http://www.boston.com/new...ncompoops/

Could you explain the post to me Hal? I couldn't figure out how to open the link.

Thanks.

Are we raising a generation of nincompoops?
By Beth J. Harpaz, Associated Press Writer | September 27, 2010

NEW YORK --Second-graders who can't tie shoes or zip jackets. Four-year-olds in Pull-Ups diapers. Five-year-olds in strollers. Teens and preteens befuddled by can openers and ice-cube trays. College kids who've never done laundry, taken a bus alone or addressed an envelope.

Are we raising a generation of nincompoops? And do we have only ourselves to blame? Or are some of these things simply the result of kids growing up with push-button technology in an era when mechanical devices are gradually being replaced by electronics?

Susan Maushart, a mother of three, says her teenage daughter "literally does not know how to use a can opener. Most cans come with pull-tops these days. I see her reaching for a can that requires a can opener, and her shoulders slump and she goes for something else."

Teenagers are so accustomed to either throwing their clothes on the floor or hanging them on hooks that Maushart says her "kids actually struggle with the mechanics of a clothes hanger."

Many kids never learn to do ordinary household tasks. They have no chores. Take-out and drive-through meals have replaced home cooking. And busy families who can afford it often outsource house-cleaning and lawn care.

"It's so all laid out for them," said Maushart, author of the forthcoming book "The Winter of Our Disconnect," about her efforts to wean her family from its dependence on technology. "Having so much comfort and ease is what has led to this situation -- the Velcro sneakers, the Pull-Ups generation. You can pee in your pants and we'll take care of it for you!"

The issue hit home for me when a visiting 12-year-old took an ice-cube tray out of my freezer, then stared at it helplessly. Raised in a world where refrigerators have push-button ice-makers, he'd never had to get cubes out of a tray -- in the same way that kids growing up with pull-tab cans don't understand can openers.

But his passivity was what bothered me most. Come on, kid! If your life depended on it, couldn't you wrestle that ice-cube tray to the ground? It's not that complicated!

Mark Bauerlein, author of the best-selling book "The Dumbest Generation," which contends that cyberculture is turning young people into know-nothings, says "the absence of technology" confuses kids faced with simple mechanical tasks.

But Bauerlein says there's a second factor: "a loss of independence and a loss of initiative." He says that growing up with cell phones and Google means kids don't have to figure things out or solve problems any more. They can look up what they need online or call mom or dad for step-by-step instructions. And today's helicopter parents are more than happy to oblige, whether their kids are 12 or 22.

"It's the dependence factor, the unimaginability of life without the new technology, that is making kids less entrepreneurial, less initiative-oriented, less independent," Bauerlein said.

Teachers in kindergarten have always had to show patience with children learning to tie shoes and zip jackets, but thanks to Velcro closures, today's kids often don't develop those skills until they are older. Sure, harried parents are grateful for Velcro when they're trying to get a kid dressed and out the door, and children learn to tie shoes eventually unless they have a real disability. But if they're capable of learning to tie their shoes before they learn to read, shouldn't we encourage them?

Some skills, of course, are no longer useful. Kids don't need to know how to add Roman numerals, write cursive or look things up in a paper-bound thesaurus. But is snail-mail already so outmoded that teenagers don't need to know how to address an envelope or put the stamp in the right spot? Ask a 15-year-old to prepare an envelope some time; you might be shocked at the result.

Lenore Skenazy, who writes a popular blog called Free-Range Kids, based on her book by the same name, has a different take. Skenazy, whose approach to parenting is decidedly anti-helicopter, agrees that we are partly to blame for our children's apparent incompetence, starting when they are infants.

"There is an onslaught of stuff being sold to us from the second they come out of the womb trying to convince us that they are nincompoops," she said. "They need to go to Gymboree or they will never hum and clap! To teach them how to walk, you're supposed to turn your child into a marionette by strapping this thing on them that holds them up because it helps them balance more naturally than 30,000 years of evolution!"

Despite all this, Skenazy thinks today's kids are way smarter than we give them credit for: "They know how to change a photo caption on a digital photo and send it to a friend. They can add the smiley face without the colon and parentheses! They never took typing but they can type faster than I can!"

Had I not been there to help that 12-year-old with the ice-cube tray, she added, the kid surely would have "whipped out his iPhone and clicked on his ice cube app to get a little video animated by a 6-year-old that explained how you get ice cubes out of a tray."

