n_y_japlander
Coupled with technology our kids are leaps and bounds ahead of our grand parents, parents,heck, even us, when it comes to intelligence !!!
Not really. I like the theory, it sounds pithy and pat, but it's not so.
People now are as “intelligent” as they were when they were making stone axes 50'000 years ago and possibly longer. We haven't changed much since then.
But as for knowing about facts and figures… Kids these days have
access to more but are more
general in their knowledge and less
specialised, so while they know
ABOUT more, they actually
know less. That's just how the world has changed, almost everyone is like that really.
I'll give you an example:
Back in the early 20thC when people went to school, even the poorest schools, they learned Western history in some detail, from all the kings of England, all the wars in Europe, to the settling of their own country (in in Australia or America), and other bits and pieces about their own place in the world. They also learned Latin, learned what was in the bible and all the history and myth there (and that's important because it had a massive influence on Western history and culture), they also learned French as well, and of course the detailed rules of English grammar. There were prizes for geography, which they had to know in detail and they also learned all classical Western history from the Egyptians, to the Greeks, to the Romans and so on.
(-this is
Western teaching, and English speaking at that. It was different for other places and other peoples)
Who knows all that stuff today? Sure you can look it up and you don't think you need it, but you don't KNOW to look it up, and you don't
KNOW that you need it, which you do: since knowing all that actually helps you make sense of what you hear in the news about the world
today, makes it easier to understand other languages and gives you a better sense of your place in the world.
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Without that specialised learning we have adults thinking stupidly that the bible is just about religion, not realising that if you know about it you can learn about why 2000 years of Western history since the formation of Christianity has gone the way it did, why art and other culture evolved the way it did to produce the world we're living in now. If you know about that you can understand why Iran is like it is, why the Russians are suspicious of the west, why countries have certain borders and still hate each other, etc, etc.
Without that learning people stupidly think they already
KNOW that stuff because they know about it, but they rarely ever bother to find out really and just make up their own reasons based on the general pittance they
DO have. Take me for example; I don't even know it all! Not even close!
So that's a big reason for ignorance and the extreme focus on pop-culture: people don't actually KNOW very much about anything, so it's not important to them. They ride on the backs of their more knowledgeable forebears, assume they can find out about things when they need it but lack the background in the basics to understand it anyway, and in the meantime only focus on what amuses them.
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Oh bugger! Another tirade!
…sorry, sorry, sorry. :(
