My 5 year old granddaughter was in a class at church. They were teaching them a little song with motions. One of the teachers told a little girl that she should hold out her left hand. Poor little thing was befuddled because she wasn't sure which side was the left side. Grandaughter, a little impatiently, told her friend "It's the haw side." I'm afraid that still didn't translate to the city friend and the teacher had to ask my daughter what that meant. Must be tuff being city folks.

I'll tell ya what.. I did some class talks for one of our schools in the history class and when it came to question and answer time the type of questions you got were like, What is a hoe ? Iv'e never seen one before ! and some of the best were .. What kind of machine puts that yellow stuff inside the egg without breaking it ??? OH,, milk comes from cows! Well what kind of cow makes chololate milk?? Do they eat chockolate ? These are real questions and I had no idea how disconnected city people were until I did this and that is only a small sample. I could go on for hours!!

the masses have evolved to the do it for me stage..instead of washing their food and cooking it properly they want the government to make all disease go away..make all food come to them clean..police friends tell me they go into houses on calls and find no food in stock..just fast food wrappers and boxes..when a big snow is called for on the weather panic sets in..milk and bread disappear from the shelves but you will find a ton or more of flour and corn meal and gallons of butter milk in the store..none of these people knows how to make bread...i am sure most of them don't know what flour is...

Between 3 and 5 years old, humans are probably more articulate than they will ever be again. I really enjoy having conversations with little kids. And, that's very cute about the haw side.

Virginia Gal I sure do agree with your comment of the 3 to 5 year olds. As a school bus driver I watch them start out in pre-school and continue through the grades. Really makes a person wonder about the value of schools and book learning. By the time a person goes all the way through they lose most of their common sense.
Will stay away from politics on this one.

Ike, would you have a surgery by, have your taxes done by, have your investments handled by or get on an airplane built by someone who had abandoned all that silly "book learnin"? When did education become a dirty word?

Harvard man with the highest office in the land is completely ignorant of how basic economics work.

What does that say about education?

Look at the whole world Book smart But common sense dum. who would you rather have come to help you to do some work. Ive seen people 35 years old went to college got a education couldent even shovel gravel out of a pile. Needed a job because mom dad quit supporting them. some education is ok but need alot of common sense to go along with book learning.

I love the comment from your granddaughter, she sounds like my kind of girl! I use to ride shotgun with my Dad, before I started school. My Mom made me quit when I started picking up some pretty good curse words, in Spanish, no less, from the Mexican guys that worked in the barn.

Nothing wrong with education, They just ought to apply some common sense to it. When I'm in for a test at the hospital I don't want a truckdriver doing my upper and lower G.I. But somewhere I hope he learned where chocholate milk comes from. Heck! Why do you thing they have black cows?

Thanks for sharing, that had to be so cute!

Education is something to be highly valued, I think, but there needs to be a balance maintained between the academic and the practical forms of education, across all levels of potential achievement, in my humble opinion.

I'm not so sure it's the common sense many people lose after age 5 or so, as much as it is natural inquisitiveness, creativity & imagination that makes them seem like so many blank pages as adult androids.

When those 2 yr olds start asking, "Why?" .. hopefully there's somebody around to help them discover the answer, and encourage them to keep asking questions all their lives. Maybe that's what's missing. Too often as an answer kids get, "Because I said so!". While occaisionally (hopefully rarely) appropriate, I feel that one gets overused, to a fault. :-)

Parents, go look in the mirror, that is where childrens common sense comes from, NOT video games.

I watched a little 13 month old last night for a bit. He made me laugh. He was taking a domino and trucking clear through the house and hiding it under the back door mat. Then go get the other one. Entertained the little guy for over an hour.

It is easy and natural to look down on someone from your own pedestal. I personally qualify as an over educated egghead. In my profession I have the opportunity to interview the new hires to be civil/structural engineers. First question I ask is where have you worked. I have answers from I haven't to I worked at a dairy milking, irrigating, and haying at 14, then moved into construction in the summers and the dairy during the winter. Guess who got hired? I will admit and several on here can attest that my inner geek at times over rides my common sense. The flip side I think is true for some that the ignorance of geeky things over rides folks ability to get out of the because grandpa did rut. It all becomes a balancing act.

The the OP I love it when kids get the horse words into their vocabulary. Mrs. KM though does not find this as endearing. I will occasionally poke her in the rib and say over when we are in the kitchen together. Didn't even think about what I was doing until I caught that cast iron skillet up the side the noggin. Never had a horse respond in such a manner. Wonder what the text book says about that? KM

Education is a wonderful thing if only students will take advantage of it. College age people around here wonder why they aren't taken seriously, and may be treated as younger children because as soon as they open their, like mouth, like, no thought, like, seems to, like, make it out, like, clearly, without, like, sounding, like, oh, maybe an idiot.

Education is great but a person needs to know the basics of life also. I'm proud to say that my son will be graduating fron Law School at the University of South Carolina at Columbia in May. He did his undergrad at University Of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. I always told him to "get a good education but know how to work with his hands, as a person who knows how to work with thier hands will never be hungry". I proud to say that through the years of he and I Antique Tractor Pulling together, he can tear a tractor engine and reassemble it as good or better than I. And yes he enjoys our Haflingers but has not had a lot of time to spend with them since we got back in the horse business a couple years ago.
Education is great as is common sense. Thanx for letting me gloat a little!

Don't think I won't teach my little girl early. She will think that horses were given to people as a reward for good behavior. Oh, you were good today?? Well..you want to go with daddy to pet the horses? I can't wait!! It all starts around April 29th this year.