things can easily look down on me, so be it.

[abelenkpe]

173. NO

I know plenty of older republicans who are willfully ignorant and they are far more offensive than a young kid who still has potential and an open mind. I work everyday with kids in their 20s and they are bright, creative and hard working. I'm not sure why anyone would want to judge an entire generation based off superficial conversations with two individuals. Would it be less offensive if your post was a generalization of boomers? The elderly? Children? People from a certain area? Of a certain color or gender? Such generalizations should probably be avoided.


Unless you're talking about birthers. Those guys are bananas....

[ieoeja]

175. Human knowledge has expanded somewhat since we were young.

It seems like half the stuff my kid learns in high school were undiscovered or not yet invented when I was in high school. So I'd assume they had to clear out some of the stuff I learned to make room.

I am not shocked by the ignorance of young people. I fully expect them to be ignorant by comparison to someone my age. What percentage of the knowledge I have today did I learn by the time my schooling stopped? 50%? Less?

I used to be SHOCKED by the ignorance of middle-aged and older people. But it so common that it no longer shocks me.

[snooper2]

178. Good, we are progressing, as soon as no young folks know what a sermon is

We will have a better country for it

[Arugula Latte]

197. Hah! I admit that was my first thought as well.

Although I did know what a sermon was when I was a child, even though we only went into a church under duress (wedding invitations). However, the demographic of people who do not go to church is growing and that gives me a small sliver of hope for this country.

[PufPuf23]

181. Wasn't Sermon on the Mound when Casey was at the Bat?

Shasta county needs a minor league baseball team (not to mention a real four year liberal arts college).

There is the four year Simpson (Christian College). Two of their student murdered a prominent gay couple and burned a Synagogue in Sacramento. The leaders of Simpson and North Valley Baptists were more "Robertson" than PC in their initial comments to the local press.

Shasta county is one of the most Red, white, Christian, and anti-intellectual counties of California (not to forget the meth).

[XemaSab]

182. It's totally true

However, the local public schools are supposed to be pretty good.

If these two girls are the products of a "good" public school, I shudder to think what's coming out of the "bad" public schools.

[iemitsu]

183. my favorite statement (and i've heard it from several students)

is " i'm catholic not christian".
i agree with the above posters that student (and people in general) don't read enough.
i am of the opinion that people should read every word that comes into focus in front of their eyes. i don't care if its a list, an advertisement, an article, graffiti, a novel, the bible, etc. people should even try to read words that are not in the language they speak.
words equal ideas. the more of them one reads the more ideas one has.
i've noticed that in recent years those who don't read have begun to confuse then and than. many seem to think then and than are the same word and use them interchangeably.

[Zax2me]

185. Young people 4-1 support Obama over romney.

That fact and your headline don't mesh well.

[laundry_queen]

196. So I just asked my 12 year old if she knew those things

because my 15 year old isnt' home.

She had no idea what a sermon was or who LBJ was.

Now granted we live in Canada and don't learn all the presidents (or even all the Prime Ministers) so she likely wouldn't have learned it at school.

And being in Canada, most people keep their religions to themselves, and we, ourselves, don't go to church, so she wouldn't have heard the word from us. And I'm pretty sure they don't teach about sermons at school. I remember that the ONLY reason I know that word is the Little House on the Prairie books I read as a kid, and I remember asking my parents what it meant (because we didn't go to church either, and although I did take religion in school, it was Roman Catholic and they don't use the word 'sermon').

I'd cut those kids some slack. I think back to when I was 18 and boy was I ignorant. At that age I was far more concerned with boys and partying. And if I'd have owned a phone to text with at the time, I'm sure they would have had to pry it away from my cold dead hands. I *would* have known who LBJ was though, if only because my parents were convinced he was part of the conspiracy that killed Kennedy.

[Arugula Latte]

200. I'm actually more shocked by how ignorant an older white dude I know is.

He's had decades to get a clue and has not done so.

