PX EliezerPremium
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| reply to EUS
Re: Memorial UniversityStudents can't identify continents on map said by EUS:Saw this over the holidays, »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy and as I'm a fan of Clarke, Heinlein, and of course Asimov, I'm afraid that the future may turn out to be more like idiocracy, and not like that proposed by any of those fine writers.
Asimov's story "The Feeling of Power": People could not do ANY arithmetic without a calculator/computer, they didn't even know they had the capacity.
Cyril Kornbluth's 1951 story "The Marching Morons": Sounds like that "Idiocracy" movie you saw was ripped off from this story.
Another Kornbluth story that overlaps: "The Little Black Bag".
John D. MacDonald's "Spectator Sport" (1950):
See here for a discussion:
»thetrapofsolidgold.blogspot.com/···ort.html |
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| reply to peterboro
said by peterboro:said by lugnut : I tell ya, I'm just sooooooooooooooo damned happy I never had any kids of my own. Until you spend your last years a lonely desolate lost soul. Having kids is no guarantee that you won't be lonely. I know a lot of people who haven't traded more than 5 words with their kids in the past 30 years. |
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 A LurkerPremium
join:2007-10-27
Burlington, ON | reply to vue666
I'm not surprised at all. I took a travel course a couple of decades ago. One of the segments was geography. Identifying all provinces, states, capital and/or major cities (generically placing them close to where they were) was a requirement. ie. it's more important to know where NYC is than Albany. The same was done for the other continents, although less detail for some areas. Airport codes as well were required.
Now, you have a group of people in the room who (you would think) are interested in travel since they want to work in the field. Most were clueless. Of course, for a long time I kept a couple of blank maps and coloured in where I'd visited. There's a couple of online versions of the same idea kicking around. |
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peterboroAvatars are for posersPremium
join:2006-11-03
Peterborough, ON | reply to lugnut
said by lugnut :said by peterboro:said by lugnut : I tell ya, I'm just sooooooooooooooo damned happy I never had any kids of my own. Until you spend your last years a lonely desolate lost soul. Having kids is no guarantee that you won't be lonely. I know a lot of people who haven't traded more than 5 words with their kids in the past 30 years. Ok there is a pretty good chance, and very likely, you will spend your last years a lonely desolate lost soul. |
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 EUSKill cancerPremium
join:2002-09-10
canada | reply to PX Eliezer
Feeling of Power, I remember that short story.
I have not read Kornbluth...
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~ Project Hope ~ |
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| reply to vue666
said by vue666:There is something wrong when university students can not even identify North America or the Atlantic Ocean on a blank map....
»www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundl···115.html
But not surprised as we as a society now spend more time & money on entertainment and escapism then on education and enlightment...
WOW what a great vid that prof is spot on. We need more teachers like her.
My pet peve is math...Are we that hard up for carpenters in Halifax we give them calculator's?
One of my all time fave math vids.
»www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkp···A2rkpBSY |
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| reply to ekster
Re: Memorial University Students suffer from incontinence said by ekster:I know that it can make people lazy. I know some people who have been driving for 10+ years and still don't know the 4 major highways in Montreal that every single one of them takes at least twice a day...
But do they reach their destination? I think this is a bad analogy, if you have a decent sense of direction you can find your way without knowing the name of the road. I do this all the time going to the cottage , take all kind of backroads knowing which is north and which is east and sensing direction from the daylight. But i cant tell you the names of the roads. |
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| reply to Thane_Bitter
Re: Memorial UniversityStudents can't identify continents on map said by Thane_Bitter:said by ekster:I don't get it, I figured that, if anything, people should know these things better now because of computers and Internet as it takes 2 seconds to find a place on a map, and everyone is constantly exposed to people from across the world...
That's the osmosis theory of learning, don't teach, just show stuff to kids and they will learn on their own. Forget theory, knowledge and facts, all kids should be able to formulate complex ideas, relationships, and theories without any tools or underpinning logic. Naturally, why know anything when the answer can be found nearly instantly either from a computer, smart phone or someone else. Once you couple that with today’s classroom and student management "you get a gold star just for coming to class! / you failed but welcome to the next grade" the end result is a generation which started off being curious but ignorant and successfully transformed them into utterly stupid narcissistic beings full of want. It's like the old skill of remembering phone numbers. Shit, I think in my mid teens in late 80s early 90s I remembered 30 or 40 numbers for different family and friends. Today I can still remember a few of them even though I haven't called them in 20 years. Now I can barely remember my own 2 numbers, as all the work is done for me within the address book of the phone. |
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 vue666I'm in the prime of my senilityPremium
join:2007-12-07
Halifax, NS | reply to vue666
I resemble that remark.... |
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said by vue666:There is something wrong when university students can not even identify North America or the Atlantic Ocean on a blank map....
I disagree. I feel it's meaningless.
I could identify tiny islands on a map and tell you what languages they speak and the primary religion, if one exists, but it's only useful to me as geographical facts were a necessary aspect of my job a while back. Now... they're just trivia.
