Basic things younger people don't know.

Didnt know

I notice young people don't hold / use a knife and fork in a way I consider proper. I suppose it doesn't really matter, but knives and forks are designed to be held in a certain way. No big deal I recognize that but I wonder why?

They don’t seem to realise leaving the lights on costs money and just switching them off saves money.

Caught my daughters boyfriend opening a sachet of silica gel to sprinkle on his crisps

Oh the things we didn't tell them! ? Last week I went to meet my new GDD - (DDs 3rd) - Turns out, DD was convinced Curry powder was made from curry leaves - easy mistake

The way a lot hold pens and pencils in their fist. My grandchildren, teenagers, had never even heard of World War 2. Plus they go to a Lutheran school! They have only heard of the Vietnam war. As for events like the Russian Rev or French Rev - nada. Mind you, they know about nuclear physics and psychotherapy.

They dont need to remember stuff...they carry wee computers around with them in the shape of mobile phones .They can find out about anything at the push of a button .
My daughters ex SIL made us howl with laughter when she bought a cheese plant ,because she thought she could grow cheese cheaper than buying it ! She also didn't know chips were made from potatoes She was 30 ish at the time .So people who dont know things isn't new

Shelflife

I notice young people don't hold / use a knife and fork in a way I consider proper. I suppose it doesn't really matter, but knives and forks are designed to be held in a certain way. No big deal I recognize that but I wonder why?

Maybe because their parents didn't teach them.

growstuff

Shelflife

I notice young people don't hold / use a knife and fork in a way I consider proper. I suppose it doesn't really matter, but knives and forks are designed to be held in a certain way. No big deal I recognize that but I wonder why?

Maybe because their parents didn't teach them.

My teenage GC were certainly taught how to use cutlery, but now, at 17 and 14, choose to use them differently.

GS just seems to shovel food into his mouth and GD abandons her knife and uses her fork only, in one hand, even though it seems to make getting the actual food into her mouth harder than if she used both.

These habits seem to have been acquired since starting secondary school.

We all eat with just a fork because we don't eat meat, so there's very little to cut up!
If you're eating pie or sausage (either or without meat), the same is true.

Surely most of the things mentioned (changing a fuse, where cheese comes from, chips are made of potato) come from having things explained to them as children, usually in the home.

Basic school lessons in Civics, about how our system works and why it's a bright idea to join in and at least vote. how you can ask your MP for help. who looks after what.

I know we didn't get much of it at school, we got some, but it seems to be every more pressing.

I helped a cafe worker at the gym whose autistic son was treated badly at school and she isnt being heard. She had no idea her (quite a good one) MP could help and didnt really know what they did or how they got there except vaguely appear in parliament and vote.

All electrical items come with a plug attached now and an isolated fuse which you can remove and replace. There must be a reason this adaption was brought into production, safety perhaps?

Wyllow, I think you raise a really good point. I've been talking to some of the young people I work with about registering to vote as they are all worrying about their energy bills but most of them don't vote. They say (quite a lot of them) they don't know how it works. So I have told them, they need to register and then read up on the candidates and each election/by election/council election and chose someone who fits their view (not fool proof I know ) and believes in things that matter to them. I have said to them, they cannot be complacent that other people will vote in their best interests.

Re cutlery, I also work in a multi cultural environment and some people <gasp> eat dinners with their hands Some cultures are not taught nor find it necessary to use a fork. I just can't get excited about it.

I'm concerned young people don't know how lovely they are. There is so much pressure on them to look and be a certain way, from their own looks to cars, houses and the interference from the 'the outside world' is immediate via phones/social media. It can't be healthy for them

You’re right Jane. When I was doing my teacher training the students were all so self conscious and shy. Not really helpful for primary teachers. They were all so afraid to speak. It was so strange. And this was before the pandemic, so lord knows what it’s like now

Not understanding cheese plants and chips in one’s 30’s is very extreme paddyann
She must have found everyday life rather a challenge!
Food preparation especially

We had a visiting student from Kosova and he was amazed to find that potatoes were growing underground on a neighbours farm.

I’ve got an absolute wealth of these, but most of them include SEN somewhere along the line; and / or a childhood deprived of everyday experiences, basic instruction, and conversation

Since everyone, including young people, carry a computer in their pocket, why do they not look it up?

When my children were in junior school, around the early 1980s, I read a letter in a newspaper from an 18 year old A level school leaver saying that school didn't teach anything useful. This person did not know how to open a bank account, get a mortgage, tax or insure a car and several other things.

So when my children came out of school, I asked them whether they knew how to open a bank account etc. DS was the elder and his response to the bank account question was: 'I would go into a bank and ask.' We went down the list and his response was always. I would go into a building society/post office etc etc and ask. There was one he didn't know, but thought and said, 'I expect there is somewhere I could go and ask.'

This divergence between what older people think younger people should know and what they do know has always been there, and depressingly, despite the omnipresence of google, too many of them never seem to have been taught how to find things out for themselves.

My Nephew was asked to get the milk out of my fridge.
I have it in pint bottles, he looked at an unused full bottle and asked how you get into it?
He thought pushing down the foil top was cool.. He's got a degree in Environmental science!!

A young man in the supermarket was collecting items for a recipe, he asked me if I knew where he could find tepid water, he was about 20

I gave a neighbour a housewarming gift of a pineapple plant with small pineapple attached. She thought pineapples hung down from trees like pears rather than like a spider plant’s babies.

It’s not just young people, I’ve met quite a few adults who don’t know quite a lot of basic facts.
We’ve had quite a few on GN.

I wonder how young people have a clue about how to use (paper) maps. They just use their phones. What would they do in a crisis, without Internet access?

Amusing stories are fine, but we are all still discovering things, even in our seventies. I do not denigrate young people for what they don’t yet know. I knew nothing about running a household when I got married, or about bringing up babies when I had my first.

I don't remember teaching my boys about banks, insurance, and that sort of thing (I probably don't know much myself). Nowadays they are the ones who tell me.

They can all mend things around the house, have potty trained their children and sent them off to school without any input from us. Our parents didn't teach us how to do it, but we muddled through, and our grandparents most certainly weren't involved in our upbringing. Neither in my family nor in DH's.

Sometimes it is odd what young people don't know. What is depressing is when they don't even want to know.