The younger people I know are smart, liberal and not at all homophobic.

[johnd83]

201. I have met plenty of dumb middle age and old people

Being an idiot knows no age group. There are plenty of smart young people, you just won't find many of them doing retail jobs.

[iemitsu]

217. good point about the employment - smarts connection.

not that everyone in retail lacks intellect. in fact, i believe that many in these jobs have wonderful social skills.

my wife and i collect old photographs. once, while on vacation, we ran across a pile of photos priced between 5 cents and a quarter. we selected 30 or so of them and took them to the clerk, who had nails piercing her ears (not a pertinent detail but it helps the listener visualize the story). this was a small "junk" store on a back road and had no cash register, so the clerk had to add the cost of the stack of photos herself.
she could not add a column of numbers and so had to add two numbers together and total, then add that total with the next number and so on.
if one interrupted the process, which i did more than once, she had to start the process all over.
it was tedious and took nearly half an hour.

the event had a big impact on me and i've thought about it many times since.
other than being slow at her job the young woman was perfectly pleasant and we weren't in a hurry. but one might expect better math skills in a retail clerk.

[jeff47]

203. Yep, your generation really did a shitty job educating the next one.

Or did you think budget cuts devastating our public schools are the kid's fault?

[Drale]

205. They could probably talk for hours about things that you would have no idea about but

in general young people are getting stupider, part of it is politics and some of it is their parents. I see it right now. Today is the first day of classes at UIC (University of Illinois at Chicago) and I just spent 20 minutes trying to find someplace to sit for my 3 hour break, but I can guarantee most of these people will be no longer coming to class by next week.

[Posteritatis]

224. "Young people are getting stupider" is a millenia-old claim. (nt)

[rasputin1952]

208. The stupid goes long and deep across the nation...

Now if the conversation were about "Snooki", I can guarantee it would have lasted longer, although somewhat more specious.

We are the best entertained, least educated people that has ever been on the planet.

[Smilo]

213. In their defense........

it is often how something is phrased. Sometimes someone will say something to me and I go "what?" - they rephrase and I understand what they meant.

Words that we grew up with are not all that familiar to the younger people and they have words/vernacular that isn't familiar to us. Also, if you don't hear words regularly your brain does a double take on trying to make sense and sometimes it can't pull up the info quickly enough.

If you are not a church goer you probably wouldn't recognize the word Sermon, and to say Lyndon Johnson - could be anyone - if you had said President Lyndon Baines Johnson there may have been recognition.

[jberryhill]

218. I find ignorant, and informed, people of all ages

[Liberal_in_LA]

235. From two twentysomethings: "who is Bob Hope?"

[haele]

243. Butt-ignorant young people usually have one or both butt-ignorant parents.

ignorance defined as not caring or bothering to take the time to learn about anything that does not interest or immediately affect one. It's a lack of curiosity in anything other than whatever they consider important.

I know lots of smart people with advanced degrees in positions of responsibility who are butt-ignorant of anything that does not fall within their narrow world-view.

Haele

[seabeyond]

245. 14 yr old. sermon. what preacher does. lbj. lyndon b johnson.

piece of cake. no pause, or thought. a given.

he thought i was really stupid, for a minute. until he realized probably a kids are stupid thread.

that was fun

[texanwitch]

252. What is lacking is common sense sometimes.

A lot of history went on before I was born but I know about it.

Just because it happened before you were born is no excuse for not knowing about it.

I worked this summer with some smart kids, some not so smart.

The smart kids wanted to learn everything about the the job.

The not so smart spent every free moment glued to their smartphones texting.

It was the same when I was a kid.

Some people are not curious about learning new things.

[alphafemale]

253. That's OK. Some of your elders probably didn't think very highly of your teen self either.

[DFab420]

256. I find it more shocking how butt-ignorant SOME old people are...

Like denying blacks and whites the right to marry in the 60's

Like denying gays the right to marry now

Like voting against their own interests because they are scared of the new generation..

