To me “common sense” is mostly aquired by upbringing. If you ignore “guidance” and you are left with the consequences of your actions then you will learn.

My Father always said”you made your bed, now lay in it”. He let me suffer the consequences of my actions. I learned to pay attention to those with more experience and not just do it my way.

Today’s parents protect their children from any consequences of their wrongdoings.

That said, their are some people who seem to not be born with any common sense. Those are the ones that sometimes when they say or do something you can only look at them with a blank stare. There is just no way to comprehend what they just did/said

yes at a young age its like learning right from wrong by two girls always will say to me [I know dad what make sense] or [I know dad right way is not always easy ] they are 32 an 22 years young

This^

Common sense can absolutely be taught. It should be taught early by parents and teachers. And, as Hobbs said, by experience. Unfortunately, some parents and most teachers are failing in this regard.

i look back now and realize what my parents were doing and am very greatful they weren't just jerks sometimes and honestly did have my best interest in mind.pray i taught my boys the same as i believe eventually it will be of the most valuable of human traits.

I would think the above is more an example of learned knowledge rather than common sense. If you burn your mouth from hot soup that just came off the flame of a stove, common sense should tell you the stove is hot.

Knowing the water is deep and you can't swim, common sense tells you to stay out of deep water. Not a parent telling/teaching you, nor you nearly drowning before figuring it out.

Common sense is something you are born with or without to whatever degree. You cannot teach common sense. If it is taught, it is considered a skill, ability or understanding by that point. "Common sense" would tell you that you can't fly, therefore you wouldn't jump off of a bridge trying to do so. The definition of common sense is something you are born with not taught.

Certainly common sense is learned. If common sense is just a feature of being born, congratulations you are now on equal footing with the family dog. It was born too.

Of course it can; it has to be. When you were born, the only thing you knew how to do was poop your pants and suck whatever was put in your mouth to provide nourishment. Literally everything else you know was taught to you, or learned through experience. Don't be so prideful. If it bothers you that somebody doesn't know something, teach them. That's the only way anybody learns anything.

If it's taught, it's not what i consider common sense.

Dad used to shake his head when we were doing something screwed up and as he was walking away he'd say you boys will learn if you live long enough.i had a lot more common sense when I passed 40.

When you were born, you didn't know what hot, soup, a stove, burning, water, deep, or drowning was. Somebody had to teach you those things, or you learned them from experience.

Your missing it.

Common sense is two boys touching that hot stove. One has enough born in common sense to not touch it again, but the other touches it again because he doesn't have the same amount of common sense.

Now, you could've taught them to not touch it, but that's not what is considered common sense.

I understand that, that makes sense. The second boy just needs enough lessons, and he'll get the point eventually I suppose I might agree that common sense can't be taught in that sense, but I wouldn't call it common sense, just stupidity.

So what your saying hippie is some people are "slow learners".

I ask because it is an element I want to expose at the Youth Camp we are working on.

The Military seems to do a good job of teaching it however we don't want ours to be a "boot camp."

Thank you everyone for all the input and it sounds like the best way is to provide as many experiences as we can that the "individual" will actually learn from vs trying to teach it literally.

I don't know if it can be taught but it might be able to be beaten in. I've seen some desperate cases.

Plato wrote a piece called Allegory of the Cave
Its good if you like forms, shadows, teacher, knowledge, Republic and even puppets. Part of the frustration of teaching is like being set free and get into the light of the real world and see how wonderful it is and you want to go back into the cave of forms and shadows and want to set your friends free but they wont hear for fear of something different. Because forms and shadows is all they know.

A good 2x4 is just to get the attention.


Its all concerning human perception. Plato claimed that knowledge gained through the senses is no more than opinion and that, in order to have real knowledge, we must gain it through philosophical reasoning

I don't think it matters. Some people are just plain dumb.

Common sense is something you are born with. It can be taught to a point if started early enough.
It can also be lost if a person spends too much time around a person or people who have lost all of their own common sense, such as in a university.
Common sense at a young age is a learned experience like learning respect for others. As soon as you lose respect for others, your common sense also slips away until none is left.