Ask Lemmy

It is a matter of expectations. A person who grew up in X situation believes that Y knowledge is fundamental, while one who grew up in Z situation may of had zero exposure to or need of being exposed to Y knowledge, instead learning T knowledge which they find to be fundamental.

There is a book I have actually, the Book of Basic Knowledge. I would say there is a baseline that makes sense for everyone to know for daily life(basic mental mathematics, how to construct sentences/formulate thoughts, a basic grasp of history to help understand why we are where and who we are, etc.), but some might believe there is "Basic Knowledge," that is outside the scope of that book, because of the logic I posited above. Or some might think that the book goes beyond Basic Knowledge. And some might just outright disagree with what I think is fundamental to interface with the world(though having lived in it long enough, I think what I put is pretty universally needed).

It's yet another subjective thing because it varies from person to person. Basic Knowledge from Person 1 will say "common sense, simple math" and Person 2 will say "manners and developing respect". I mean, it's everywhere.

Basic knowledge is similar to common knowledge and someone once said: "Common knowledge is not as common as you might think".

It's entirely subjective and one generation's "basic knowledge" may be someone else's "useless esoterica."

For instance, old people jerk themselves a lot about writing cursive and driving stickshift (and winning WW2 somehow???) but don't know how to put their phones on silent.

On the other hand, people are forgetting how to read and how to learn, and I'd say that's basic knowledge... so, case-by-case.

Who was responsible for teaching them?

I think it greatly depends on "basic knowledge" definition. I once worked with an new-ish engineer who couldn't put air in her car tires. She told me she tried, she went to an air pump but couldn't figure out anyway to attach the hose. I offered to take a look. Turns out she didn't know that you could remove the valve stem cap.

Another example was another person didn't know you had to file taxes, this is in usa. He knew taxes got taken out of his paycheck. He knew he paid sales tax. He didn't know you had to file taxes and you could either get a refund or a additional bill. Not saying he didn't know HOW he literally didn't know it was a thing.

These were both college grads in stem fields before Ai. That said I mostly place blame for these things on their parents for not showing these basic things.

Yeah. I really think there is only so much people can really keep up where they know it. Preppers pretty much teach themselves stuff that was common knowledge in the past. those older people lack all sorts of basic knowledge. It comes down to what you need to know. The most useful basic knowledge is just reading and reading comprehension and math helps a whole lot to up to a point. Enough to read how to books and such. good to have enough experience that it does not have to explain how every tool works. of course we have video instructions now so hard to say how much that is needed. Still math, reading, writing. They help a lot in general cognitive understanding. I highly recomend elementary logic.

I think there’s merit to it — there’s just some stuff you need to know to be a successful person in the world. If you’re a couple generations removed from me, or from a culture that’s significantly different from mine, your corpus of “basic knowledge” will be significantly different from mine, and that’s okay.

It’s fine in specific institutional contexts, like academia or employment where training is provided. Basic knowledge would be what’s covered in a 101 class, apprenticeship, or orientation.

Out in the world? People will yell at you for not knowing something, and the something they know is wrong. Don’t bother with those people more than is required. You can’t even expect that everyone makes it out of high school with the same information.

Subjective and this hardly useful.

They think the things they learned as a child are still relevant today.

Sometimes they're right, most of the time they're not.

Like, some people are still super upset that cursive isn't taught in school, mostly because humans don't like being the last in a line of knowledge, because that means they didn't really need it.

For an extreme example, look at the pushback again cochlear implants from deaf communities, especially from people over 40. A significant amount want to prevent deaf children from being able to hear, just because it makes the deaf community smaller.

Even if people don't admit it, we all want our "tribe" to expand. And tribal lines are only racial lines when racial segregation is happening. Segregate all the dead kids into a "school for the deaf" and they're gonna get tribal and want to see that tribe continue to exist even if that means their tribe members are worse off personally.

It's basic human psychology, to tie it back up to your question.

Getting mad at later generations for not learning the same stuff, is just a small slice of that behavior.