Surprising things pupils don't know?

[letsgomaths]

Usually, we adults are surprised when the younger generation do know something we don't expect. But are there any times you have been surprised by a child or teenager being quite unfamiliar with something you thought they would know about, or have had to shift your expectations? Here are some I things I have had to explain unexpectedly, come and share yours!

Pin the tail on the donkey. I used it in a maths question about probability: a pupil had never even heard of it! I didn't get them to play it though.

Also about probability, I've sometimes had to explain playing cards to teenagers who have never used them.

I once had to explain to a teenager what a microscope is used for: it was news to them.

I was going to add the Millennium Bug to this list (it seems like only yesterday everyone was terrified of the impending doom), then I realised most of my pupils hadn't been born then!

I quite enjoy telling pupils about old technology, such as looking things up on microfiche, or TVs that were not flat screen.

I had to explain to my DS what a 7inch & 12 inch single was, what a double A side single was, what a B side was. Then I had to explain albums & how you had to turn them over halfway through. He had never seen a record until I showed him my record collection in my childhood bedroom at my mum's.

@sashh Oh yes, I agree about there only being one groove on each side of a record: it's a question that's often in the same league as "what was the highest mountain before Everest was discovered?". Answer: Everest.

@Bigearringsbigsmile As for no means no and not arguing with adults: I think it's also possible for the opposite to be true, i.e. that some children (admittedly fewer nowadays) have obedience and rules so deeply ingrained, that they don't know when it is appropriate to argue, and stand your ground. I remember being astonished to learn about haggling over prices of big things (cars, houses), rather than obediently paying what's asked for; that you could turn away unwanted salesmen without listening to what they had to say; and that for some parties, you don't have to arrive on time; indeed you're supposed to arrive late. My jaw hit the floor when I learned that.

My mother told me that when she was in primary (70 years ago)) it started snowing and a South African girl in her class asked what was happening as she had never seen snow. The teacher let her out of class for 10 minutes to play in it.

Just this week I totally grossed out some of my Year 8s with the fact that chicks hatch from eggs like the eggs from the supermarket (plus fertilisation). They somehow thought that eggs for eating were a different kind of egg

I had a grade 4 student who didn't know what a penguin or a camel were.

I'd like to find out more about this 21 year old who doesn't know how to a answer a phone

A housemate from Missouri didn't know Uk was an island until he looked at a map on his flight from the USA. He was an exchange uni student and 23.
He also said he was surprised we had fridges and cinemas.
It was 1990, so before internet, but still!!!

@SarahAndQuack

*It used to be most kids could tie their shoes by the time they started school.

Like when? Like, in never-never land?*

I remember being able to tie my shoelaces when I was in reception class. Apparently I could also buckle my shoes by the time I was 2 (though it would take me 20 minutes - my mother used to ask me to do it when she wanted some time out!).

As with all the other examples in this thread, I think 4/5 year old children can't do it because of the lack of opportunity (velcro is heavily marketed and is the easier 'go to' option) rather than true lack of ability at their age.

Blind man's buff is often referenced in literature, but some children haven't heard of it, let alone played it (too dangerous!).

Also the idea of playing with conkers: once an extremely popular children's game, now outlawed by health and safety. As a result, I have come across children who are baffled by the idea when they see it mentioned in books.

In a year 11 geography lesson, I remember a pupil being utterly baffled about how small Greenland really is, which is understandable because it appears big on most "whole world" maps (with the old problem of representing the round Earth on a flat map).

When I teach 'passe-temps' in French and say it means a pass time, they stare at me blankly.

You might do better by spelling pastime correctly.

Telling the time Is it no longer taught in primary
It wasn’t taught in my school in the 70 s

One of my year 11s said a couple of months ago that the Earth must be flat as she could see the Eiffel Tower out of the classroom window. Admittedly we were reasonably high but still from Manchester I'd say it wasn't likely...!

