OK. I officially claim that the snowflake generation is stupid, no…that would insult stupid people. They are ignorant! No, that would insult ignorant people. What is worse than stupid and ignorant? Ignoramous’.

My grandparents were from the greatest generation. They survived the depression and WWII. My parents were no slouches either and while my mother went to school in a one room school house much like the one on ‘Little House on the Prarie’, she was still taught how to tell time, read, write in cursive, balance a checkbook, read a map, read a phonebook, basic American civics and geometry and more importantly, think for herself. My father was in the military and was involved with basic, intermediate and advanced electronics and was a teacher who specialized in the same. I graduated HS with the knowledge of reading, writing, arithmetic, American civics, American and world history, biology, chemestry, computer sciences, the ability to write in cursive, read and tell time on an analog watch, math thru trigonometry, read a map, a newspaper, phone book, Sheakespeare, balance a checkbook and yes, think for myself. The main thing that Dr. Kron instilled in me was to ask the question ‘why’?

So why is the current generation so lacking in the basic skills needed to think for themselves?

While at a drive thru coffee house, the barista noticed my wrist watch which is an analog divers time piece. This young man of about 20 years old asked, after admiring it ‘how do you tell time with it?’ I can only hope that, while this young man looked sincere, that he was only joking. But it does beg the question ‘what are they not teaching in school anymore?’

I went to a large national chain department store to buy a thig-a-majig. I went up to the cashier and my whatchamacallit was rung up at $9.26. As I handed him a $10.00 bill the power went out. He informed me that I would have to wait. I told him the change is going to be 74 cents. He said he did not think so and had to wait for the power to come back on to figure out how much change to give me. I stared at him dumbstruck. He could not ‘think’ but had to be told what to do. Again, another graduate from public school. Why are we pumping out a generation of people that can’t think for themselves?

I like SciFi and if you are astute, you can see a possible future in science fiction. In the 1997 Outer Limits episode called ‘Stream of Consciousness’ (season 3 episode 5) mankind has become so dependant on technology that the populace can no longer think for themselves. They had created a neural implant which connects everyone to a ‘Google-like’ computer which gives them all the answers to any question. Well, something goes wrong as technology inevitably fails and since the populace can no longer think for themselves, they are helped by the very person that they shunned because he could not be ‘plugged into’ the computer….because he had to learn to think for himself. Kind of prophetic isn’t it?

Our children are being taught how to put a condom on a cucumber and that they can ignor their genetics and be whatever gender they ‘feel’ like being, but they can not read an analog watch, write in cursive, perform simple mathematics, know almost nothing of American civics, know even less of the Constitution of the United States of America and how & why it was written. And more importantly, our children can not think for themselves.

I see people that ‘live’ on their ‘smart phone’. By that, I mean that people have become so reliant on the smart phone or other mobile device that if the power goes out or the internet goes down, they literally do not know what to do. They remind me so much of the way people were depicted in that episode of Outer Limits. Think about it, very few people buy cameras anymore because there is a camera in their phone. When was the last time someone bought a map? There is Google Maps on your phone. No need for an MP3 player because you can store all of your music on your phone. Who in the younger generation wears a watch? The phone can literally ‘tell’ you the time. Who needs to write a letter? Send an email instead. And what the heck is a fax machine? Technology is great, as a tool but we must learn the basics. In school, my teacher said that in order to use a calculator in class, we first had to prove we could solve the problem without it. The classwork comprised of 25 questions. If each of us could solve the first 10 questions on paper without a calculator, after she checked your work and if you were right, then you could use a calculator for the remaining questions. The calculator was a timesaving device but she did not want us to be dependant on it. We had to understand the math concept first. We had to think for ourselves.

While I am not a fan of the TV show called ‘Naked and Afraid’, I did watch two episodes. The concept is one man and one woman are taken to an isolated location like the Amazon jungle or the mountains somewhere, these two people have not met each other until the first day of 21 days, they strip naked and each get 1 tool. Maybe a machete, a pot, a magnesium fire starter. Then they have to live with each other, alone in the mountain or jungle and survive. No cell phone, no survival manual, no McDonalds or water faucet. just themselves and the two tools they chose. How many millennial snowflakes could start a fire without a lighter? How many of these whinny snowflakes could find food, water or shelter? Take away their cell phone, fancy clothes and give them only a knife and a pot, could they survive? What if that fat North Korean pot bellied pig decides to get ‘wild and crazy’ and our electrical grid is disabled for a short period of time? No cell phone, no internet, no McDonalds, no air conditioning or water from the faucet. What would these under prepared ‘sheep’ do? They would be dependant on the government for everything and probably have to go to a concentration, er, FEMA camp. What will they do when they can’t log onto Facebook and bitch about the President wanting to make America great again?

Several years ago, there was a push for school vouchers. This is simply a plan to allow the tax money that the parent already pays, and allows the parent to choose the school that they want to send their children to. It could be a private Catholic school, Christian school, or any public or charter school. The power goes to the parent, not the government. Maybe it is time to bring the idea of vouchers back. What can it hurt? It is obvious that many public schools are more interested in telling a third grade boy that it is OK to dress, act and be treated like a girl, put condoms on cucumbers, and yet put little Cindy in jail for bringing a pink squirt gun to school because, hey, she brought a firearm to school and is a danger to everyone. You see, snowflakes don’t like an environment of alternate ideas, or a pink squirt gun.