Nincompoops

As a sort of follow-up to yesterday’s post, here are a couple of articles that are more-or-less on the same subject:

 

Are we raising a generation of nincompoops?
By Beth J. Harpaz, Associated Press Writer

Second-graders who can't tie shoes or zip jackets. Four-year-olds in Pull-Ups diapers. Five-year-olds in strollers. Teens and preteens befuddled by can openers and ice-cube trays. College kids who've never done laundry, taken a bus alone or addressed an envelope.
Are we raising a generation of nincompoops? And do we have only ourselves to blame? Or are some of these things  simply the result of kids growing up with push-button technology in an era when mechanical devices are gradually  being replaced by electronics?
Susan Maushart, a mother of three, says her teenage daughter "literally does not know how to use a can opener.
Most cans come with pull-tops these days. I see her reaching for a can that requires a can opener, and her shoulders slump and she goes for something else."
Teenagers are so accustomed to either throwing their clothes on the floor or hanging them on hooks that Maushart says her "kids actually struggle with the mechanics of a clothes hanger."
Many kids never learn to do ordinary household tasks. They have no chores. Take-out and drive-through meals have replaced home cooking. And busy families who can afford it often outsource house-cleaning and lawn care.
"It's so all laid out for them," said Maushart, author of the forthcoming book "The Winter of Our Disconnect," about her efforts to wean her family from its dependence on technology. "Having so much comfort and ease is what has led
to this situation -- the Velcro sneakers, the Pull-Ups generation. You can pee in your pants and we'll take care of it for you!"
The issue hit home for me when a visiting 12-year-old took an ice-cube tray out of my freezer, then stared at it helplessly. Raised in a world where refrigerators have push-button ice-makers, he'd never had to get cubes out of a tray -- in the same way that kids growing up with pull-tab cans don't understand can openers.
But his passivity was what bothered me most. Come on, kid! If your life depended on it, couldn't you wrestle that icecube tray to the ground? It's not that complicated!
Mark Bauerlein, author of the best-selling book "The Dumbest Generation," which contends that cyberculture is turning young people into know-nothings, says "the absence of technology" confuses kids faced with simple mechanical tasks.
But Bauerlein says there's a second factor: "a loss of independence and a loss of initiative." He says that growing up with cell phones and Google means kids don't have to figure things out or solve problems any more. They can look up what they need online or call mom or dad for step-by-step instructions. And today's helicopter parents are more than happy to oblige, whether their kids are 12 or 22.
"It's the dependence factor, the unimaginability of life without the new technology, that is making kids less entrepreneurial, less initiative-oriented, less independent," Bauerlein said.
Teachers in kindergarten have always had to show patience with children learning to tie shoes and zip jackets, but thanks to Velcro closures, today's kids often don't develop those skills until they are older. Sure, harried parents are grateful for Velcro when they're trying to get a kid dressed and out the door, and children learn to tie shoes eventually unless they have a real disability. But if they're capable of learning to tie their shoes before they learn to read, shouldn't we encourage them?
Some skills, of course, are no longer useful. Kids don't need to know how to add Roman numerals, write cursive or look things up in a paper-bound thesaurus. But is snail-mail already so outmoded that teenagers don't need to know how to address an envelope or put the stamp in the right spot? Ask a 15-year-old to prepare an envelope some time; you might be shocked at the result.
Lenore Skenazy, who writes a popular blog called Free-Range Kids, based on her book by the same name, has a different take. Skenazy, whose approach to parenting is decidedly anti-helicopter, agrees that we are partly to blame for our children's apparent incompetence, starting when they are infants.
"There is an onslaught of stuff being sold to us from the second they come out of the womb trying to convince us that they are nincompoops," she said. "They need to go to Gymboree or they will never hum and clap! To teach them how to walk, you're supposed to turn your child into a marionette by strapping this thing on them that holds them up because it helps them balance more naturally than 30,000 years of evolution!"
Despite all this, Skenazy thinks today's kids are way smarter than we give them credit for: "They know how to change a photo caption on a digital photo and send it to a friend. They can add the smiley face without the colon and parentheses! They never took typing but they can type faster than I can!"
Had I not been there to help that 12-year-old with the ice-cube tray, she added, the kid surely would have "whipped out his iPhone and clicked on his ice cube app to get a little video animated by a 6-year-old that explained how you get ice cubes out of a tray."
Friends playing devil's advocate say I'm wrong to indict a whole generation for the decline of skills they don't need.
After all, we no longer have to grow crops, shoot deer, prime a pump or milk a cow to make dinner, but it was just a couple of generations ago that you couldn't survive in many places without that knowledge.
Others say this is simply the last gasp of the analog era as we move once and for all to the digital age. In 10 years, there won't be any ice cube trays; every fridge will have push-button ice.
But Bauerlein, a professor at Emory University who has studied culture and American life, defends my right to rail against the ignorance of youth.
"That's our job as we get old," he said. "A healthy society is healthy only if it has some degree of tension between  older and younger generations. It's up to us old folks to remind teenagers: 'The world didn't begin on your 13th birthday!'And it's good for kids to resent that and to argue back. We want to criticize and provoke them. It's not  healthy for the older generation to say, 'Kids are kids, they'll grow up.'
"They won't grow up," he added, "unless you do your job by knocking down their hubris."

