What two countries border the United States?
When was the Declaration of Independence signed?
Simple questions, right?
The surprise is that the average high school student cannot answer these common questions. In the modern world, it is not that American teenagers are incapable of remembering information—it is that they choose not to.
They forget the information provided them, letting it slip through one ear and out the other. That is how we have gotten here. Students today are so done with the essays, the equations and the notes that they just decide not do it. They figure that school is taking so much out of them physically and mentally that it is just healthier and more appealing to not put forth the effort.
Albeit, it could be the fault of past teachers, but in the 13 years of education these student go through, it becomes tedious to know where the Statue of Liberty is or the name of their state’s capital. It seems that the teens’ opinion towards education has become an attitude of just not caring.
It is not that they do not like learning. If students did not like learning they would not want to watch movies or read or travel the world. It is the inevitable crushing effect of stress and pressure to remember so much information in such a small span of time that leaves a lot of teens wondering why they should even bother. And so they do not.
This brings us back to the simple questions. If students today feel as if their brains are going to explode from one more fact about the last ten presidents, they will not listen. They will not retain information they find themselves not caring about. It is just not important to them. Teens today feel trapped in a flood of information that they honestly will only need little of to happily live their lives. And these facts, these common little facts, which young teens do need, are just another wave of information being shoved down their throats.
The reason teens do not know these facts is not because they are stupid or ignorant—it is because they feel like they are drowning. And how do they avoid drowning? They do not get in the water.