Jan Etherington

they can Google. Like you I’m often appalled at the lack of general knowledge displayed by apparently bright contestants on quizzes and reality shows.

One question during the Chris Tarrant years on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? was: “In which county is Worthing?” Four choices including Cumbria and Cornwall. The contestant asked the audience while anyone over 50 was screaming at the TV: “Sussex, for heaven’s sake!”

I knew it – not just because my auntie Hilda lived there but because we learned about towns and counties. By heart. Now there’s a phrase that seems obsolete these days.

Older people are always being told to do sudoku, crosswords and learn poems by heart to keep their brain active. Perhaps it’s time the young were told to do the same?

Everyone at my school (Tiffin Girls’ Grammar School in Kingston) can quote psalms, sonnets and poems by Yeats and Tennyson. Great chunks of Shakespeare retained from A-level revision can be called upon to brighten up a dull conversation. Recently a friend addressed Juliet’s speech to her groom at their wedding: “Give me my Romeo. And when I shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars. And he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night…”

She didn’t read it. She had learned it at school.

But I hate generalisations and I’m not going to castigate the young and say that they’re always on social media and more likely to read Facebook or Twitter than a novel.

We didn’t have social media or mobile phones when I was growing up and so we didn’t have that temptation. How can we possibly judge the young when, had we had this technology, it’s very likely we would have embraced it just as they have?

I have an 18-year-old granddaughter who has been studying day and night for her very tough science A-levels. Yes, she uses various social media but she and her fellow students are smart, determined and work harder than we ever did for our exams.

But there’s a worrying tendency to be proud of being ignorant.

ANYONE erudite or bookish on the soaps, such as Ken Barlow or Roy Cropper on Coronation Street, instead of being treated as wise elders are viewed as highbrow freaks.

If they refer to a piece of classical music or a great novel it’s greeted with a grimace or a giggle. The other characters are complicit in their view that acquiring knowledge or culture is somehow weird.

Also, having a high IQ doesn’t mean you’re good at everything. Far from it. Little has been made of the value of emotional intelligence: the ability to read people (including ourselves), situations and body language and adjust and manage an emotional response.

We all know extremely clever people who have no social skills and are likely to be standing alone at parties. They have no emotional intelligence.

Back on Love Island, Eyal admitted he was “looking for someone… who isn’t too superficial”. Hayley asked: “What does superficial mean?” She looked at him adoringly. Obviously not a sky-high IQ but is she dumb or, as I suspect, emotionally intelligent?

‘Appalled at the lack of general knowledge’