Things you can’t believe your teenager doesn’t know

[Annoyingwurringnoise]

My teenage DS, who went to a Church of England primary school, does not know the song Little Donkey. I am utterly perplexed as to how this can possibly be. He’s been a donkey twice in nativity plays, once at preschool and once at school, but he swears he doesn’t remember Little Donkey.

What things have you found out your teenagers don’t know that’s just left you scratching your head in disbelief?

This made me make my kids jump cos I proper cackled!!!

This.
…. and what he doesn’t know it’s false and/or not worth knowing.

Dyslexia made this harder for me - same with right/left - but I did get there - my teens can tell the time but it was a long process and digital is their normal clock - quarter to 10 they'd immediately check by converting to 9.45.

Yes, but I won't pay tax for a while from April because it's a new tax year so I won't have earned enough 😧I had to burst his bubble and explain that once you're in a job and paying tax, you just keep paying- they don't give you a few months off every year

We do sort of get two months off for council tax - we pay 10 monthly instalments, followed by two months of not making any payments but that's the only sort of exception I can think of.

I've read a reference book over Christmas and was amazed at how ignorant I am. I listen to Radio 4 often, read newspapers etc, read a lot, look things up online, but there was so much in the book that I would never have known about otherwise.

🤣 I’m now wondering what’s wrong with me as I’m missing all my grey tubes coming out of my arms and my heart and lungs are small and in my chest not massive and floating above my head. This is why it’s more important to teach logic and critical thinking skills than memorising specific ‘important facts’ that sound plausible but turn out to be complete bollocks. Surely nearly everyone’s seen actual blood in real life, which should trump any misleading drawings.

What is an ‘Ostler’? Other than a former opening batsman for Warwickshire along with Roger Twose.

Forgot Queen Elizabeth II (due to having the longest reign). There may be others I’ve missed out, but it won’t be many.

I often wonder how I survived my childhood without all this Hi-Tech and only all this old basic know how was so not in fashion and this Hi-Tech was the future 😳

Worked for me in my day 👍

Granddaughter out with her friends on a night out in her car, they got lost and all their phones were flat or no signal 🙀

She was able to get them home using basic navigation skills which I had taught her when she was a lot younger including basic star navigation

She was also taught how to read a map which she kept in the car. Her friends could not read the OS Map 🙀🙀

It was a clear night and she was able to identify the Pole Star and knew home was a certain direction so went in the appropriate direction until certain landmarks were recognised

Her street cred gained Brownie Points from her friends that night 👍👍

I got a hug next time I saw here 👍

My student daughter expected there to be student rates for car insurance, when I said there were, it meant astronomically high!

Shadopeactually, the Carnegie public libraries were gifts from the American philanthropist/magnate Andrew Carnegienothing to do with church libraries--in fact they overtook the religious libraries.

Yes. I grew up on the Anne of Green Gables series, and those books are the origin of so much of my knowledge of Canadian (and by extension, British) history. They’re where I first learnt about the Whigs, for instance.

Even though I taught my 15 year old to tell the time when younger he just can't get (or he does it on purpose as its apparently old people talk) if I say quarter past 5 or quarter to 5. He says what does that mean and I have to explain 5.15.

Ok fair enough.

a shocking percentage of the British public does not know what Auschwitz was

An ostler is someone who looks after horses, when they were used as transport, at an inn. Seem to remember it fromThe Highway Man.

I was familiar. Because we had one TV and I watched films and programmes my parents had chosen to watch with celebrities from their generation.

You don’t have to ‘care’ about stuff to be aware of it. It’s the lack of awareness of anything outside of SM that is so jarring.
A sign of intelligence is curiosity and it’s worrying how many younger people lack any curiosity outside their own little bubble.

I agree, and can't believe that there are people in the world who think that all that matters can be found in social media!!!!

My teens didn't even know who Winston Churchill was!!!!! Gob smacked! 🤣🤣🤣

@crowisland i didn’t mention libraries or hospitals but I agree with you!

Christians seem to think that they bestowed anything generous to humanity it seems! Without God we’d all be in the dark ages and sidling around murdering people eh.

Tim the Ostler dobbed the Highwayman in.

I was a child of the 70s but because of only having the one tv (and parents ruling the tv schedule) I was familiar with a huge array of ‘stars’ from well before my time. Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, The Platters, Joan Crawford, Hedy Lamar to name some off the top of my head. They weren’t my generation or necessarily my cup of tea but I was well aware of them. My lot have never heard of Paul Newman or Robert Redford or Barbra Streisand etc. Yes maybe it doesn’t really matter but it was so normal (to me) to be very aware of your own parents cultural references.

Christians seem to think that they bestowed anything generous to humanity it seems! Without God we’d all be in the dark ages and sidling around murdering people eh.

On the other hand...:
whyevolutionistrue.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Screen-Shot-2022-12-26-at-10.59.30-AM.png

I've just remembered the 19 year old apprentice at work, who told me he couldn't check his emails because his phone was broken. So I offered to let him check them on my phone or laptop, and he was all confused and told me they were linked to his phone. I asked him if he meant he didn't know his password but he did. I asked what his email address was, and got the sign in page for Yahoo or whatever big platform it was and he was gobsmacked he could check them that way, I guess he thought email was like a text inbox. So not all young'uns are tech savvy.

I would think of disowning any child of mine who didn't know who Karl Marx was.

You mean there isn't?