I continue to be mystified by people living in this information age who have no idea how to make use of the information that is at their disposal. It's almost like people take great pride in being ignorant.
Just yesterday, a young woman called me on the phone looking for employment. I really have nothing available but maybe I could call a few people and see if this young woman can be given a job. It's not easy being unemployed.
So I asked her if she had a resume' and she replied "What?" I assumed that she may not have been familiar with the term because on this island the term often used is CV, as in curriculum vitae, so I asked her "Do you have a CV?" She replied, "No, I have a DVD player." I almost dropped the phone.
However, I repeated the question because maybe she did not hear clearly what I asked, you know how cellphones are; but when I asked again, there was a deafening silence at the other end of the line suggesting that she had no idea what I was talking about. I just hung up for fear of embarrassing her further.
Deep level of ignorance
This is the kind of thing I am talking about, plus other instances when young people, some young people, just by opening their mouths, expose a deep level of ignorance that kind of surprises me. But then again it shouldn't, should it?
Many of today's youth only use the Internet to send instant messages, to download tunes, movies and ring tones and other trivial stuff that really only makes them slaves to the computer as opposed to the computer becoming a learning tool for them.
TOTALLY UNAWARE
It was only a week or so ago that I asked some kids in town what they thought of what was happening in the Middle East and none of them knew of the ongoing 'crisis' between Lebanon and Israel.
The stories have been on every single cable news channel and in every newspaper, but they had absolutely no idea. For all they knew Israel could be somewhere in South America.
Again, a couple of months ago, there was a story on Headline News that said that many Americans did not even know where Afghanistan was.
They could not even find it on the map. Now, how can you live in a world where everything that happens on a global scale affects your life in one way or another and not know that it is happening or even where it is happening?
But after reading that, I understood how Bush could have sold his population about the 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' that were supposed to be in Iraq.
Because if you don't even know where a country is, how the heck are you even going to have an idea of what goes on there?
Headless chickens
But that's in the US. Here in the Caribbean where our young people should be embracing the knowledge we have at our disposal because it is this knowledge that is going to provide the foundation for us to better ourselves, we refuse to make use of it. Instead, our young people, primarily our young men are running around like headless chickens not knowing that they don't know and not even knowing enough to care that they don't.
Comments, reactions, send to shearer39@gmail.com
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