[rbg81]

You are absolutely correct. Kids today know how to use high tech gadgets that someone else produced, but few understand the internals. In short, they are users, plain and simple. They are also not critical thinkers for the most part.

On the other hand, let’s not pretend that there was a surplus of geniuses in 1912 either.

[TalonDJ]

A lot of people that were kids in 1912 went on to develop technology and weapons used in WWII.

[MHGinTN]

In any typical demographic of human beings there is a range of intelligence. I would guess that in 1912 the range was weighted more toward the right side of the bell curve than today because kids were more trained/prepared for the challenges of living at an earlier age, giving them a higher degree of common sense than one would find in today's couch potatoes.

My real point in responding to the post on this thread was to point out the degradation of education by design of some very bad people. Your mileage may vary. By design, our posterity is more vulnerable to survival issues following a disasters than the kids of 1912. That is not a function of growing technological advances. Rather, it is a sign of our failure to better prepare our children for self-reliance. Again, ymmv.

[Cvengr]

On the other hand, most kids today would be scared to feed chickens or even clean out a chicken roost.