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movdqa t1_j43tn3o wrote

It's hard to tell because I think that my phone screens them out. My phone is normally in the basement. If it rings, I get a note on my watch saying the number is calling. If I recognize the number, I call back on the computer. Otherwise it goes to voicemail. My mother gets about 45 calls a day. I can see it on her phone - they show up as missed calls as they never leave a message. I've been at her home for a while and I answered the calls and they were health insurance, utility switching, medicare-related, etc. There seems to be no way to get rid of these things.

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Trailwatch427 t1_j44dt7l wrote

Many seniors--people in their seventies and eighties--just think they have to answer every call. So they do. Seniors are favorite targets of scammers, because they are law abiding, polite, and sometimes easily confused. The scammers hope they can find someone with borderline dementia.

The more calls you answer, the more they will continue to call.

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movdqa t1_j44nk2u wrote

Back then calls were important. You didn't have spammers and scammers because they had to pay for the call.

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Trailwatch427 t1_j48l8l8 wrote

I agree. Unfortunately, the scammers have taken advantage of the trusting nature of good people, who don't realize how much things have changed. I take the opportunity whenever I can to remind those trusting seniors. Of course, some are pretty stubborn, and don't want to hear me out.

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movdqa t1_j48q400 wrote

It is very difficult to change the mindset of older folks because they have such a long history of doing things a certain way. Getting them to use modern technology is difficult unless the older person has a pliable mind. We got my mother computers and internet access in her house. Her approach to using the internet in her house was to ask one of us to come over and use the internet for her as opposed to self-service. My wife is like this as well as she grew up in an era where your manager told you what to do and how to do it. The modern world has managers giving you a task and you have to figure out how to do it.

Older people get spammed by postal mail too.

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Trailwatch427 t1_j48w3kj wrote

Depends on the person. Some older people, such as myself, move forward. We ask our kids for help with the new technology. We accept technological change as inevitable, and we keep learning as we go. I have the advantage of having an administrative job where I worked with a computer on my desk beginning in 1990. Software and hardware change constantly. To me, a computer is part of my brain. So is my iphone now.

The problem is when the older folks figure they don't need to learn the new technology, they will just go with the landline, the newspaper, cable tv. I have a 93 year old neighbor who is convinced that he doesn't need the internet to know what is going on in the world. Not true, but he can't be convinced.

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movdqa t1_j490za3 wrote

Schools used different methods of teaching in the 40s, 50s and 60s emphasizing rote over analysis, creativity and discovery. So people didn't necessarily know how to learn new things that they didn't already know, without some kind of training. That changed in subsequent years and you can see that reflected in math textbooks among other things. This was mirrored in Asia where countries came to believe that their rote learning methods was insufficient for a modern world.

I'm a retired software engineer so I basically have a math background; but you generally have to figure out how to do things without help. So you explore, experiment, fail and eventually figure it out. This was the way it was back for us in the 70s and 80s but this became what employers wanted from all of their employees later on. Self-motivated, able to solve problems and find solutions without help or management attention, initiative, etc.

I have taken it as a given for some of the older folks that I know as this is what I have observed. I know retired engineers, doctors and others and they generally don't have a problem learning or even inventing new things. But I don't think that they are the majority.

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Trailwatch427 t1_j4dmeqm wrote

I suppose it also depends on your background, your upbringing. My dad, who was educated in a small town in Minnesota in the 1920s and 30s, was also very good at math and science. I have no idea what sort of curriculum they had, but he went off to college, was trained at Harvard and MIT and the US Naval Academy during WWII. His grandfather was raised in an orphanage in Germany, where he learned engineering and mathematics. I guess to be a military engineer, but he immigrated to the US instead.

So even if I went to public schools during the fifties and sixties, I had a scientist for a father, which makes all the difference in the world. My mom grew up on a farm, where she learned all about animal behavior and how plants grow. Both my parents were grandchildren and great-grandchildren of pioneers, so they were accustomed to the idea that they had to solve problems with their common sense and their own knowledge. They also both read extensively and we possessed many books, as well as visited the library.