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And this one:

By LENORE SKENAZY , New York Times Columnist and Author of Free Range Kids

Maybe we've been pointing to the wrong culprits when we attempt to assign blame for the dumbing down of America. (What is it this week — too much testing in the schools? Working mothers? Fox TV? It's hard to keep track.)

It is quite possible that people are growing dumber than dog biscuits for the simple reason that they are being treated this way by the world in which they shop.

Here's the sign on a hanger at K-Mart: "Standard, full-size hanger holds everything from wash and wear to outwear!"

Yes, that complex and daunting device dangling there in home furnishings can be used with every confidence to hang your clothes — and not just certain, very specific clothes: wash and wear AND outerwear, which usually demand such very different hardware. Hurrah.

Of course, it's not just hangers out there hitting you over the head.

It's food: "Croissant swirls … ideal for snacking!" (They are? Could that be why they're sold in the grocery store?)

And clothing: "Choose your favorites!" suggests the sign at Children's Place. (Gee, may I?)

Even once-reticent office supplies have taken to yammering. This ballpoint pen, says a Pentel package, is "for notes and general writing." RoseArt assures buyers that its erasers are fully ready to "erase and erase and erase." Paper Mate boasts of a pencil: "Ideal for school work and general writing."

It's less than ideal for broiling with lime and garlic, I'm guessing. Not to be used as a giant toothpick? Cannot, in a pinch, serve as a very narrow snowshoe?

"I'm looking at a package of Crayola crayons right now," the author of "Punk Marketing," Richard Laermer, a student of the advertising absurd, said. "It says, ‘Good for children.'"

When it's reached the point that the folks at Crayola see fit to tell you that the quintessential childhood item is the quintessential childhood item, something 's wrong.

The problem can be partly traced back to that most American of fears: litigation. This has, admittedly, led to some great moments in labeling. Not just the old, "Contents may be hot because it's a CUP OF COFFEE," but also more baroque missives, such as the one I found on the box of a little electric heater.

Among its 17 instructions (including, first and foremost, "Read all instructions") was the advice: "To disconnect, turn to ‘off,' then grip plug and pull from wall outlet." That way, when you happen to assume the best way to disconnect the heater is actually to turn it to "high," submerge it in the tub, and lower your naked body — and your cat — in after it, you cannot blame the company for any discomfort you (or your pet) may feel.

Fear of lawsuits alone cannot explain the painfully obvious explanations on painfully obvious objects, however. When a duster says, "For removing dust" — and I just saw one that does — it's not because the company is worried someone may use it in lieu of a tibia transplant. It's because we really are becoming a nation of idiots and dummies. Just like the book titles tell us.

Americans have not only come to expect absolutely everything to be spelled out for them — they appreciate it, a consultant with the marketing firm Group 1066, Todd Merriman, says. "It may make a difference in their purchase," he said when I asked him why the maker of a rain poncho felt compelled to note on its hang tag, "Made of waterproof vinyl." Added Mr. Merriman: "You've taken away some of the guesswork for your customer."

So, next time you go to the store and you see the umbrella that, according to its manufacturer, "Opens full size"; or you find a set of Dixie cups that promise to be usable "for all occasions" and not just, say, wakes, or you learn from the package of Halls cough drops that you are supposed to "dissolve one drop slowly in the mouth" and not use them as suppositories, be grateful for one thing: You have a standard, full-size hanger waiting for you at home.

With a little practice and maybe a glance at the manual, you can probably figure out how to hang up your coat and then enjoy what's left of your evening. And brain.