Yesterday Lighter said: "Bill, why should he have thought different? Surely you don't think he had a ballads course in school.."

Two things.... first, I question the idea of describing songs from 10-20 years ago as 'oldies'. I had replied to the kid, "In my group, 'oldies' means from 100-300 or more years ago."

Second... in general, I remember when I was in school they tried to at least give us a sense of history and relative ages of different events. I am aware that you can't spend all your time exploring the minutiae of the past, but many of the kids I meet now have no idea of 'when things happened'. For all some of them know,(unless they had a European History course) Hitler and Queen Victoria were contemporaries.

No, I doubt the kid had a ballads course in school....but he didn't WANT to believe me that 'ancient' songs were still being sung... he seemed to think that if it was vaguely popular in HIS group, it must have been written in the last 20 years or so.