Kids can't use computers... and this is why it should worry you

[Garth Wilson]

I have said that in spite of the exabytes of information available today on even a smartphone, today's kids are incredibly ignorant.  I could elaborate on that to no end; but I'll give just this one example:  My wife and I were working in a Wednesday nights kids' program for many years.  There was always dinner before club time started.  Six or eight years ago, just for the fun of it, one of the leaders went up to one of the tables which had 4th- to 9th-graders, and said, "Ok everyone, what's ten divided by six?"  All eyes turned glassy.  After several seconds, two of them thought to reach for their smartphones to try to find a calculator ap, but even still, could not give an answer.  I was flabbergasted.  Yes, folks, this is what our $12K/year/student is giving us in the public schools.

Related, in the field of programming:
Editorial: The reason kids can't program today is because technology is making it harder.
Blog: The Duplo®code Fallacy, how industry & academia make it harder today for kids to start programming
Report: 80's kids started programming at an earlier age than today's millennials

I dumped Microsoft and went to Linux 15+ years ago, and 90+% of my computer problems disappeared.  For the few remaining problems, which are few and far between, I need the help of our son who worked very successfully for a manged-services provider, installing and maintaining computer and digital-phone networks and being a technical-help man for the software problems.  How I wish someone would write a real Linux manual!  The answer is always, "Oh, it's all on the internet.  You just do a search for whatever you need..." but in many cases you don't know what you need.  HP's manuals of 40 years ago were absolutely outstanding, and when I was writing manuals for our equipment at work, I used HP's as a pattern to follow.