This I heard from one of my children's friends, when teenagers, "is the Pope Jewish?", and from a couple of friends when they were in their 20s at the time, "but Catholics aren't Christians though are they?" "Is Switzerland part of Scandinavia?" One son recounted this from a co worker when working in a shop during A levels, "are the sun and the moon the same thing?" "have you heard about that Hitler bloke, someone needs to stop him"

@Anchovies12 I used to believe that I could see the Eiffel Tower from my bedroom window in London, after I'd seen a picture of it. I hadn't learned about the size of the world yet! This is what I could actually see. (TV mast in Crystal Palace)

I was shocked when I realised my then year 7 child didn’t know where any of the countries (apart from uk ones) were on a map of Europe.
Obviously I’d never taught him but I was just surprised he was never taught or come across it.
We now have an atlas and a globe.

A lovely young lass in my previous job was stunned that I knew how much change to give someone when she had accidentally put in the total on the till, not what the customer had given her. She had no clue how to work out the correct change. I gave her a lesson in that. She was bright and caught on instantly, but had never ever been shown how to do that. Everywhere she had worked, the till had told her how much change to give. She wasn't alone in that.

Another time in that same job, the card machines crashed. It wasn't a huge disaster, as there was a cash machine just a few doors along, but it was inconvenient. Management said they would get out the old card impression machine if the problem wasn't sorted quickly. It turned out that I was the only person there, management included, who knew how to use one! In my current job, I discovered that my colleagues also didn't know how to use one, and hadn't realised that there was one in the shop.

@Charles11 I learned where countries were by doing jigsaws: I had one which was a map of Europe, where the countries were cut to shape.

My 18 year old DD, Has just started her first office job. She really amused her new colleagues with the fact of not knowing "Joe Bloggs". The name was written as an example on a spread sheet. She'd spent a while trying to find him under Joseph etc. Bless her!

It's really important for children's development of their fine motor skills to learn to tie laces.

My rule of thumb as a dentist when asked when children should start brushing their own teeth used to be 'when they can tie their shoelaces' but doing up velcro isn't really the same!

When my DCs were small I taught them to tie laces - we just made sure we were ready for school about 10 mins early and then practised tying laces every morning until they got it.

I am 48 and always had shoes with buckles and pumps with elastic for PE. I think I had some lace up trainers at about 10. I'm sure I couldn't fasten laces at a young age because I didn't need to.

Several of the things on here, I can remember not knowing/ thinking myself as a child.

I'd never heard of Eton Mess until a couple if years ago either.

@Ohyesiam

Boy, it needs to be. Most days I am helping teenagers with time telling.

Also looking up things I an index in a textbook

When I was a driving instructor, I found that some 17-year-olds found it really difficult to make their own decisions, and to think on their feet; this often seemed the case with the more middle-class teenagers. If I said to them "you decide whether it's safe to go" (having told them that I would stop them if it wasn't safe), some of them were very uneasy, as if they had been micromanaged all their lives. I used to encourage some of them to play computer games, to practise making decisions quickly, as you have to when driving.

And don't get me started on appointments: lots of them had never kept their own appointments before at all, and had always been managed by their parents.

At primary school I attended a weekly lunchtime group where we did things like hopping, skipping, forward rolls, balancing, catching balls and bean bags, and walking along a narrow line on the classroom floor. I didn't know it at the time, but I found out later this was a remedial group for children who needed extra help with "coordination and gross control"; probably one warning sign was that I often fell over in the playground. But nice to know that school was keeping tabs on this.

I once mentioned Ben Nevis in a year 11 class and a student responded “who’s Ben Nevis?”

'I was great at probability but had never been allowed playing cards at home as my mother thought they were 'evil'

Now, this is no bloody help now, but I see that as a failure on the part of whoever should have been coaching you in exam technique. I was taught in a situation like that where you don’t have the correct starting parameters (either through a lack of knowledge or if it is a two part question and you couldn’t do the first part) is that you should make some assumptions and state them. So we would have been coached to write ‘I have never seen a pack of cards, but assuming there are 20 cards in a pack....etc.

We did some practice sessions on it Too. Now it’s a while since I did GCSEs but I’ve used this a few times since school in some exams I do for work, and never had feedback that it’s a bad idea.