Do other people ever astonish you with their lack of general knowledge?

[Ohnotanothernamechange]

Just recently I've spoken to a few people who expressed amazement when they disocovered that Chernobyl is a real place. I know that we all have gaps in our knowledge but how the hell you can not know about the Chernobyl disaster? It's a bit like the simpleton on a twitter some years ago who was amazed to discover that the Titanic was a real ship and not figment of James Cameron's imagination....

I remember one time a work colleague was going to Rome and when I told them I'd been they asked me if there was lots of stuff to see and do there. I was like well of course, it's Rome. And they asked me what they were. I then had to list the coliseum, the Trevi Fountain, The Spanish Steps, The Vatican, the countless Roman Ruins etc not to mention the countless designer shops and fabulous restaurants. They genuinely had no idea what was in Rome. I was gobsmacked. This was someone I'd assumed was pretty intelligent as well.

I can't work out if I just know too much, or these people are just really ignorant?

Many people don't actively seek out knowledge or information, don't read books or watch the news/documentaries, so if no one has ever told them and they didn't learn it at school, they don't know.

All of those are choices. They choose to be ignorant. Almost everybody has access to the internet now and even with the cuts to library services most people would be able to go to a public library to look things up in a book. There are any number of documentaries on TV and radio. If people who learned to read to a reasonable standard at school don't bother using any of these resources to acquire knowledge and understanding, that's a choice.

As for not knowing who the PM is, I'd be dubious about somebody who didn't know that until an election was in the offing making a real effort to get to grips with all the party manifestos so they could vote on the issues. Their prerogative, but the dreadful state of British politics at the moment might be helped if more people held our politicians to account. Starting point there is knowing who they are.

However it seems to be a modern thing for some people to sneer at others who have a wider general knowledge than they. I suspect it's insecurity.

Except that the opposite is happening on this thread. A lack of knowledge of history and politics gets you ridiculed on Mumsnet. But, as I mentioned earlier, a lack of knowledge of celebrity gossip gets you bullied at work.

our visit to Stonehenge. Not a single one of them had heard of it.

Were these Britush people who'd never heard of Stonehenge? God almighty.

I think young people's general knowledge is very poor these days for two reasons.

1. Schools seem to concentrate on just getting them through their exams, with no time to veer off onto other subjects.

1. Media is now very "targetted" and young people tend to just watch/read what they're interested in. When I was young (and there were only 4 TV channels & no internet) you ended up watching things for the sake of it, but you learned stuff that way.

Mind you, my DH is ancient and still doesn't know when the Bank Holidays are.

Blimey how snobby! No one is born knowing anything other than how to breathe and feed. You don't know what you don't know!

In some ways, I envy the people who go through their lives in what appears to be a cosy bubble of ignorance - and I mean that in terms of not knowing, being unaware and having no concept of so many things, rather than as a term of abuse.

But, on the other hand, not only are they immensely vulnerable to being taken advantage of, abused or of being persuaded to behave terribly by anybody who has the knack of sounding convincing, they're also ignorant of so much beauty and good in the world.

As a 25 year old who didn't go to school since year 6 (had issues) I can say Yanbu. It amazes me too, i would understand some things but lots of it are really simple things.

I agree, Mitzi. Freshstart, nobody knows anything at birth, obviously. But we all spend more than a decade in full-time education. What do some people do during that time? Not much, it would seem.

The lad who served me in Tesco's picked up the vegetable I was buying and asked me what it was - it was a cauliflower! My neighbour when informed I was going to Cornwall for a holiday said "where's that then". We live in the South.

Bobby: yes there is too much dross on TV and young people are drawn to it as if it was crack. I still remember stuff I saw on Blue Peter 35 years ago but some kids these days (including my youngest) get home from school and go straight on the Xbox and learn nothing all evening. My eldest does have a thirst for knowledge but my youngest was probably exposed to computer games too young, and consequently chooses to do that over other activities which may actually teach him something.

Top set English at my secondary school don’t even know how to spell words like February. I despair.

My husband has had two assistants who clearly hadn't studied geography/ever looked at a map, one didn't know where Jersey was, the other didn't know what the capital of Belgium is. Both were university educated, one had teachers for parents.

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to advise on something at work. And then it transpired that it was Ireland, not the UK. Client (based in UK) did not know that Ireland has its own legal system. Admittedly as an English lawyer I can be a solicitor in Ireland without doing another exam, but the law is not the same!

I used to work with someone who hadn’t a clue of things like a terrorist incident happening, Harry and Megs getting married and the Grenfell disaster. Me and my other colleague were 🤦🏼‍♀️ How can you be so ignorant of such big news? Do people like this live in a bubble or on the moon? It beggars belief.

A sizeable minority of millennials.

