
Are we raising a generation of nincompoops? - robg
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/09/27/are_we_raising_a_generation_of_nincompoops/?page=full
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_delirium
I don't see a very convincing discussion of how this differs from any other
generation. Yes, people are using electronic devices for some things that they
used to do mechanically. And people in the past generation or two also did---
and used mechanical devices for some things that they used to do manually. The
helplessness angle in particular predates even that, and goes back to
specialization, where people would have no idea how to do things that once
were considered basic knowledge, because they now just buy them or pay someone
else to do them.

Some of the complaints seem very similar to some of the stuff you can read
from the late 19th century, where farmers complain that city-dwellers couldn't
milk a cow if their life depended on it, and seem to think that food comes
from grocery stores. I could even buy that maybe we _should_ have a wider
range of basic DIY knowledge, but I don't see it as a unique problem of this
generation. Why is kids not knowing how ice is made a bigger loss to society
than kids not knowing how butter is made, which the article author doesn't
seem too worried about?

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BigZaphod
This is a pretty stupid article. It basically boils down to, "I'm old and it's
my right to assume kids are stupid even if maybe they aren't - but I know they
are! So there!"

