Kids Wildly Out of Touch with Natural World, BBC Survey Reveals

[Czymra]

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

ATTRIBUTION: Attributed to SOCRATES by Plato, according to William L.
Patty and Louise S. Johnson, Personality and Adjustment, p. 277
(1953)."

[ucan]

Friends - your taxonomic lexicon (lol, I hardly ever use big words) is essential for your survival.

It's not about train spotting the knowledge or the political ethos of the day - it's about what makes culture and language tick - what you don't know can harm you - what you forget suppresses you - The natural realm is still waiting for us to return - It loves you so much.

[Sol Invictus]

Originally Posted by Czymra

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

ATTRIBUTION: Attributed to SOCRATES by Plato, according to William L.
Patty and Louise S. Johnson, Personality and Adjustment, p. 277
(1953)."

Thats right, and Sparta beat Athens because the kids who formed the army were too soft. Oh and another thing, pray do show me where it said kids don't know where their food comes from or what a cow or sheep is.

[Czymra]

Is this issue about 'survival in the wild' or 'culture' now?

[ucan]

if your idea about survival in the wild is a lonely hard life then I don't think you'll be having much "culture" anyhow - but if your still interested in "living" in a Radiant Zone then you'll see that they are intertwined and inseparable - culture is a language also...

[Czymra]

Well, there are multiple things that play into this, aren't there?
Is it culture/language, understanding the 'real' world or rather nature or actually knowing how to engage with that natural 'part' of the world.

I can just say that I speak about 4 languages, I'm 23 and in most of them, including my mother tongue, I probably can't come up with more than 5 or 8 names for different species of birds, flowers, plants, trees. The most common, no problem but beyond that, plainly no.

I grew up in the countryside however and to claim that 'not knowing the language is being completely ignorant toward it' is as blatant as thinking you understand an illness by giving it a name.

That children nowadays are out of touch, playing too many games, I admit to all that, but a study that engages with language I think, is a rather removed way for proving just that and falls into the quote I pasted before, which proves to some extent that grown ups always thing that the next generation is useless. But of course we focus more on the unpleasant kids than the nice ones, they're in our way after all.

Have a go, if you think I'm missing something but please explain yourself but spare me the cynicism, I don't know what to make of it and I do think that writing is about the worst media to actually communicate the true meaning of it.

Thanks.

[Sol Invictus]

Fish finger are NOT caught in packets.

Milk is not 'made'.

Having a generation of children who don't know where their food comes from or how it is made / produced / sourced is an absloute invitation to feed them anything and every thing.

If you don't know, you'll trust some one who looks and sounds if they do even if they mean you harm; because how are you to know the difference?

Children disconnected with the world are sleep walking into a potential nightmare.

[Dantheman62]

I think the"electronic playground" kids have these days does hurt their overall learning of nature and natural things.Another thing is location, if kids are growing up in cities then it will diminish their 'hands on training' so to speak.Books can only be an intro to the world, it's the hands on thing that really teaches people.I grew up in the country and can tell you what kind of Duck is flying over by looking, what kind of fish are in the lakes and rivers and what they eat, none of that knowledge came from books, it came from growing up in the country.

[Czymra]

Those are both sound statements. I can not proud myself with knowing nature's creatures like that Dan and I do see the threat in what you point out Sol, however I would be dumbfound if there were really so many people that would believe those two examples you have made.

What you are asking for is not a 'learn your terminology' it's a matter of abandoning cities, which I'm all for.

I just wanted to prevent everybody from nodding without understanding what this is about.

I just hope my last 5 months in London will go by fine.

[Dantheman62]

Where are you moving to?

[Czymra]

Originally Posted by Dantheman62

Where are you moving to?

I'm from South Germany. I'll go back there first of all and then see what's possible. Might hit Japan or France. But the world is open to me.

Glad I'll be out of this place tomorrow over christmas, not returning till Obama's taken over, then again maybe I'm just not returning.

By the way, I heard in some Camelot interview that South Germany was making preparations long ago. Anybody heard about that and happens to have a link? Maybe I'll open a thread.