If a zombie can learn...
Something I find hard to understand is people who just can't seem to learn anything new. I mean we live in a society where every child has the chance to attend school for up to twelve years and in that time you will constantly learn and develop new skills and improve on others.
I constantly get people asking stupid questions where they could have easily answered themselves with a little bit of research. Well I say research how about a Google search for a start. Nothing wrong with asking a question but don't ask something that is so easy or is very obvious that you clearly show that you have no knowledge or understanding due to being lazy and not reading or even thinking.
I work with many skilled people most have many years of learning in university. But after the 4 years or more of uni I get such stupid questions. I was once asked why the sound on the computer does not work. No speakers on the computer is the answer. Can you photocopy this black and white picture into colour? Sake!
People seem to take school and college/uni and after all that just shut down the learning area of the brain. Why? Lazy? Or just stupid, in reality many people are very stupid but can be good at school work. I really never found school that great for me. I did like some subjects but most were just so badly taught. I like history, computers and music all three are not what is really taught in school as an important subject. Maths, English and Sciences are the main ones and the ones the jobs market want.
A great film out in the 80's Day of the Dead by George A Romero tells the story of a post-apocalyptic earth where people are outnumbered by zombies and the plot is around a US military base that is in an old WW2 bunker. The mission is to assist in the research of curing the zombies. But the scientist that is present is looking into changing the zombie behaviour. He is looking into stopping the zombies from wanting to eat humans. He has to learn what makes the zombies tick and after working with them finds a zombie Bub who learns how to do certain things. If a zombie can learn does that mean much of the world is beneath a zombie?
I may just be getting old but everything is getting simpler, computers are a great example. I remember the old commodores where you had to learn a computer language to programme it. Or even use the machine for basic things. Now it is so simple, point and click, people still can't do that.
Flat pack furniture is a great example; many people struggle to use this. It has a great wee leaflet with it that shows you in pictures and simple text what to do. Take screw A (with a picture of screw a) and place in plank of wood C (Plank C has a letter 'C' on it). Fuck sake kids' stuff.
The Sun and all tabloid newspapers are guilty of dumbing down to a point they are used in schools in Africa to teach 6 and 7 year olds English. Yes if you read the Sun you have the same reading ability of an African seven year old. Ok the Sun has nice pictures and page three but I don't need a picture of a car on fire to show me what a car looks like when it is on fire. I remember the fire on the channel tunnel years ago when the sun reported it they had a graphic that shows France and England and a wee tunnel with a fire symbol in the middle. That took up a page with a small caption at the bottom on the story.
It is an old one but the exams in schools are getting easy, I have seen some of them and I am shocked. But it is not just schools. I went back to college a few years ago and done a computer aided design course. I was looking into the electronics course I done ten years previous. To my shock it was now only 14 hours a week course. Not the 36 hours I done just ten years ago, I did ask and was told it was due to money. But I really think it is due to people failing the course as I was the only person in three years to pass it in 2000.
Why is ignorance celebrated? As a former manager I was in the position of hiring (and firing) people to work in my lab. All I seemed to get was people who went out of their way to be stupid. And even to the point I could not train them in anything. Most of the work in the lab is very simple but you can go on and learn a lot, it is a technical job and requires a quick sense of problem solving. So it is no way a boring job but they just don't want to learn. I found most of the people who wanted to learn would do so and also enjoy it. The ones that don't want to learn would just stay in the same area of the lab and do the same thing. And they are happy to do so, why? I will never know. I bumped into a former workmate a few weeks ago and found he is still in the same job ten years later and doing the same task. He has not learned a thing. The job is near impossible to not learn anything, time alone would teach you something but not with this guy. But he seems happy to be daft and never learn.
I always remember a Bill Hicks show where he tells the story of a waffle waitress asking him "why do you read?" and I see this happening more and more. OK I am not a huge reader but I do read far more than most and again it is now how much you read but the quality of the text. I well written book can teach you things and without you knowing it as well. But people constantly buy the book about some idiot on Big Brother or a footballers autobiography.
Television is guilty of dumbing down as well, it is now at a point that much of what is on is a soap opera or some lame quiz show. Even back in the day looking up on the TV guide and picking out a show to watch and then going to the TV at the time it is on has been lost. Not much of a skill but it did use the power of buying a TV guide and reading it, telling the time and not missing the show. TV on demand means people can miss things due to being so fucking stupid that they can catch up on the brain numbing shows later.
I wonder if people are just turning into drummers all over the country. Great test, give people a card with P.T.O. in the corner on both sides and see what they do.
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