Some people feel that history is important. I know plenty about wars in other countries and how they effect the current political climate and how today's citizens in foreign lands feel about wars they won / lost generations ago... but North American trivia? I knew there were wars and I know some names that were involved, but I couldn't tell you what the years were or who won what war.
As far as I'm concerned, it's all trivia unless it has a direct application on your life. Eventually you hit an age where all that information is replaced with other information anyhow. I was a decent C / C++ coder in the early 90's and now I doubt I could complete a hello world function without googling. |
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vue666I'm in the prime of my senilityPremium
join:2007-12-07
Halifax, NS | reply to vue666
The more I learn instills in me a desire to learn more as I realize how much I do not know...
Knowledge is not a bad thing...
Yes my mind is full of trivia...what was the first year for the Ford V-8, what was the last year for Studebaker, what team won the Stanley Cup in 1967 or 1978, what was the name of the Dallas police officer Lee Harvey Oswald shot, what is the capital of Saskatchewan, what is the capital of Nebraska....
Knowing this stuff I do not perceive to be a liability. Does it assist me in doing my daily duties as a network system admin? NO... |
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| reply to vue666
You people sound like my math professor rambling on about how the Calculator was going to destroy math forever. That evil green vacuum florescent display of Math death just destroyed civilization.
The check out lines would be frozen still while helpless people's batteries ran out and they couldn't properly verify their change due. The technology will just fail us in the end! An actual assimilation of an argument made by one of my professors, in one of his idiotic ramblings.
Anyways just wanted to point out how similar some folk in this thread sound. |
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 AnavSarcastic Llama? Naw, Just AcerbicPremium
join:2001-07-16
Dartmouth, NS
kudos:3 | reply to vue666
Yes well, I get lost in Eastern Passage sometimes LOL but I can navigate crowded cities in Europe. |
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| reply to elwoodblues
Re: Memorial University Students suffer from incontinence said by elwoodblues:Unfortunately that's what technology brings, makes people "stupid' as they don't need to think.
I can't count the number of times I've watched people look at the cash register to see what change they need to provide, when I've already calculated the amount in my head.
I will admit there are times in which I'm just plain lazy and will use a calculator instead of doing the math in my head.
Well its easy to figure out change when you don't have to do other things at the same time. If I have lots of customers to deal with I don't bother with in head calculations, just enter the amount they gave me and wait for the POS to spit out the change. |
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| reply to vue666
Re: Memorial UniversityStudents can't identify continents on map When the teachers don't know anything and they have 100 Pro D days per year you can see how kids these days don't know as much as say 30 or more years ago.
Wait another 20 years when the current generation of "internet" kids is ready to be the teachers. We're gonna have some issues. |
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 dirtyjefferAnons on ignore, but not due to fear.Premium
join:2002-02-21
London, ON | said by analog andy:When the teachers don't know anything and they have 100 Pro D days per year you can see how kids these days don't know as much as say 30 or more years ago.
Wait another 20 years when the current generation of "internet" kids is ready to be the teachers. We're gonna have some issues.
i think the vast majority of teachers are quite knowledgeable...the issue is the kids...they feel they should get straight As just for showing up...the stories i hear from my friends are sad.
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- George Orwell |
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| reply to vue666
Let's face it. GPS is doing to geography what calculators did to math skills and spelling and grammar checkers have done to the English language.
Science fiction was right. We ARE becoming a world of morons.  |
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said by dirtyjeffer:i think the vast majority of teachers are quite knowledgeable...the issue is the kids...they feel they should get straight As just for showing up...the stories i hear from my friends are sad.
I wouldn't say that at all... it seems between a 1/3 split between teachers that are knowledgeable and care, teachers that are dumb and shouldn't be 'teaching' children and teachers that don't get a shit and can't wait to retire.
I don't know if teaching ability applies to this issue or not but if you engage kids properly, you can teach them faster. |
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| reply to lugnut
said by lugnut :Considering we all learned the 7 continents and 5 oceans in grade 4 geography, I have to ask, "WTF are they teaching kids today in elementary schools?"
Imaginary self esteem?
Advanced sharing?
Tournament Nintendo?
Or are the schools leaving it all up to PBS and videogames to teach the kids nowadays? Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
My kid is 9 and his homeworks are complicated, more than they were when I was in 4th grade in the 1980's. Sometimes as an adult I cannot understand some of his excersizes, but one thing is true, geography is not taught at all because I'm sure he wouldn't be able to find Canada on a blank map. |
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 J E F FWhatta Ya Think About Dat?Premium
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Kitchener, ON
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The kids getting out of university are very stupid. Not only don't they know geography, their history, math and spelling is horrible. They can't tell time either. Yet, these are the people getting the good paying jobs. And you wonder why society is collapsing.
Part of the problem is that schools prep kids for university rather that community college, so they're taught things like vertices in grade 2 rather than 5*8. I was talking to a young lady who got her MBA and plans on going back to college to learn something so she can get the jobs she wants. Otherwise, she'll end up with a .gov job or executive position where knowing things isn't important...just a good GPA in the study of BS.
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If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. - Albert Einstein |
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