An Inconvenient Truth as a teaching aid.

In reply to frenchyd :

And my wife gets physically abused by the kids. During the school year she comes home with new bruises and scrapes from her kids throwing fits etc. Granted, hers are high needs special ed and she expects it but then to go through that and get the parent that thinks they know more than her about behaviors (21 years of behavior modification and special needs) because they read a book that told them vaccinations caused ADHD or some other nonsense. At least she is well paid. 

SVreX said:

I questioned just about everything when I was young. 

Though I have taught my children the same, I will confess... I’m tired of the drama. Virtually every arena of my life is politically charged (including this site).

I’m worn out on trying. The sea of disagreeableness and shouting from uninformed has made me weary. 

I’m much more excited about dropping out of participation in society and finding a quiet mountaintop somewhere than in trying to fix stupid. 

Wish it wasn’t true. 

 

I was exactly the same as you in my youth. Question authority.  It’s what most kids do. It’s part of growing up and leaving the nest. 

A couple of combat tours and I began to understand authority, even those who were bad, ignorant, or just  wrong.  

My first tour we were ordered to do dumb dangerous things that wound up getting about 1/2 the the flight crews in the squadron killed or injured.   The second tour those of us with prior experience had quiet conversations with the newbees and as a result no one was killed or injured. Yet the tasks got accomplished.   

School is like that. Especially college.  You learn to ask older students about instructors and classes.  You buy used books to help you figure things out based on previous highlighting and underlining. 

I hear my  high school kids talking to their juniors about how to avoid certain teachers or how to get other teachers.  

There have always been systems. There has always been ways to work the same system.  

bobzilla said:

In reply to frenchyd :

And my wife gets physically abused by the kids. During the school year she comes home with new bruises and scrapes from her kids throwing fits etc. Granted, hers are high needs special ed and she expects it but then to go through that and get the parent that thinks they know more than her about behaviors (21 years of behavior modification and special needs) because they read a book that told them vaccinations caused ADHD or some other nonsense. At least she is well paid. 

While she gets better pay it’s still not enough for the danger, her care, compassion and more complex training she’s required to get.  

Thank her for me will you?  In my mind she’s a hero. 

TopNoodles said:

In my high school literature class I started getting fed up with the "classic" literature we were required to read and even had a dialogue with the teacher at one point. All I remember is that she didn't condemn me for disliking the classics, she just told me that it was my choice if I wanted to skip them as long as I was content with scoring poorly on tests. I was content with low scores and ended up passing with a B, which I believe was my lowest grade for that semester. To this day I have tremendous respect for her for not changing the rules for my sake, but not expecting me to conform to them.

Today I've rekindled my enjoyment of reading and it's been invaluable as I try to learn skills I've always wanted to have. I even read for entertainment sometimes (but not the classics!).

Teachers are only human and while some seem to be more "human" than others, it's good to know that bad experiences can still be learning experiences for everyone.

The adventures of Tom Sawyer.  To Kill Mocking Bird.  Etc. 

I was dyslexic. ( back before anybody understood it)

 I had a Librarian who helped me overcome dyslexia by teaching me to read books like that.   Reading  those made me hunger for more good literature.   Oh look! see Jane run.  Never did it for me. 

You may be like me.  Not enough challenge not enough reward. That’s why large classes fail.  

RevRico said:

Schools are too busy teaching children what to think instead of how to think. Encourage his inquisitive behavior outside of the school. Question everything, trust no one, particularly those in authority.

 

You have part of it right, schools are too busy. Full stop! 

Big schools with lots of students can’t teach individuals well.  30 students means  each students gets 2 minutes attention per hour. Less when attendance is subtracted and other mandatory duties such as handing out assignments or test results.   Much much less when one or two misbehaving students command attention.  

And if your child isn’t pushy or demanding, questions aren’t even asked. Let alone a well thought out answer  provided.  

The reason for big classes is due to the costs involved. Teachers are paid the same no matter how many students  are taught.  So double the class size and costs are cut in half.  Double it again and they are now 1/4 per student.  