Also I'm sure whomever these young women were are very appreciative of your derogatory comments towards their intelligence made on an online website.

Now instead of it being a simple conversation between two girls we can mock their private mistakes and make ourselves feel smarter....

Bullying alive and well on the internets.

Did you stop and inform either of these young women of what you were talking about? Or did you simply judge them from you learned pedestal and go about your day?

[randome]

260. Ageism in reverse.

[Prometheus Bound]

258. In Time Magazine, for example, 'sermon' was almost 10 times more common in the 50s than it is today.

So it is to be expected that older adults would be much more familiar with the word than younger ones.

[XemaSab]

261. I was born in the late 70's

I dunno what the hell words they were using in Time in the 50s.

[Prometheus Bound]

264. I'm kind of interested in this stuff. Here's 'sermon' in Time through the decades.

Number of times encountered
1920s - 143
1930s - 213
1940s - 187
1950s - 227
1960s - 175
1970s - 101
1980s - 66
1990s - 49
2000s - 25

[XemaSab]

265. Interesting that there was a double peak in the 30s and the 50s

I would suspect that the decline of the word in the last 30 years coincides with the decline of Time as a serious news magazine.

[Cleita]

259. You think that's bad, I know people half my age (between 30 and 40)

who are professionals, who have graduated from college, some with advance degrees, who don't know who Lyndon Johnson or even Jimmy Carter is or even what Congress does and why.

[Brigid]

262. Earlier this summer,

I saw, on either History Channel or H2, a program about Richard Nixon and Watergate. It was a real trip down memory lane for me, because at my age (54), I was there. I vividly remember the hearings on TV, the "Saturday Night Massacre," Nixon's resignation -- all of it. I recognized almost everyone in the footage that was used: Sam Irvin, John Dean, H. R. Haldeman, John Erlichman, G. Gordon Liddy, etc. Then I went to my Sociology class that afternoon and was met with blank stares from the younger ones when I talked about it before class. They would know nothing about how the scandal, coupled with Viet Nam, has affected attitudes toward government and authority to this day. You need a broad frame of reference in order to understand today's world, and I'm not sure many people, young or old, have that anymore.

[steve2470]

271. +1 nt

[fascisthunter]

270. No... actually, I'm not. The System works against them, so why should I expect different?

In other parts of the world, kids get much better eduction... you know why? Because of socialism.... most kids in Germany don't have parents who have to work three jobs to make ends meet, while living in a cesspool of others who are more inclined to try to steal, cheat and lie....

What do people expect from people....? Try growing up in a ghetto or an extremely poor, violent neighborhood where the "strong" only survive... try being a good student in an environment like that. Most couldn't do it... but they have no problems pointing fingers at the criminals who have come from this shit! Do you know what the percentage of success is for a child who grows up in an environment like that??????? NO????? Look it up idiots!

[XemaSab]

286. Exactly

Part of my descriptor "white" is that I grew up in Oakland and I will cut kids who literally have to dodge bullets some slack.

White kids in Redding have a lot of opportunities. I just wish they realized it.

[jp11]

274. Yeah, not really.

While I am put off by how insensitive and ignorant of other people some people are I generally don't take the extreme initial reaction of how 'butt-ignorant' some people are. But I'm not one who has extreme reactions to many things I'm very low key and when I am surprised I'm more speechless than judgmental I just don't naturally go to that.

As to what these two white american girls who graduated high school were doing for 13 years, I imagine they were doing lots of things and I highly doubt that their collective inability to recall a President decades before they were born or a word not commonly used in many circles are overwhelming evidence of how they 'sure didn't learn anything while going to school for 13 years.' But lets say they didn't learn much of anything could that be because they might have had problems at home or is it solely that they are to blame for their own ignorance?

Perhaps what is more telling is that after HS they are in low paying jobs seemingly being friendly with someone who looks down on them for not knowing all that they do after x years in the world.

