Sort Order: Data Midified / Created

This has been asked in many ways in many places, but I've yet to see a solution to this... when using Windows Explorer to display folder contents, and to then sort the files displayed by date (created, accessed, or modified, the problem is the same), the files are sorted first by month, then by day, then by year. The result is that all "January" date appear first, then all days within January, then all years for January dates, and THEN all February dates, etc. This is not how a sort by date is done.

Any first year programming student knows that when sorting by date, the result HAS to be chronological. Why doesn't Microsoft know this? Fields in a sort need to be handled by TYPE. Date fields are NOT the same as numerical fields. When an ascending sort of "1/15/2007, 1/14/2009" produces the results of "1/14/2009, 1/15/2007", that is a BUG, and Microsoft should fix it.