 Cutting taxes has a real cost. 

frenchyd said:

bobzilla said:

In reply to frenchyd :

And my wife gets physically abused by the kids. During the school year she comes home with new bruises and scrapes from her kids throwing fits etc. Granted, hers are high needs special ed and she expects it but then to go through that and get the parent that thinks they know more than her about behaviors (21 years of behavior modification and special needs) because they read a book that told them vaccinations caused ADHD or some other nonsense. At least she is well paid. 

While she gets better pay it’s still not enough for the danger, her care, compassion and more complex training she’s required to get.  

Thank her for me will you?  In my mind she’s a hero. 

She's my hero too. The constantly changing state requirements are what drive her the most nuts. Every year they learn new systems and tools. Always filled with the typical IT gremlins that take 3 months to get straightened out. She spends a lot of hours in those 180 contracted days. 

And she makes twice my salary, gets lots of holidays and summers off. I'm not feeling sorry for her too much. plus, in another 9 years she can retire with full pension. 

In reply to bobzilla : I happen to be aware of some of what she’s Going through. We drivers have special needs kids on our buses.  

Big buses have up to 77 kids on them. I’m the only adult on the bus.  Typically we have several special needs students who can conform most of the time to bus rules.  

We are required to write up any breaking of the rules. 

Then they are demoted to the smaller buses with 18 seats and a Para.  Followed by the same bus with no more than 3 students and a para plus the driver  

Finally a minivan with a para and the driver and only one student.  ( I skipped some steps) 

students as close as one block from the school get assigned a driver, & a para,  

I won’t go into all the privacy, special rules, training,  and compliance regulations just to get them to and from school.  

aircooled said:

GameboyRMH said:

 

I am indeed assuming that the majority of authority figures will make more true than false statements, in which case you would believe less falsehoods through blind trust than automatic disagreement.

To my point though, you have no way of know which ones are false or true (no matter the ratio), unless you question all of them.  You also cannot assume each lie has the same impact.  E.g. you could believe fewer lies, but more influencial ones.

Question everything is impossible.  A complete search of anything will take a whole lifetime and then still not resolved.  

Some things you simply have to accept. Or accept conditionally until you are further able to do complete research. 

Then you have to set aside your own bias.  We all have bias.  Not all of those bias are right nor are they all wrong. 

If you prefer the color Red and dislike green does not make grass bad and stop signs good. 

I will agree that Question Everything is impractical and that was an overstatement.

I will restate it as: 

Question everything to the extent that you consider it important, it can impact you, or that you plan on repeating.

Conditional acceptance is a reasonable way to approach many things.  It can be hard to stick to.  We have all been burned by the "did you hear" statements (web, email, news etc) which could have easily been shot down by a very quick search.  It's so easy to forget to question.  Unfortunately its a bit of a built in feature to humans, and the more you hear something, the more likely you are to believe it (even if it's all based on the same source).

Any yes, you certainly cannot do complete research on almost any topic, but at least be informed on different angles. Leaving out relevant information or context seems to be a prime pathway for most of this miss-information and that's normally pretty easy to find.

In reply to aircooled :

We are all guilty of it to a degree.   Not always with intent to mislead either.  Sometimes we just fail to do proper diligence.  Or mid-remember something.  

The advent of the internet sure does its share of misdirection.  If you want to find out obscure silly facts there are plenty of sites that are dedicated to flat earth society, the world will end tomorrow, and Elvis is alive and living in • • • 

frenchyd said:

The advent of the internet sure does its share of misdirection.  If you want to find out obscure silly facts there are plenty of sites that are dedicated to flat earth society, the world will end tomorrow, and Elvis is alive and living in • • • 

Yes, the internet makes it easy for those with fringe beliefs to surround themselves (virtually) with others sharing those beliefs further reinforcing them.

Just to drive this home a bit more, I did a bit looking around and there is stuff out there now that can make this attitude far more important / critical:

What are called "deep fake" videos (which are getting easier and easier to create).  The ones in this article are pretty funny, but point to the potential:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywyxex/deepfake-of-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-fake-video-policy

AI has been developed to create plausible, well written, sensationalized, entirely (false) news articles:

https://futurism.com/ai-generates-fake-news

(It's also very useful for spotting such articles)

There is even a area on Reddit that is entirely comprised of AI generated news/posts as well as all the comments / responses!  (its a big rough at this point, but you can see the potential)

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/

Interesting, and slightly scary, stuff