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.

@ManchesterBorn I took a group of 5-7 year olds on a train as part of a trip, they were more excited about the train than the actual destination

Yabbers You need Clarkes or Startright. My y9 DD is size 3.5 and has Velcro, also elastic in her trainers.

A friend didn't know you had to pay for water out of the tap (and draining it away) and something like road tax too. We were in yr 10 or 11 in 2010-ish.

I work with someone for who my pregnancy was a massive learning experience, no the baby doesn't breath through my belly button and know there's no magic sex detector at scans they just look at what's between the baby's legs, babies aren't blind with eyes sealed at birth like a rabbit. He's mid 20s.

@noblegiraffe really? Weird, I'm 24 so still (I think) very young and we learnt to write addresses on envelopes in primary school. This must be quite a recent change!

SarahandQuack That is interesting. I have tried to explain to younger people that the term queer is not at all inclusive to everyone as they think it is.

My 14yo DS had to wear a belt for the first time a few weeks ago and wasn't sure how to do up the buckle 😳 and he's usually quite an intelligent kid

@Ces6 I find that hard to believe... am only just 24 and everyone I know, including my teen brothers know who Madonna is... they must be spectacularly thick

@SadOtter I live in an outer London borough with It's own tube station & about 10 years ago was with a friend's 17 year old sister for her very first tube trip. She'd been into Centraal London once in 17 years on a coach for a school trip. So not a new phenomenon.

This thread is not a rant or moan about what pupils don't know: of course a teacher's job is to teach. But quite often teaching has to build on some prior knowledge, which we "expect" pupils of a certain age to have, but perhaps our benchmark is often simply that we knew it at their age. Times and priorities change, hence "shifting our expectations" in my OP.

I remember noticing (aged 6) a lot of things about the teaching process: that teachers asked lots of questions when they already knew the answers. I also recall what must have been a cunning move by my teacher; we were given exercises on buying things in shops, which were full of words which not many of us would have known the meanings of at that age: haberdashery, crochet hooks, stationery... (Don't ask me how I remember stuff like that, I have a very vivid memory of childhood!)

I was fixing a fence in my field one day. A 10yr old boy from the neighbouring school ran up to the fence to worriedly inform me that my horse was eating grass. When I replied that's what horses eat he said he thought they just ate carrots.

My child's school teaches how to tell the time on an analogue clock. It also teaches dictionary work.

I used to work in adult education so it really doesn't surprise me what some people know and some people don't. I am intelligent, but I know next to nothing about kinds of birds. I grew up in an inner city housing estate... We didn't see many birds. We can only learn what we are taught.

Stranger danger! I once in KS2 assembly asked hands up if you would go in a car with a stranger who said they knew your parents. Almost all of y3 put their hands up!!! I couldn’t believe how sheltered they were

I was surprised a few years back when our year 8s couldn't tell the time on an analogue clock - previously they had been able to.
Recently they have not been able to write their address on praise postcards.
My DD is still at the age of 11 unable to do laces! Have told her that when she goes into year 7 she will need shoes with laces rather than those Clarks ones with the velcro strap......
My DS announced a few days ago he thought dogs were just dogs and didn't know there were different breeds. When we expressed surprise he asked me about some footie stuff which I knew nothing about. So he made the point that it depends on what you're interested in....

@Confusedteacher I was once severely told off at secondary (yelled and screamed at, then sent out of the room) for looking at the clock. Admittedly I might not have taken my eyes off it at all for several minutes. Heaven help me if I'd had a mobile phone to take out then!

Not school pupil - but I recently met a university student at an event who told me that she'd just learnt about this group of women at a place called Greenham Common.

I loved that she very seriously explained that it was obviously a conspiracy on the part of 'the system' to downplay Left / feminist history because she'd never heard them mentioned before.

I didn't like to say that I suspected no-one had ever mentioned the peace camp to her because they were at Greenham so very, very long that it was something everyone would just assume people knew about!

I teach year 1. We were learning about mammals, discussing how a mammal feeds its babies. None of them knew what nipples were...looking at a photo of puppies feeding and they were called everything from stones to spots!

In 2005 I told my Brownies "you can bring cassettes to play music in the summer party".