[ileus]

279. Nope...I work in healthcare.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

280. Mere ignorance is curable and excusable

Being willfully ignorant, i.e. refusing to learn facts, is inexcusable and not particularly curable.

The type of person who makes me crazy is the type who knows the intimate details of the Kardashians' lives and/or all the Super Bowl winners since the beginning but can't tell you who their Congress critter or even governor is.

[Cleita]

282. Even I know more about the Kardashians than I ever cared to.

They just keep popping up everywhere even though I try to avoid anything about them. They still are there. This is the bread and circuses of the Romans. We get nonsense and gossip as news no matter where we turn.

[XemaSab]

291. I've gone to the tea party meetings three times (because it's good to know the enemy)

Once they asked me if I knew who my county supervisor was.

Yes, I got told by an actual, literal teabagger.

I at least had the sense to feel shame.

[Whisp]

287. That's a bit harsh

calling these kids stupid when you know shit all about them.

but I know something a bit more about you now

[Igel]

293. They've seen the words and the names.

They just didn't think it was relevant.

Relevance is the touchstone today. If you want to reach out to teenage girls, you have to have them read about teenage girls. They couldn't possibly be interested in anybody unlike themselves.

"Higher order thinking" is also key. "Evaluation"--coming up with an opinion--is erroneously ranked by some as more important than "knowing". As though you can have a fact-free evaluation process.

What the author says and means is fairly unimportant for some teachers. What do you think the author meant? Because, after all, you're important and the writer isn't.

Teenagers are always narcissistic. It's part of the program. Except that instead of fighting with it we too often encourage it.

So they've seen the word "sermon," but it wasn't on a list of the important words they needed to know. They were expected to not understand that part of the text.

The fact that we have those word lists is telling. Students aren't expected to be responsible for looking up words. It might disadvantage the bottom 15% of students. So we limit what they need to know. The top 10% continue to look them up. What's missing is the middle, the kids who would look them up if told to but fail to look them up when they're told they'll be spoonfed exactly what they need to learn to do well on the standardized test.

Subbed for a history class. It was all about finding the right words and names, whatever they were, to fill in the worksheet. In the end, what mattered were epithets. "The '60s was the ____ decade, the '70s was the _______ decade."

[MrMickeysMom]

294. I don't know if it's a result of dumbed down education or that their parents aren't too swift AND...

that stuff.

I must hold hands with you on this...

I asked a girl working at Panera Bread behind the counter, probably about the same age about my salad, which I felt was bad. I told her that the mandarin oranges tasted like they had fermented.

She said, "what's fermented mean?"

[NuttyFluffers]

298. no. but then i'm not surprised by how butt-ignorant people are in general to things i care about.

[treestar]

300. In defense of the LBJ person

It might be in the school system. We'd start American history at the 1492/1620 mark. We'd rarely get past WWI.

"History" may tend not to cover that which is in living memory but not current. I learned about WW2 because people talked about it.
History teachers just never got there.

So at this point in time, the 60s might be like that.

And then some people's parents/grandparents might not talk about much of that kind of thing. You're at a definite disadvantage if your family and surrounding people aren't all that intellectual.

So I'd just answer her. Tell her who he is and when he lived and get her curious

[XemaSab]

305. That's what I did

When I was coming up it got really vague after WWII, but now that's 65 years ago.

Especially with the rise of modern technology, there's no reason to be ignorant about history in the last 65 years.

[eppur_se_muova]

359. The problem with teaching recent history is that it's so politically charged.

How does a textbook author write about JFK, LBJ, Vietnam, civil rights, without risking the ire of parents for daring to criticize one side or the other ? You can't write about Watergate without mentioning that it was a REPUBLICAN president and his cronies responsible, and Democrats who insisted on finding out the truth -- it's hard to talk about that without realizing the Repubs are still around, and haven't exactly reformed themselves. Bound to raise the hackles of some Repub parents to see their heroes, or their obvious predecessors, held up to criticism, no matter how justified.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if high school history textbooks basically leave out any real details of history after Eisenhower, the last 'innocuous' President. This is where our textbooks faded out when I was in HS (class of '77) and I suspect they still fade out there today. How could there possibly be a neutral discussion of Ronald Reagan ?

