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?

Remarkably few adults, let alone teenagers, seem to know how our electoral and Parliamentary system works (I’ve spent the last decade or so teaching people aged 16-60, most of whom were intelligent and able) particularly the roles of Government and Opposition. It doesn’t really surprise me that the country is in such a state.

My 14 year old nephew, after 3 terms of 20th century European history, asked me if Queen Victoria had ever met Hitler.

Do people not at least watch tv programmes and discuss them with their children? Even if you don’t talk about topical issues around the dinner table or on car journeys surely tv provides much of this information.

If a neurotypical teenager is unable to identify an aubergine, a cabbage or a lettuce, their education somewhere has gone badly awry.

My friend posted a cracking video this week of asking her teenagers what tinsel is.

Not a clue.

My 13 year old, a complete whizz with everything electronic and technical, was recently asked to put a CD on at Grandad's house .... she looked blankly at the CD player for a few minutes, got a CD out of the case (touching the bottom I might add), looked blankly a bit more then said "what do I do with this?"

I had no idea she hadn't come across one at all and felt ancient at that moment in time!

Not my teen, but my early 20s friend at uni. She had anarchist leanings and didn't really believe in voting. She was complaining that she'd been tricked into voting in the General Election. I quizzed her how on earth that could come about. It transpired that she'd merely been asked by a pollster outside the polling station how she intended voting that day, ("uh, Labour I guess"), and believed that constituted a vote.

Not a teenager, but a few years ago, my youngest friend, 9 years younger, so 36, had never heard of Sinitta (spelling) she’d never heard her song ‘So macho’ etc, I couldn’t get over it 😂

@Annoyingwurringnoise My mum (born in the 50s) is adamant that the words are 'Little Donkey on a busy day', so maybe that song has always been forgettable.

I definitely sung it at my school as a kid. I can't remember the words but I'm pretty sure it's not about him having a busy day 😂.

I'm a teacher and the lack of basic general knowledge among our teens still surprises me. They have not a clue about Christianity at all: I don't expect them to follow a religion but a little cultural knowledge would be useful.

My small DDs thought the film they were watching the other day was finished 10 minutes in because there was a commercial break. They watch cbeebies or Netflix so were completely unfamiliar with adverts!

Yes, all the time. I think it’s partly down to the way it’s taught -spiral learning, where they revisit the same topics again and again but with greater depth. I learnt by starting at the beginning with Australopithecus, through Neanderthals, Homo Sapiens and on and on.

I would be tempted to say that these days any bloody idiot can get into "uni", but my mother told me a tale once of a colleague, a recent graduate from Bristol University, who didn't know who Richard Nixon was. This was in the 1970s at the height of the Watergate scandal. Mother said 'I thought you had a university degree?' He replied 'Yes, but it's in chemistry'. She had a thing about scientists being unworldly.

I have a scenario of Pat the scout leader from BBC 'Ghosts' relishing explaining this to the troops😄

Bit different but I found out yesterday my 20 year old has never bought a stamp! Said she wouldn't know how to go about getting one!

This isn’t surprising when so many adults think it is the government that pays for stuff and that things like the nhs are free.

And at the same time the govt make out that they are doing us a favour by giving our money back to us!

seems like a reasonable question?

My teenagers wouldn't know how to use a landline phone. Why would they? Nobody I know has had one for 10+ years.

I don't think my kids would know where to buy a stamp, how to use a landline or about area codes tbh. I will ask them. They have probably no idea about the dial type phones.
They won't know the Lords prayer, they've probably only heard it a couple of times in their lives.
I think one reason for some of this is there is less time spent together across generations. This Christmas made me think that, as we spent time together as 3 generations.
Also less time all watching the same TV. So I knew who for example Clint Eastwood was because of watching old movies with mum and dad. Even though he was not contemporary to my era.
Not a teen but some early 20s at work had never heard of top of the pops.

Things I've had to teach teenagers from scratch, usually in order to explain a poem/ play/ novel in class:

Adam and Eve creation story

What email is and how it works

This one shocked me the most- September 11 attacks

but where does that gets us? Children then believe that there is some sort of order, beginning with Australopithecus, through Neanderthals, and on to Homo Sapiens etc - which is equally ignorant, in fact more ignorant, as it shows a fundamental misconception of what our species actually is and where it came from, as opposed to just what individuals of the species have done, where and when.

And I know people who have carried this misconception on into adulthood

Tbh, I would be embarrassed that I hadn't taught my child some of the things mentioned here.

Weirdly I didn't even think about trying to plug the gaps on DD's RE general knowledge until it was just too late. It didn't seem important at the time but now I'm quite aware that she knows so little.

Probably because there was so many other gaps I had to fill. Like UK history and geography, French. So many things that she didn't learn. She's doing a history degree now which is impressive as she did no UK history at all until she was 15.

I suppose she knows and can do other things that she learnt at school when she wasn't being brought up in the UK. (We lived in Australia). She can fluently speak (and read and write) mandarin and Indonesian for example. And she is incredibly sporty in a lot of different sports.

She could save your child if he was drowning 150m from the shore and didn't know how to identify a rip tide but she hasn't a clue about Little Donkey.

Well, I suppose it would be if you hadn't been taught and had in your course material that Victoria died in 1901, a bedridden old lady, when Adolf Hitler was an unknown 12 year old schoolboy in Austria.

"Little donkey little donkey, on a dusty road, got to keep on plodding onwards with the/his precious...' If my memory serves me correctly. Dh who is in his mid thirties hadn't heard if it! He claimed I went to a "posh" school! The cheek of it 😂

Full class of 12 year olds only 1 knew who John Lennon was

@MeJane she can do a History degree no problem even if she hasn't done any UK History before the age of 15. Surely the two things are not mutually exclusive?