Most struggle with direction, can’t tell north, south, east or west even on a sunny day at noon. Nor can many memorise an 11 digit number, such as a phone number. Or the size of Russia relative to Europe. And other stuff.

Too much reliance on phones.

Conversely, I was really surprised a few years ago to find that loads of my students were incredibly knowledgeable about Chernobyl. It turned out that Pripyat is a key location in several editions of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare.

A couple of years ago, when I still had a facebook account, I put a general "I can't wait to get home from work" status and one of my friends from the US posted a reply along the lines of why are you are work shock] . I asked why I wouldn't be and she said because it was thanksgiving. I had to explain that we don't celebrate thanksgiving in the UK as it is a US holiday, she was really shocked as she thought the whole world celebrated it. She is a highly educated and thoroughly lovely person who still to this day exclaims her shock about this to me.

l worked with a woman who insisted unicorns were real, (swore she'd seen one at a horse show) but said dinosaurs didn't exist, they were "just piles of bones they've put together in museums."

I am shocked also how some people keep themselves ignorant and wear it as a badge of pride.

My sister insists there is no difference between a river and a lake. My mother laughed at me when I told her when my son arrived in Alaska after driving across the Yukon he was glad to be back on U.S. soil. She told me she thought it was so funny I thought Alaska was part of the U.S. It turns out she thought Alaska was a country not a state.

My dad on the other hand was an encyclopedia of knowledge and we'd just look at each other in disbelief at some of the things my mother and sister said.

One day my mother declared there were not as many stars over England as there had been a few years ago. She wasn't talking about light pollution as they had lived in the same village for 40 years with no changes to block the view of the stars. She believed the stars came and went like clouds.

Their ignorance took on an dangerous twist when my father became very ill with advanced Parkinson's. When he had trouble walking, even getting up out of a chair they believed that getting him on antidepressants would get him walking again because 'people who just sit around all day are suffering from depression'.

They got a GP to prescribe my father antidepressants which I read might be the wrong ones for someone with PD. He started hallucinating two weeks after starting them and when I told my mother she needed to talk to his PD specialist about it all she refused because "I want dad to walk again". My sister backed her up. They were convinced his worsening symptoms were just depression and he could snap out of it with antidepressants.

Reading what I just wrote I believe my mother and sister were just plain stupid, but my god they could talk your ear off about fashion, celebrities, make-up and who had plastic surgery and who didn't.....

My hairdresser asked me what the holocaust was when I was talking about a trip to Poland.

WTAF, I was appalled. So much so I couldn’t even be arsed to continue the conversation. She is 32.

Or the size of Russia relative to Europe

Oh! Oh! I know this!

ahem Fucking massive

YANBU OP. I like knowing things. It annoys my MIL that I know random things about lots of subjects. Her problem, not mine.

Years ago, my cousin went to visit a friend she'd been at uni with who was living and working in Germany. While they were out and about, the friend commented that there were "loads of streets called eingangstrasse".
Excusable maybe if she was just visiting, but she'd been there for two years. This woman has a very decent degree and was working as a teacher.

Is it the echo chamber effect perhaps where people tend to stick to the subjects they have an interest in, on social media? So they don't watch the news or discuss things in RL as much as we used to?

Having said that, I used to know a lot but due to a medical issue, have forgotten shitloads of stuff I knew, but mostly stuff that's happened in the last few years. What's particularly weird for me at the moment is (I know this sounds bizarre!) people who have died, which I was knew/aware of the time but have since forgotten. Was absolutely astounded the other day that Dale Winton was dead. And Anthony Bourdain and Mark E Smith...it's shocking to me when I hear things like this.

So I would probably be the type of person to go "oh my gosh I didn't know that" about recent events, but I did know it. Im constantly surprised at major things that have happened. Worried now that people might just think I'm an uneducated stupid ignoramus!

Years ago l worked with a woman who thought lamb (the meat) was sheep. She wouldn't believe me when l told her it was actually 'lamb' as in 'baby sheep', and not 'grown up' sheep. She was horrified when she realised.

Yeah. I love my DH but I swear he must have grown up with his eyes closed and his hands over his ears. He takes nothing at all in. But he's also an amazing husband and father so....

YANBU.

What amazes even more are people who think the earth is flat, that the moon gives light or that the Plague happened in 1900.

I think its a shame. I certainly dont think I am way abpove anone else or that I know everything. Far from. dc1(15yo) is far more knowledgeable in geography than I am for example (he has an amazing knowledge whereas i have a lot of missing bits in mine).
I have more f an issue with it when this ignorance then drives people to take decisions that are unwise eg health wise as AmeriAnn or when voting in an election, taking financial decisions etc etc

@WeBuiltCisCityOnSexistRoles

This is very true. I have forgotten lots of things I once new and it is very frustrating sometimes when I know I know but just can’t produce the information in my brain. Partly due to getting older and also due to my being very ill with pneumonia a few years ago.