Just think about how hard it will be to teach anything about the Iraq war. Probably only private colleges will be able to teach that there were no WMD's and that we went to war based on lies. (Think the Gulf of Tonkin incident gets discussed much, even today?)

Repubs recognize how dangerous it is for kids to learn how much they and their corporate cronies have screwed up our recent history. They sure don't want them realizing that the likes of Nixon, our most easily hated political figure, were mentors and godparents to the current crop of wingnuts (think Roger Ailes, to give just one example).

[Third Doctor]

304. all of the time

a lot of them know more about unimportant or imaginary matters than things that can actually impact their lives.

[Odin2005]

307. You think the average Boomer is any more knowledgeable???

[LeftyMom]

308. I think you're jumping to a conclusion.

The OP's Gen X, not a boomer.

[Honeycombe8]

315. In a word, yes. When I was a kid, we were required to read.

That gives kids general knowledge, and they learn a vocabulary that is not from a list.

The OP was talking about common, general words that any 10 year old would know. Or should know.

[seabeyond]

321. i cannot even begin to list the books the boys have read in school.

they read tons, still. both in classes and outside.

the classes my boys take anyway. the senior year english is going to be mostly literature.

[kiva]

353. Yes.

Not because Boomers are intrinsically smarter but because our education was more demanding.

[GaYellowDawg]

309. It's a result of a decade of NCLB

The most important thing that they're taught in school is how to take a standardized test. It's really not their fault. I see a lot of bright, hardworking students who do their best to shrug off all of that crap and actually learn.

[Honeycombe8]

316. Do kids read any more? We read a lot of books, when I was in school (long long ago). nt

[justabob]

320. some do, but

I asked my son today if he had a list of the books they'd be reading this semester in English class so I could go get them. He said, "we don't do that, only the AP class". He went on to say that none of the kids (parents) in his class would buy them and read them so they do short stories and break it down other ways. I was shocked. I had to read something like ten novels/stories including two Shakespeare when I was a sophomore in public school.

Fortunately, my son likes to read and we have a well stocked library at home. I already have a pile of books for him to get started on apart from whatever they are doing at school.

[seabeyond]

323. i have been surprised the number of books and variety my boys have read over the years

i just responded in a post above. but, my boys take AP english. so that must be why. i was wondering. that is such a bummer. i cannot even recall, but excellent books. i am tired and it is late

[justabob]

324. this is our first year in the big public system here

Dallas is suffering from years of craptacular administration (something like five or six corrupt or inept superintendents that only stayed a year or two, budget issues even before all the recent slashing and NCLB crap, etc.) He's at one of the better schools in the system too. It is frustrating and a bit shocking. Until now, my son has read some great books in school and had a more traditional education. The good news is that this is an area where I can actually help and supplement his work at school, so I am not worried. I wish he could make the jump to AP... maybe next year.

[seabeyond]

334. but they have terrific cross country teams, .... lol

i tease.

we do not have any of that in our area. i havent heard of anything. i am in amarillo. what grade is he in?

my kids were in private, but they are all religious private in my area. by my oldest fourth year i had to pull him out. he is stubborn and was so angry back in 2004 with all they ugly and hypocrisy of the christians. christian coalition was going strong during the kerry election, and between that and passion of christ it really change the whole feel of the school he was going to. he was flunking bible. he refused to open the book. i couldnt get him into the public school i wanted either, so was holding out until i could get him into the public school i wanted. couldnt wait any longer.

i had heard so many bad things about public. kinda like this thread.

