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 worked with someone who had no idea that leather was an animal product. He’s a partner at a top five law firm.. it isn’t just teenagers who have poor general knowledge skills.

I honestly can’t remember where older types like me picked up this kind of info. The school day was certainly longer in those days but still, there was already enough to learn without adding in odd bits of general knowledge. Unless there was indeed such a subject taught and I’ve forgotten it (What a great job for a teacher that’d have been)
I do remember that the comics I read, such as Bunty, were astonishingly educational, disguised as frothy fun. Beano and Dandy too were great tools for expanding your vocabulary and other knowledge, even if you went around mispronouncing big new words for years! (I pronounced ‘Hereby’ as though it were a market town in Yorkshire)
Reader’s Digest, in doctors’ waiting rooms, was always a good source of fodder. Back to comics though, I wonder were the main ones actually required to feed us useful information underneath the zany stories. Not only zany: I recall a sort of comic strip rendering of ‘Jane Eyre’ in Bunty, which pinned me to my bedroom chair in appalling anguish for hours!
You look back now and see it all as a wonderful period of discovery, and I certainly wouldn’t swap it for a chance to be nine again now, but I can’t begin to guess how kids focus at all now, with vast universes of data winking at them the whole time. It must be so hard even to narrow down your interests into manageable chunks.
So plodding through lists of place names or mountain ranges probably doesn’t grab ‘em any more!

Dyslexia ? My adult brother is the same and definitely has undiagnosed dyslexia. Maths was a massive struggle for him. He never got the support required.

Dyslexia ? My adult brother is the same and definitely has undiagnosed dyslexia. Maths was a massive struggle for him. He never got the support required.

I guess it should have been something covered in class? Not a commonly known date - probably one of William the Conqueror's several smitings that year. Most likely the "Harrying of the North"? Wikipedia says, "King William the Conqueror quells [Don't get me started on the use of the historical present tense!] rebellions made by his English subjects against his rule, campaigning through the north of England with his forces, burning houses, crops, cattle and land from York to Durham, resulting in the deaths of over 100,000 people, mainly from starvation and winter cold."

Dyslexia wouldn’t account for not understanding the 24hr clock though, would it?
Gosh though, telling the time (analogue) and understanding the way we speak about what the clock says, ought to be a lesson from primary school, and early on at that. The lad ought not to have been let persist without that skill. (Not teacher-bashing, just expressing sympathy)
Who knows, after all, one day a person might be stranded without their phone, needing to catch a train, and might happen to be standing near Big Ben. At least he should be able to read that clock and save his day!
All the same, I bet this boy has more fascinating knowledge in his brain at 14 than I have now. Maybe telling the time really isn’t the big deal I think it is.

I’m 37 know ‘of’ the song but don’t know the song and nor does my 6 year old whose also at a C of E school.

Actually some conditions do cause people to have trouble reading a clock face.

Yes indeed. I rather muddled my waffling there, addressing dyslexia only in relation to the intellectual grasp of the 24hr clock; nothing visual. Then I kind of dropped it and carried on without bearing it in mind.

I’m shocked how many teens can’t ride a bike, and many have never learnt to swim!
reading this thread… I’m also surprised how many teens don’t know basic life skills.

I’d be the smart arse that replied the 3 year anniversary of 1066 happened in 1069 - surely a typo?

I went too three different primaries, the first and last were quite traditional RC schools.

The one in the middle was a school that rapidly expanded and hat a few newly qualified teachers.

We would do 'Topic', topic would be something to learn about so When we looked at fossils we looked at how they are created, about May Anning.

That would lead to looking at where Lyme Regis is on the map and why fossils were found there.

I remember getting corrugated card board and drawing the contour lines from an OS map and making a 3D model

Those in general are a marker of poverty- it costs money to buy a bike and to have swimming lessons, as well as needing a pool or park nearby. Saying it’s basic life skills is just like saying learning to drive is a basic life skill, without understanding why, for many people, it definitely isn’t.

A typewriter..

That would have been a brilliant answer and undeniably true. Yes, a typo occurred to me and, given that an exam board misspelled the name of a country in one of this year's GCSE Geography papers, quite likely the explanation. It all depends on what the kids were taught and expected to remember, I suppose.

I would have thought it was deliberate- to stop pupils using the easy answer of 1066, Battle of Hastings. They’d have to research and investigate what happened after that -which uses far more skills and research.

Dd saw Wednesday Addams using one and was amazed that her grandmother used to have one. She thinks it'd be cool to use one. I still remember how bloody hard it was to hit the keys and what a pita it was to change the ribbon etc.

I am sure lots of things happened in 1069

Not just here but around the world.

A smart arse answer would be "You'll have to be more specific".

I remember "topics" - bloody brilliant way to teach - and to teach kids how to research and how everything is connected.! We did "Greece" for a week in Primary. We did "The Ancient Greeks" , basic geography, the
Olympics, we arranged a modern package holiday using brochures and pretend money, (converting from ££), and set the chairs out as a plane and made passports and tickets, we did some of the food. And later, when I was twenty and went island hopping - all that knowledge clicked into place. Brilliant teaching.

He had a fair point at the moment though. 😂

Oh do they not teach topics anymore?
I loved that way of learning in Primary school - still remember going down a pit and a cotton mill and learning all about the Industrial Revolution and social history

Maybe they do teach topics, I hope so - but even when my DC were little it was more SATS focussed so less free somehow.

Maybe we should campaign for them to be brought back. As a teacher I can see more advantages now, it wasn't subject anyone could be bad at. You could do individual things, pairs or groups and incorporate numeracy and literacy. Similar to Greece, 'The romans' included roman sites in the UK, roman numerals, making a 'road' with poles and chalk in the playground.

They do theme learning (for example DD has just done a Magic topic... Harry Potter in the literature bit, chemicL reactions in Science and other bits in geography etc pus a trip to HP studios to learn how films are made)

As a teacher I can see more advantages now, it wasn't subject anyone could be bad at. You could do individual things, pairs or groups and incorporate numeracy and literacy. Similar to Greece, 'The romans' included roman sites in the UK, roman numerals, making a 'road' with poles and chalk in the playground

Absolutely! Everyone had a skill. Everyone could do something and they could see how they could all contribute. Building a Roman Road sounds brilliant! And kids remember learning this stuff.

The problem is it is hard to measure. Hard to assess, to be consistent to be able to publish figures about it. And assessment is the be all and end all now as the world is more about accountability and being seen to have done something rather than actually doing it. Targets, results, percentages. The kids come last. Sadly.