Secret Chief
Vetted Member
If it cheers you up....some maths exams are explicitly No Calculator ones. Could be rather challenging...
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Today's youth... What is the problem?
- Thread starter We Never Know
- Start date
PoetPhilosopher
Veteran Member
I don't consider the youth the main problem of today. And for every story you have about a young person who can't count, I can tell you about an old person who worked in my local electronics store and despite working for a electronics store, didn't know really anything about video games or electronics, to the point where I had to point out the difference between an XBox controller and a PS5 controller multiple times.
PoetPhilosopher
Veteran Member
Also, since I'm kind of a tech person, old people, when word spreads, will often try to use me for free tech support. While some people can naturally learn technology, there are some 70+ year olds out there that, when trying to teach them to use the Android smartphone (which they asked you to teach them), they will cuss and yell and blame you for any user error of theirs with the phone.
Luxury. Back in my day the teacher would cut off our fingers so we couldn't use them to count and we had to to dip our noses in ink to write the answers before walking 20 miles home through the snow to go and work all night in the coal mine.
Yes, exactly. I work at a gas station and we prefer if the customers pay with card because it can get very annoying with people using cash. They'll dump tons of change on us that they don't even bother counting out, give us too much or too little change, be lazy and make us calculate how much to put on the pump, keep changing what they want and confuse us, etc. It's people of all ages who do this and cashiers of all ages may have trouble with things. It can be very confusing and if you have anxiety or aren't great or very confident with numbers, things like the OP can happen.
Secret Chief
Vetted Member
We use to dream of having a home and of having a job to go to. We had to walk 50 miles a day to the school and it was based at the bottom of a uranium mine. It made men of us. Even the girls.
Interesting radiation exposure effect.
wellwisher
Well-Known Member
It has to do with a prosthesis affect due to technology.
When I was young, computers were only in colleges, but were not mainstream, there was no internet, no calculators, no cell phones, no Google search, no software, etc. You needed to remember and know things in your head, like add and subtract on your own. My penmanship was 10 times better, before keyboards. There was no spell check, so you needed to know how to spell, no grammar check, so you need to know proper grammar. You did not have computer software to think for you. Engineers had to use more brain power with computers less sophisticated than modern cells phones. NASA put a man on the moon with a cell phone of compute power. I doubt the engineers of today could do that since they need more bells and whistles and cannot dependent on self reliant pilots.
What were simple and doable tasks back then, now have become machine dependent. Parts of the brain atrophy or never develop, with the machine there to maintain a prosthetic illusion of competence. I suppose this could free up the brain, so one can develop more advanced areas of the brain for culture. But that is not exactly happening. The educated are becoming functionally less educated, if we take away the prosthesis. Many cannot tell the difference between journalism and fake news. AI will have a worse impact on the young than the old, when the prosthesis can talk and think for you.
Old fashion education, in many private schools still teach the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic and tend to score higher in standard tests. Public schools seem more geared to accept the prosthesis, and work with what is left, which get even further behind; modern math based on machine logic and not neural logic.
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These young kids today, these whippersnappers!
Messianic Israelite
Active Member
Hi We Never Know. Good afternoon. Is the education system failing our children, yes. But I would say more importantly, the young people are getting worse and worse because they aren't reading the Bible. I'm a mental health support worker and I work in a residential home for people with mental health problems from teenagers to adults up to 65 years old. What do the young people do with their time? They get their money from the government which include disability payments and then they go and spend that money on alcohol and drugs. They do not have extreme mental health problems. You know what they should be doing with their valuable time? They should be reading the Bible. The Bible helps us to attain a sound mind.
It sounds like the individual that you interacted with at Taco Bell didn't have a good grasp on basic mathematics. That is easily correctable. But my concern is that the young people today haven't a good grasp on the Bible. The Book of Proverbs is actually addressed to the young people and young at heart. Proverbs 1 says
"for giving prudence to those who are simple,[a]
knowledge and discretion to the young—
5 let the wise listen and add to their learning,
and let the discerning get guidance—"
Ecclesiastes 11 says:
"You who are young, be happy while you are young,
and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth.
Follow the ways of your heart
and whatever your eyes see,
but Elohim will bring you into judgment.
10 So then, banish anxiety from your heart
and cast off the troubles of your body,
for youth and vigor are meaningless."
Young people need to be reading the Bible. It will keep them away from many of the pitfalls of life and help them to foster a good relationship with Yahweh and understand the way this world is going and what will occur on this earth. Righteousness is missing from the younger generation and it's heart-wrenching to see.
Popular opinion of kids back when you were one.
This is how kids see you now....
I'm amazed by the number of adults with no skills whatsoever. There's no job that requires knowledge that they can do, and they seem to have no interest in self-improvement.