i have been nothing but pleased with the kids education since getting them into public. the teachers and adm. i have watched the kids learn material way earlier than we did and much more than we did. and i am really tired of the whine the education is not there. but i do not see that at all. oldest is a senior. he has 4 and half college accredit classes and he has 4 this school year. that is gonna save me in cost for college.

the opportunity for the kid to get an education is there. in the schools my kids have gone, the teachers welcome parental participation

eventually both kids had to drop AP math, and then the AP science. may not be AP for all the classes, but the ones they excel. my kids are history, and english and the non math science, lol. even if it is jsut a couple AP courses, it is a good thing.

good luck to your son

[justabob]

346. thanks

I am sure we'll be fine once we get over the culture shock from the private-public transition. His school is one of the better ones in the DISD, it's on the national Top 100 list put out every year, but it is not like the private schools where everything was more like I remember it being at school in my day. I agree with what you are saying about education in general. I've been telling my son for years that you get out of it what you are willing to put into it.

My son is in the 10th grade and likes the same subjects as yours. His best subject by far is history/social studies, but he does well in English, and math.... we'll see how he does in Chemistry this year. I am hoping after this year, he will have more AP choices going forward. I would like him to get the college credits like you mentioned.

[deutsey]

348. A couple years ago, I overheard two kids talking about reading

One said to the other that: "Reading is for fags." (Direct quote).

[seabeyond]

350. my kids are big readers. when they were young, i was told by brother that i did not "let"

them be kids because i allowed them to read so much, adult books also. my oldest was such an interested reader. he wanted non fiction on all kinds of subjects. i was accused of being a bad parent. i have heard both adults and kids say.... i aint reading no books. use the poor grammar to be cute. i cringe. this is the battle that both parents and kids that want to do well battle with their peers. my son says now, as a senior, the kids want to be smart. in middle school they fight to be dumb.

[Spider Jerusalem]

322. Honestly I'm frequently shocked by how ignorant some *adults* are, never mind young people.

Although the lacunae in knowledge are in different areas they're none the less staggering for all that (and I could cite numerous examples from this very forum, but won't).

[NYC Liberal]

329. Adults are so much wiser. Just ask 43-year-old Christine O'Donnell about the First Amendment

or 40-year-old Dana Perino about the Cuban Missile Crisis.

[Codeine]

341. Ignorant motherfuckers come in every age range.

Honestly, there's just a lack of intellectual curiosity in most folks that I find quite baffling.

[Blue_Tires]

347. I work at a university...Why don't you tell me ALL about it?

I try to be understanding and compassionate, thinking back to an age when I thought I knew it all, but was more like

[ZombieHorde]

354. Since neither of those topics involve butts, I don't think calling them butt-ignorant is fair.

Just because they are unfamiliar with the speed-metal band, Lyndon Johnson and the Christian Sermons, doesn't mean they are ignorant.

[Iggy]

360. "STUPIDITY is the disease of America"

Norman Mailer.

do a search sometime-- 100 years ago typical people in the U.S. knew the meaning of
something like 25,000 words. today it's significantly less. then many Americans were
required to study Latin, and knew the Latin root words for many of our words.

Now, welcome to Stupidville. welcome to what happens when people sit in front of the Tee
Vee for 6-8 hours per day-- or longer. this is one of the main reasons I don't believe the U.S. has
a long term future.

[hughee99]

371. I'll bet one could grow up to be a rocket scientist

and not be familiar with the word "sermon" or possibly even know who LBJ is. They have roughly 50 minutes a day for roughly 180 days for 4 years to teach the history of the world. Maybe they were sick the day they did LBJ.

As far as sermon goes, if you're not religious, why would you know this? I don't remember it being taught in school, and I'd like to think I turned out okay not knowing what a khutbah is (until 5 minutes ago).

It's possible they didn't learn anything, it's possible they're just stupid, or maybe "Who's LBJ" and "What's a sermon?" isn't a sufficient test to accurately assess one's knowledge.