A survey of eight and nine year old children in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee, carried out by the Royal Highland Education Trust has confirmed what FirstFoot already feared to be true.

Scotland's children are as ignorant as pigshit.

Their knowledge of the countryside and the origins of food, in particular, is so alarmingly misguided as to be downright comical.

The study revealed that many of our children believe that eggs grow on trees and potatoes come from cows. We kid you not.

A staggering 70% thought that cotton came from sheep, over half were convinced that oranges are grown in Scotland, and 15% thought that bananas are harvested in this country too.

One in ten children (the particularly gifted ones) had no idea that milk shakes were made with milk. Bless 'em.

Thick as mince? Thicker than the thickest mince on the thick mince tree it would appear.

The results of the survey don't surprise us in the least.

These are the same little bastards that will grow up to become the insolent, vicious, disrespectful, law-flouting teenage toe-rags that we previously highlighted in Youth Culture.

Ignorant simply isn't the word.

So where did we go wrong?

Should we have been harder on the wee lambs when they were growing up?

Too bloody right. Bring back the birch and corporal punishment in schools we say.

A damn good thrashing with a whippy stick never did us any harm, and by god at least it taught us that eggs come from chickens' arses.