Also, women of my boomer generation (and older) were expected to act like dummies when it comes to computers, math, and science. So, not only do they have trouble with technology, they also fall for pseudoscience. They think emotionally, not logically. And I can say all that sexist stuff since I'm a woman. Older men certainly have issues as well--I have a friend who is a retired science teacher but can't figure out how to use email or voice mail, or even how smart phones work--he thinks they require wifi. He just won't admit he doesn't understand, he's convinced he's got it down.

In fact, I would say the real problem with elementary education is that so many of the teachers are women, who are often terrified of science and advanced math. The love to teach reading and arithmetic, but they can't make science interesting if they don't enjoy it for its own sake.

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movdqa t1_j4dogas wrote

I agree with what you wrote. Modern parents try to treat their sons and daughters the same but there are influences beyond parents. The question is: can the schools provide the spark to make science interesting and approachable without having someone with a strong math and science background at home?

Perhaps in better school districts. I like the idea of everyone knowing this stuff as then parents can help their kids learn this stuff and talk about why it is interesting and useful.

My wife and my mother fit your description of their schooling. My wife grew up in an Asian country in the 1960s and the teaching was rote learning. Both struggle with technology expecting someone else to do things for them.

My mother resented her father giving her many brothers money to go to college but not paying for her to go.

If you can get kids to do reading and math early, then they can learn on their own with only a little help. There are a lot of good self-programmed materials out there and kids have the satisfaction of learning or discovering on their own. I am somewhat of a fan of the unschooling philosophy as I have seen it work spectacularly well.

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Trailwatch427 t1_j4e1ff1 wrote

There are so many cultural influences in the way we learn. Your description of your wife's experience is interesting. My midwestern parents were of German and Norwegian background, also Protestant. Reading was important culturally, but the pioneer aspect puts everyone into survival mode. Women couldn't be feminine and sweet, there was too much work. If a woman couldn't sew, preserve food, grow a garden, and often balance the books for the farm--she wasn't much use. I carry that with me.

I would hope today's schools put more emphasis on critical thinking, and that includes basic science and mathematics. While we don't have to be pioneers, we need to be better prepared for life and decision making. Cursive handwriting isn't the same as understanding and reading labels and directions.

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movdqa t1_j4e4aru wrote

Several Asian countries acknowledged over-dependence on rote learning in the 1980s and 1990s and worked to try to get the creativity that the US had in a lot of different areas. So yes, critical thinking. A good example is the Singapore Math books that you can find in Barnes and Noble. The elementary school books would give a lot of parents a tough time. These textbooks are really cheap but they have very challenging problem sets.

We have kids for 12 years and I don't understand how kids learn so little math (or other subjects) in that amount of time. There are school districts in the US that are world-class but the average seems to be poor. I think that NH does well compared to the rest of the country. I used to follow the TIMSS studies out of Boston College and recall that Asian countries did particularly well in their testing.

My mother told me stories of working in rice fields and women delivering in the rice fields and then going back to work. I don't know if she was serious or not. She did a lot of the survival stuff and we used to go to Chinatown to buy live birds and she would butcher them in the sink. She was a single parent of four kids and worked two jobs to support us so we grew up without any supervision.

The modern world is considerably different and demands different skills and abilities and a lot of our young people have those abilities. It almost seems natural to them.

We used the Socratic method around our house to teach and to get an idea if the kids understood something or not. And to see if they could connect things together that were not inherently obvious.

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Trailwatch427 t1_j4immpd wrote

There are so many challenges. Overall, I think Americans are just lazy when it comes to math and science. That is why Asians and Europeans out do them in school and the workplace. Harvard has been accused of restricting the number of Asian students who are admitted--there would be mostly Asian students there, because their academics are so high.

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