To worry about life now that young people's basic skills are so poor

[CurdinHenry]

They're taking on responsibility for such important things and you have to check everything they do because the ways of thinking that used to be taught and hammered home just aren't any more and their concentration is shot (never mind their incentive to work hard since they often won't be able to afford to move out of home regardless).

Not their fault, the fault of the education system and wider society.

(Scotland specific, maybe England is better)

Young people are not one homogeneous mass, they have a wide range of work ethics, attention spans, and levels of common sense.
The same is true of middle-aged people and older people.
The young people I encounter (my young adult DCs and their friends mainly) are extremely motivated and diligent, but I wouldn’t presume to say all young people are like that either.
Many younger adults are working more than full time in portfolio careers to pay ever-rising living costs, perhaps the people you’re working with are tired from working evenings and weekends around their day job so they can save to move out of parental homes.

What are you basing this on? I work with children and young people and I don’t recognise your characterisation at all.

Just as well they aren’t all the same! My dc is responsible for critical safety systems, hasn’t lived full time at home since 16 and is more responsible than me. Can’t say what they do, that critical!

Well I’m glad you know all young people OP. My 16 yo DS is very capable. I made him do his own washing up from about 7 onwards, his own laundry from 11ish, change his own bedding from 8/9ish and his own packed lunch from 8. I am confident he’ll be able to fend for himself when he leaves home for uni in a couple of years.

I've seen younger people (from early 20s to early 30s) coming into the workforce over the last 25 years or so and easily the last 5 years has been the worst.

It's not just young people though, the culture of older people who manage them is often poor as well.

One example is with sales people - they don't seem to have any understanding that they need to make regular contact with their clients. We've had one this year who I don't think has made one single phone call in the last three months, and her sales record is abysmal.

But her training was basically non-existent, managers assume new staff have capabilities they do not have and then they're too scared to challenge them.

Who are these young people? What are you even really talking about? Annoying young people in your work place?

It’s descimnatory language. If I replaced young people with older people/women/disabled people I would rightly be shot down in flames.

I’m in Scotland and have recently spent time in hospital. Like policemen, doctors are getting younger and younger! And it’s a teaching hospital so there were lots of students around. They were, without exception, very busy and carried out their duties professionally and with excellent interpersonal skills. I don’t accept your characterisation of young people.

I volunteer with young people in scouts and don’t recognise your description of young people at all.

Im in Scotland too

Yes but the mean thirty years ago was much more robustly skilled. They could add up, divide, read and write accurately, work out the correct dose for things. That was a reliable, drummed in ability.

Some young men will and are being left behind. Rather than skill up, they go on the Internet and blame women and immigrants. But there's enough women and immigrants who will keep running things. So not to worry. It's poor parenting that's the issue. So your title should read, to worry about the future, because parenting is so poor and schools are so underfunded and guess what? Austerity didn't work either.

It has nothing to do with interpersonal skills. I'm saying they haven't learned what they need to know and never will. If we're lucky it doesn't matter, if we're unlucky...

If you haven’t taught your dc what they ‘need to know’ that’s on you and your own parenting.

What “ways of thinking” are you referring to?

My 16 year old daughter is being taught way more about life skills at school than I ever was. Maths Apps in particular is a great addition to the curriculum, teaching them about personal finances, tax, mortgages, interest payments and the like. Their PSE topics are far more wide ranging than the “just say no” lessons we got on sex and drugs. Her school has groups they can join dealing with everything from how to make jewellery to social responsibility. The pupils have set up a community larder, they have a “take what you need” initiative where any kid who is missing any necessary school item (pens, stationery, water bottles, calculator) can go and help themselves. The older pupils provide mentoring for younger pupils. They do a weekly litter pick in the school. Their after school study groups are well attended and the school ethos is about presenting your best self, and being there for others.

This is not some fancy schmancy school, it’s a school with a high level of deprivation, in a pretty bog standard Scottish town.

The young people I meet are fantastic and I have a lot of hope for the future.

Can you provide any actual examples of what you mean or where you have experience of a young person who hasn't had a specific life skill?

What is it that you think they need to know but haven't learned?

Firstly, ageist. The other thread about elderly people was shot down with accusations of agism which goes both ways, young and old.
Secondly people have been saying this since the dawn of time. When books were widely available there was a moral panic that young people would waste their lives away reading too many books. So I think we'll be fine!

It's not exclusive to young people. You see it in Facebook groups where people can't think for themselves or do basic maths or a Google search

I work alongside late teens and early twenties and I recognise it. It’s scary how inept they are for the world

In what way?

No idea what you're talking about tbh. My Scottish nephew seems perfectly capable to me.

In what capacity?

My children and all their peers learned to do all those things in primary school just as I did.

I’m not sure where you are coming from.

I was employing graduates who were clearly wanting to earn money but do nothing. They had no life skills. Several were unable to write a basic business letter

They just wanted to sit in the park drinking with there mates.

This was from 1997 to 2002. They are now you

Literacy and Numeracy in Scotland’s schools is at a record high. Both have increased by around 10 percentage points since the 1990s when I left school.

I don’t know why everyone is so fixated on mental arithmetic as some kind of magic bullet for success. Every single person has a calculator in their pocket. I don’t care if the person on the till can’t work out my change in their head, they have a machine that does it for them. I’d much rather they were polite and efficient, and they pretty much always are.

Some of the young people I work with are really bad at writing professional reports. My daughter could do it with no problems at all. She is not more literate than they are, she has just had different experiences. One lad told me he had no idea when to use an apostrophe. Rather than judging him and being down on the youth of today, I told him when you would use one. He is doing really well as a trainee, he has skills some of my older colleagues don’t. Everything else he can learn along the way.

We need to stop expecting our young people to walk out in to the world fully cooked and ready to go. We were not like that as young people and neither were our elders, no matter what they claim. It is our job to teach them and guide them. Not to berate them and talk them down.