"Brown Owl, what's a cassette?"

I find the younger generation can't work out the time eg 9.50 or ten to ten especially when I gave an appointment time along these lines and she said "I'll have the 9.50 appointment."

I do like teaching my 9 year old niece stuff. She knows a baby rabbit is called a kitten.

I still harbour resentment in being told I had to go away by myself, look at the picture and think about what the word was in one of my Janet and John books. And no help was provided. I sounded the word out, but it was wrong, according to the teacher.

It was a fucking toy boat.

Just how many five year olds from knackered council houses in inner city areas, that have only just started school after getting the all clear from Tuberculosis treatment and spend their days surrounded by white dog shit, collecting bottles for the deposit return to buy sweets and getting annoyed when the road is covered in broken glass because that would have meant twenty sweets for the 5p are going to have the slightest notion that Y-A-C-H-T is a wanky word for a boat with a sail?

I could (and probably did) tell her at great length about different animals, domestic, agricultural and wild, including the names, the differences in ID between a boy ''aahhs sparrer' an' a girl sparrer' as compared to a tree or 'edge sparrer', how you know whether you've got frogs or toads in the pond, how to look after a vegetable patch and what weeds you can feed a rabbit - but identify middleclass toys relating to a middleclass hobby? No fucking chance.

I have noticed that telling the time is a huge issue for kids - I have flagged it up before with Year 7s and older when they've asked what the time is and I've pointed to the clock or I've told them a time and they've asked 'is that before or after lunch?'. I don't think anybody has ever done anything about it, though.

Most kids know nothing of needlework or knitting - Afro Caribbean boys, however, are very familiar with it and are very keen to learn if they aren't already very good at it.

If their parents have cars, they are incapable of navigating public transport. And they don't know there are apps to be able to do that - or to have any real sense of the geography of their local area; if a bus is cancelled, they don't know 'well, the 123 bus goes to there and then I can catch a 234 to drop me in the next street to where I live - we've had parents call in during a rail strike to say that [child] won't be in because their partner has the car when it's a 15 minute bus journey that actually stops closer to the school than the train station. Their entire lives seem much smaller physically, even if the internet makes it bigger in other ways.

And nobody seems to know anything of animals or wildlife now. Which saddens me.

Once on a school trip I pointed out some dragonflies and one of the girls (again, sixth form age) was fascinated, she had no idea what they were... & then I pointed out that she was wearing a dragonfly necklace! She said she didn't realise it was a real creature!!!!!

What a public telephone is. When I explained they realised that there was one outside the shops near school. I imagined that payphone had a sudden increase in calls that weekend as they all tried it out!
They were also shocked that we didn't have the internet when I was at school and that when I started teaching there were only a few classrooms with digital projectors that were often stolen in break-ins. They are just part of the furniture now.

Many cannot tell the time which I find strange because my dd has learnt this in Reception (o clock and half past at least).

MatchsticksForMyEyesReturns
It's spelt 'pastime' not 'pass time', though that may be the literal translation.

This thread is not a rant or moan about what pupils don't know: of course a teacher's job is to teach. But quite often teaching has to build on some prior knowledge, which we "expect" pupils of a certain age to have

But that knowledge still has to be taught. So your post is about what we, as parents aren’t teaching children? DD knows zip about the bible and could probably just about tell which bird was a robin. But she can tell you all about which king followed which centuries ago, knows more about space than I’ll ever need to and showed me how to use some video making app on the iPad.

@TeenTimesTwo
We steer clear of clarks as their shoes are expensive and she goes through them in less than a month. Not only that, all the lovely support they give (which makes them so expensive) is needless because of her splints and often means they don’t fit well. But, if they do Velcro, I’ll need to go and have another look! Thanks.

I taught my 7 year old to tie laces because we had no choice - he needed to for his football boots.

And guess what, he surprised me by getting it after watching one YouTube video!

I think we should give kids more credit and give more of them shoes with laces. Yes it’s unnecessary technically but at the same time, why not take the time to teach them.

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

My teenager complained that the ring pull had snapped so she couldn’t open the tin of beans. When I told her to use the tin opener she had no idea what I was talking about!