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?

I'm 78 and don't know any song about a donkey.

I wouldn’t call Little Donkey a classic carol that people ought to know. It’s not Away in a Manger, O Little Town of Bethlehem or O Come All Ye Faithful.

Just before the holidays, a girl in my year 7 English class asked me whether I’d ever met Charles Dickens. None of the others seemed to think there was anything wrong with this question.

I was also recently asked by a 6th former whether Charles I was a Victorian…

Seems ‘quarter to/past’ befuddles them because a quarter primarily means ‘25’ in their world, so its actually meaning 15 minutes just fazes them.

That's shocking! The whole idea of a fraction is that it's a proportion determined by any given number; even a percentage doesn't have to only relate to a fixed number of 100!

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll - i hope you mean you?

Well, there were several of us who didn’t really get it – and you yourself did admit to using an awful lot of words to say something quite simple.

Did he really not realise that the main characters in Gigglebiz were all played by JF, though?

Reminds me of a YouTube video of a US cop administering a road-side sobriety test:
Cop: "Say the alphabet backwards"
Driver: "Go ahead and arrest me. I can't do that, drunk or sober"

That brings to mind this Australian radio competition!

An elderly aunt told me that a child had asked her in the 1950s if she had heard the news of the battle of Waterloo on the radio.

My friends son is a very good cook and by the time he got to uni he was teaching others . One day a girl came to their house and he asked her to put an egg yolk into the mix ....... apparently she stood staring into the fridge egg compartment blankly for an age , he asked what's the problem ? She replied ... which eggs have whites and which have yolks . She was 20 years old 🤦‍♀️

I have a landline phone both at home and at work.

And guess what I'm doing right now? Listening to a CD!

I think it’s a case of young people being able to pick what they watch and listen to in a way that the older generations didn’t have. Ha I g to sit and watch the one TV with parents meant you watched the news and shows of their choice so you absorbed information. Young people now can be quite insular in what they choose to watch and listen to.

It's scary how many young people seem to see history in two homogenous lumps as 'things that happened in my lifetime' in one and 'everything that happened before I was born' as the other - and seem summarily unable to compute that somebody born 30, 40, 50, 60 years before them couldn't possibly have witnessed things that happened several centuries ago, much less shaken hands with a dinosaur!

Perfectly articulated. It’s the endless choice now which is diluting what was once the once common, shared cultural and social experience. Everyone watched The Ascent of Man, or All Our Yesterdays because there wasn’t much of an alternative! Now it’s possible for each individual to tailor a hinterland entirely separate and distinct from her immediate family’s, her friends’ even. I’m glad I lived through fevered rehashes of last night’s Monty Python at school. Absolutely everyone in the Common Room would have been watching it.
(I remember my parents had a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica and for some reason a similar set of medical volumes: as youngsters my brother and I would scour both for illustrations, mainly gruesome ones such as a dissected arm, or Christians in the Colosseum with some lions (that was a scary one; I can still see it!) In the process of such thrill seeking we’d inevitably read the odd bit of info and learn general knowledge that way)
I’m still attached to a general philosophy of limited horizons or choice as a better way of going about things, though I know it’s no vote winner!

Even with endless choice we still find when we chat at work that people have been watching the same programmes (although not necessarily at the same time), we discuss books, sport, current affairs. We range in age from 25 to 65 and different people access the information in different ways but there is still a lot of common ground and shared experience. My DCs interests are not exactly niche either (sport, Dr Who, Harry Potter for example).

That’s good to know...and I realise I’m something of an alarmist, to my shame.

Just asked 15 dd if she know Good King Wencesles and she said no who is he 🤔

Nimbostratus100 - the Lord's Prayer is not banned in schools.

Apart from being in a carol, I am not sure if Good King Wenceslas is that well known for what he did or didn't do.

If you asked my DCs who Pluto was, they would tell you that he was ruler of the Underworld in Greek mythology. They would have no idea about Mickey Mouse's dog!

Apart from being in a carol, I am not sure if Good King Wenceslas is that well known for what he did or didn't do.

He is in Czechia!

Well that's interesting.

I always thought it was Hades but seems there was a name change.

No, Pluto means "The Rich One," it's an alternative name. Greeks and Romans thought that mentioning the name of a God / Goddess would summon them, so it was use euphemistically.

The Lord’s Prayer is banned in schools? I am furious. I knew from as far back when that renowned Lafty, Professor Ted Wragg was very influential in teacher training, that many teachers were, and remained on the left but banning the Lord’s Prayer is outrageous. It is obvious on GRANSNET that many of them are on the left of politics, so maybe their education was slanted by the teaching profession. I was a teacher, but not in UK and never had any experience of teachers anti the Christian religion. I know we have people of differing religious faiths in UK, but our traditions, culture and the law are built on Christianity and I can only mourn the fact that so many people do not know the Lord’s payer”Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us” is not a bad philosophy to abide with. People of my age know the prayer and can sing a whole lexicon of hymns without any hymn book at hand. I am now bowing to find out if my grandsons, in their 30s can recite the Lord’s Prayer.

It's. Not. Banned.

It is regularly recited in Catholic schools. Nilot that you'd know, if you asked any of them what the words are.

"What does the phrase 'deliver us' remind you of?"
Blank looks.
'Never said it, any of you?'
'Oh, is is that prayer one? The one about Mary?'

@Lapun - 'The Lord’s Prayer is banned in schools? I am furious.' Unclutch your pearls. It isn't 'banned'. It just isn't compulsory.

Well, there was a name change, sort of. From the web:

"In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Pluto (Greek: Πλούτων, Ploutōn) was the ruler of the Greek underworld. The earlier name for the god was Hades, which became more common as the name of the underworld itself."

The Lord's Prayer is not banned in schools.

And that prayer (which I do know by heart) has nothing to do with right wing or left wing politics.

And teachers are not blindly influenced by Ted Wragg, or any other educationalist. On the whole, people who work in the public sector, as most teachers do, are more likely to be Labour voters, simply because Labour governments tend to put more money into the public sector than Tory governments. Just as bankers and the higher-paid in the private sector are more likely to vote Tory. Simple as that, and doesn't imply any sort of brainwashing.