I've watched several episode of a show called Bar Rescue, which salvages failing bars by counseling owners, training staff, designing food and drink menus, and renovation of the bar. Many owners know nothing about their business. Many bartenders can't mix any drinks properly, and many cooks can't cook. They press frozen burgers onto grills and drop frozen food into dirty oil. It's like a train wreck that I can't look away from - people allowing themselves to be so undeveloped as to have nothing to offer an employer that requires knowledge or experience.
Is it worse than in the past? I don't know.
As a digression, I've learned a lot about bartending from this show. I'm not much of a drinker. Began twenty years ago at age fifty, and only order cocktails when I'm out. Until recently, it was always a margarita, which, along with a screwdriver and a cosmopolitan, were the only drinks I knew anything about, and with the last two, I only know the fruit juice in the drink (orange and cranberry), not the spirit (likely vodka or gin).
Now I know the difference between a shaken, stirred, and built drink. I know what balanced means - two things: ratio of sweet to sour if both are present, and ratio of alcohol to other ingredients (not too weak or strong). I learned that a standard drink is a 1.5 ounce pour, which is a six count with a standard bottle with a pour spout (hold it by the neck, not the body). And when we shake, it's always a metal part and a glass part with the glass part up and facing away from the bar and customers when shaking, and then usually a strain. I believe that shaken drinks all contain citrus, and the shaking is to break up the pulp. Otherwise, you stir.
And I recently ordered my first non-margarita cocktail - a tequila sunrise: a built (layered) drink.
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Secret Chief
Vetted Member
PureX
Veteran Member
WE are the problem.
Our never-ending lust for ever greater profit in all human endeavors has caused us to determine that public education is not profitable enough for us to invest much money in collectively. Teachers don't increase stock prices. So we don't want to pay them any more than the bare minimum. Students are just future workers, and we need fewer of them thanks to robots and off-shore manufacturing, anyway. So no point in investing in them, either.
And that girl at the Taco Bell wasn't even being paid a sufficient wage to allow her to live, so why should she care if you think she's not good enough at basic math to give you the correct change? If I were her I wouldn't give a crap about the job, either.
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Guitar's Cry
Disciple of Pan
In a sense, yes. I don't mean that in an insulting way, only that the youth at cash machines aren't the customer waiting for change. They are kids in fairly new and scary situations being asked to calculate something on the spot while people wait, watching and judging them.
Reminds me of my check out work. Shudders
Cards were by far preferable. I could quickly count out cash and change and got quite good at it. But it was rather exhausting and don’t wish that upon anyone.
In saying that, I think we have a little less in that department compared to American currency. I mean you guys have nickels and dimes, our coinage is counted out in fives, if that makes sense lol
Random aside, I always kind of wonder how Americans can judge how much fuel/gas they need. Here you fill up your car and then pay whatever it is that it came to.
So maybe I’m just used to absentmindedly fueling up lol
Believe me, the customers standing and staring at you is weird regardless of your age.
In my country, minibuses usually collect the total fare via one of the passengers who collects from everyone else and then passes it along to the driver. What happens is you'll have 15 or 20 passengers all giving you their fares and asking for the change. It typically goes like this:
"Pay for three out of this 50 [50-pound note]."
"One out of a 100."
"I need change. Tell him [the driver] to send some coins."
And you have to calculate all of that quickly, for all of them. If you don't, you risk getting into or causing an altercation over the fare. You usually have to collect the fares from everyone and then give back the change from those before passing along the correct sum to the driver.
I hate doing it, because, while I'm good at arithmetic (and math in general), it puts you on the spot, can be stressful, and isn't something you're obligated to do. I once made a mistake in calculation, and the driver disapprovingly said, "You're studying engineering? Damn" because his typical route included my university, which was for engineering and computer science.
I recounted what had happened to some of my classmates as a joke, because I had made study notes for math for five semesters in a row and gotten straight A's in all mathematical subjects. I also rarely needed a calculator in exams, even though we were allowed to use it. One of my classmates said, "Good thing being good at advanced calculus and linear algebra doesn't rely on calculating fares on the bus, but I guess that guy doesn't know that."
I don't consider doing everyday arithmetic on the spot to necessarily be a reliable measure of someone's mathematical aptitude, especially since a lot of advanced mathematics is largely based on understanding concepts and underlying logic rather than merely crunching numbers via basic arithmetic. There are many variables that can affect that besides ability to do arithmetic well.
Not much call these days to do math in your head with all of these electronic devices about to do it for you. Also I suspect less folks using physical money vs credit cards.
Takes a bit of routine practice for the brain to wire itself to monetary exchange. So not less intelligent, just less practiced.
I suspect someday we'll do away with physical money so your concerns will seem archaic.
