What are they teaching the little...darlings?

I often get people finding this site because they do a Google search for "baroque recipes," mainly because I have written about baroque music and post recipes. So, as a courtesy I posted something that says basically, "look, you are barking up the wrong tree, but if you want a good idea of baroque cooking, then try this or that..." nothing too detailed, because if I am going to delve deeply into culinary archaeology, then it will probably be the 1920's Italy, rather than the baroque era. I have nothing against the baroque, but when it comes to food history, I am far more interested in tracing several dishes of modern Italian cuisine to the Italian Futurist movement.

However, I have had a few children find this site while doing "research" for their school projects. They get angry when they don't find exactly what they are looking for.

One of the little darlings recently left this message (cut and pasted verbatim):

I agree with Sara! It's hard to do a school on a damned near non-existant thing when all you talk about is crap!!!

Since the little Einstein did not want to look stupid, he corrected himself:

I mean I school report.

Ah, thought I, it must be a member of the Rastafarian Youth Brigade: I and I school report, mon!

But, no, it probably is just another fine product of our educational system. Lynn has addressed this, too, but here we go again:

Let me offer this wayward child some advice on research:

1. The Internet is a decent place to start, but you will need to learn to use a library and real resources.

2. Google is not a "magic find it" resource. Take a few minutes to learn the language of search engines in order to refine your queries. You will understand why Google (or Yahoo or Altavista or any of the other search engines) will return things that are listed as matches when they aren't .

3. Do not choose topics for papers that are out of your league. My guess is that you probably don't even know the years that make up the baroque era, let alone have a particular country in mind.

4. When you are whining that a blog has not done your school work for you, use proper grammar and spelling, so you won't look like an idiot.