Dumbing Down the US

No, not me. I'm retired, but still tap at the keyboard every day.  

I hired a kid, maybe 25 or so, to do the heavy work in the garden. I wanted him to do the bed prep and to set up the soaker hoses and then mulch the veggies I had already planted in another bed.

He had never seen a tomato plant before. For that matter, he had never seen a veggie garden before.  I asked him to snake the soaker hoses near the stem of the tomato plants.  After he did not move, I realized he had no idea what I was talking about. He did not know what the plant was, what a stem was or why he was doing what he was doing. 

Aha, sez me, a teaching moment says the old teacher in me.  I explained what we were doing and why. Showed him the baby bean plants because the seeds had come up.

Showed him why we plant bean seeds a couple of weeks apart because I don't want all those beans at once, so we plant them in stages. I explained that the tomatoes would grow and yield nice red tomatoes, the likes of which could never be found in a supermarket. 

Not only did he not know what a veggie garden is, I found out he didn't care. 

He had no curiosity whatsoever.  I asked him to bring me a bag of fertilizer from several feet away.  

He brought two bags to me, the only two nearby. One was lime, the other fertilizer.  The bag had FERTILIZER written on the side.  He either couldn't read or had no idea what fertilizer was.  None.  I finished the placing of the soakers, the mulching, the fertilizing while he watched and then I sent him home.

And we wonder why young folks are unemployed.  I sure know the answer for this particular young man. Not that this couldn't happen with older ones, but it seems to be epidemic with youngsters.

What happened to his natural curiosity, that wide eyed discovery and learning process that every baby is born with?  Did the schools pound it out of him with their regimentation? Did his parents not care?  Why is this happening everywhere?

And with the way the schools and jobs are being dumbed down to suit the new work force, do we care?  Guess the politicians care because an uneducated populace is easier to control.