On Tue, 17 Jul 2018 at 14:36, Noel Chiappa via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: *Chuckle* I doubt they'd understand. This quiz was in the basement bar of a youth hostel. I would guesstimate that these kids are all young enough that they don't remember the 20th century. They're highly media-literate -- my team only won by 1 point, although if they'd listened to me it would have been 3 -- but the quizmaster struggled with the task of reading the team names out. Ours was called "Intravenous de Milo". This had to be explained to him. He confessed embarrassment that he didn't know the reference -- he hadn't heard of the sculpture -- nor did he know the word "intravenous". Most team names were puns. He struggled with every one, simply to pronounce it. To mark another team's paper, you need to be able to add up and count to between 10 and 12. Several times we've had to ask for a recount because that much mental arithmetic is hard for them. The former quiz mistress, who's ~32, totally them wrongly about 3 weeks ago and gave the prize to someone else who'd got 3 less than us. These are abstract skills that are not handled well by millennial kids. It scares the pants off me, because in a decade, some of these people will be running companies. Some will employ thousands. These are smart, monied, well-travelled kids, travelling the world alone for fun. They're probably among the brighter of their generation. But then, when I look at school examination papers from 50 or 100 years before I was at school, *I'm* terrified. I feel like I am retarded, compared to schoolchildren of the turn of the 20th century who were expected by 11 to be fluent in 3-4 foreign languages, to play several musical instruments, to be able to confidently quote literature in multiple languages, and so on. My generation were considerably dumber than that. Now, my generation is running things -- I'm broadly of an age with the government members of most of the English-speaking world. And they are, very evidently, making a total mess of it. So I am perversely reassured that it's not just me. Nope, my generation were dumb too. Yes, the next generation seem very stupid to me, but they know stuff I don't know, have skills I don't have. I marvel that they lack skills that seem basic to me, like the "three Rs", but they don't see them as particularly important. -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053