Friends playing devil's advocate say I'm wrong to indict a whole generation for the decline of skills they don't need. After all, we no longer have to grow crops, shoot deer, prime a pump or milk a cow to make dinner, but it was just a couple of generations ago that you couldn't survive in many places without that knowledge.

Others say this is simply the last gasp of the analog era as we move once and for all to the digital age. In 10 years, there won't be any ice cube trays; every fridge will have push-button ice.

But Bauerlein, a professor at Emory University who has studied culture and American life, defends my right to rail against the ignorance of youth.

"That's our job as we get old," he said. "A healthy society is healthy only if it has some degree of tension between older and younger generations. It's up to us old folks to remind teenagers: 'The world didn't begin on your 13th birthday!' And it's good for kids to resent that and to argue back. We want to criticize and provoke them. It's not healthy for the older generation to say, 'Kids are kids, they'll grow up.'

"They won't grow up," he added, "unless you do your job by knocking down their hubris."

------

Online:

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/

For lack of a more eloquent response...Oh please!

Every generation complains about the prior. Upset that lazy kids cannot operate washers and dryers? Well, people used to complain that lazy kids used washers and dryers instead of washboards and clotheslines. Before that, I'm sure people complained about lazy kids who didn't have to walk miles to the river to wash their clothes because they had water in their home.

Lazy kids can't use a can opener? What about the lazy kids who could use can openers but got their canned goods from the store instead of canning everything they produced out of the garden?

Lazy kids can't operate an ice tray? What about the kids who could operate the ice tray but were so spoiled because they had the luxury of ice, when in the good old days, no one had ice.

The Velcro complaint is ridiculous. How many teenagers do you know who wear Velcro shoes? Quite obviously they learn to tie their shoes after the age of five. Velcro shoes are simply not cool.

Incompetent kids don't know Roman Numerals. Past generations would say that incompetent kids no longer had to study Latin either.

I could go on and on and on. Bottom line, every generation embraces a new level of technology. Parents who accuse kids of being incompetent and lazy today had no problem embracing microwaves and computers when they were younger. People complain about cell phone use. Before cell phones, people complained about telephones being the end of letters and the written word. Were they nincompoops?

Change is inevitable. Learn, grow or die.

I agree 100% Denise. The same kids that are annoying the hell out of you because they "can't fill an ice tray" might be kind enough to re-program your computer, help you send an e-mail, show you how to send a picture on your phone, show you how to buy that hard-to-find gift on-line.....ya know, the stuff you're too big of a nincompoop to figure out on your own!

I dont know how to tell the time on an analog face clock unless it has a bird that pops out and chirps the hours at me.

I just wanted to see if the Webmaster's filter would allow nincompoop - I thought maybe it would come out as nincomkaka or something like that.

I think we should blame the schools. In an August issue of the Onion there was an article that said that more parents would rather have the children "school-homed" than home-schooled. Think what the school has to offer in independent living skills. The cafeterias put out an outstanding array of finger foods such a chicken strips and fish sticks, tacos, french fries, carrot and celery sticks. Fast foods restaurants do not require utensils. As for potty training, why bother. When you get old, you'll need Attends. Why not just keep making bigger Huggies. We can surely hire school aides at $8.64 an hour to keep changing the kids. We, old fogies, can always find a way to worry about the next generations. Remember, our parents were the best generation and it's been a down hill slide ever since.

I think we should blame the schools. In an August issue of the Onion there was an article that said that more parents would rather have the children "school-homed" than home-schooled. Think what the school has to offer in independent living skills. The cafeterias put out an outstanding array of finger foods such a chicken strips and fish sticks, tacos, french fries, carrot and celery sticks. Fast foods restaurants do not require utensils. As for potty training, why bother. When you get old, you'll need Attends. Why not just keep making bigger Huggies. We can surely hire school aides at $8.64 an hour to keep changing the kids. We, old fogies, can always find a way to worry about the next generations. Remember, our parents were the best generation and it's been a down hill slide ever since.

Well, at least we now know that Gunnar comes by his "greyhound complex" honestly.

This also reminds me of the recent talk about extending the school year because of America's continued slide in rank in school performance.

While results of year-round schools are mixed, and often conflicting, I think Pres. Obama is missing a key factor in his proposed solution. Tacking on additional school time, in my opinion, will not stop our descent in the rankings. The failing in the U.S. is not a failing of our school systems (okay, maybe a little bit of that), but rather a failing of parenting, and society in general. The kids who are disruptive in class, don't return their homework and don't have parents at home to help them or take an interest in their success, will still be disruptive in class, not return homework and have no one at home whether they attend school seven hours per day, nine months of the year, or nine hours per day, twelve months of the year.

Teachers are not miracle workers. If you send them a six-piece watercolor set, don't expect them to return to you the Mona Lisa. Almost without exception, our children's failures are the result of our poor parenting and lack of interest in their success. Trying to place the blame anywhere else is simply scapegoating at its finest.

Change will not occur until parents start tackling head-on the immense responsibilities that come with deciding to have and raise a child. Perhaps that is why being "school-homed" is such an appealing idea.

I wouldn't have a clue how to sign my name with an old bird's feather and a little bottle of ink.
First time I had to drive the old Studebaker truck I couldn't figure out how to crank it over. No start button. Not even a starter pedal like the old Chevy. Do you know how to start it?
How many people know how to choke an engine to get it started?
"Children Learn What They Live".

But his passivity was what bothered me most.

This is the key point. It is not the particular generation's technology, but the inability or unwillingness to attempt to use a technology one does not already know. The teenager who gives up on cans without pull tops, and the grandparent who gives up on mail without paper both have the same problem. When faced with a challenge, every generation has some people in it who tackle the challenge and solve it, and others who slump their shoulders and walk away.

When faced with a challenge, every generation has some people in it who tackle the challenge and solve it, and others who slump their shoulders and walk away.

Precisely.

Probably true. I remember as a kid when faced with a challenge I'd do my best to solve it, whether it was lawn mower engine that quit working or I wanted to build a tree house.

The kicker is that I had to be interested in it...if I wasn't, no amount of cajoling could get me to tackle the issue. So...give me a motorcycle engine, an electronics problem, etc...I'd stay up all night, but Algebra? Pffft!

I missed that, but you're right. And unfortunately I fear that I have become that person who gives up. I used to be the kid that people called to come and get all their stereo stuff hooked up, or the new gadget working on the tractor. Now my DVD player frustrates me to the point I have to hand the remote to my 14 year old and ask her to get "Modern Marvels" back up on the screen for me...
The difference would be that young ones need to face the challenge, while we old people recall how simple things used to be.
That's a great article.

This is a topic that greatly interests me. My husband and I have consciously tried to raise our child to be an independent and self-sufficient adult. She seems to be heading that direction quite nicely. But I am concerned that because of our reliance on technology kids are not learning some of the basics that could keep them independent. For example, cell phones are great but they are not a substitute for making good decisions. Do they cause the child to be more reckless because they have an instant line to mommy if they need it? I don't know. I do know that a friend of mine does not think it necessary to teach her driving child how to change a flat tire because she has a cell phone and can just call AAA. I think knowing how to change a tire is a necessary skill if you drive. I've changed flat tires twice, both in rural areas.

As far as parental involvement there's no excuse for not knowing what your kid is doing in school. Many areas use a computer program to track grades online and parents can check on individual assignments at any time.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news...y-11263559

Hal, I still can't remember how to open these 'link' things. Could you post the text for me.

Great.

Thanks.

Hal, I still can't remember how to open these 'link' things. Could you post the text for me.

Great.

Thanks.

Dillpickle,

It's easy. You just stand up and shout each letter of the link into the top of your monitor. If it doesn't work, you either made a mistake or didn't do it loud enough. Keep trying.

Dillpickle - rummage around in the cupboard until you find one that's a pull-top.

Um, Dillpickle. To open a link you just click on it.

This is the key point. It is not the particular generation's technology, but the inability or unwillingness to attempt to use a technology one does not already know.

This is precisely what I see; The lack of will to endeavor to solve the problem. I don't care if a kid can show me something technical on a computer. What I do care about is that a kid can figure out how to open a can and feed themselves.

During my college education to get a degree to teach and train adults my instructor admitted that the education system is no longer designed to teach people to think, but instead teaches them how to perform a job. This greatly limits their skill set. Thinkers solve problems, and many of today's youths that I run into do not demonstrate the ability to solve problems and think creatively. I'm glad someone else noticed.

When I see the word "nincompoop", I always think of.....



"What a gulli-bull! What a nincom.....poop!"

I remember the joke as "What a Nincow.....Poop" but that was many years ago so could be wrong.

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words.

When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of
elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of
restraint.

~ Hesiod, Eighth Century B.C

You forgot: "What an 'Em ... bezzle' (imbecile)

Not to mention "What a maroon" (moron)

Yah...I forgot that one! Thanks!