A friend passed along in email an article about a woman who appears on her mumsnet.com posting to suggest that mothers band together and force the removal of dinosaurs from the academic curricula their small children are subjected to. "Please, do what you can to get dinosaurs taken off the curriculum," she writes.
The well-educated may cluck and deride this woman (a reincarnation of Sarah Palin, perhaps), but, reading her plea, I was somehow touched ... frightened, but touched. The whole of her plea is written in reasonable tones. She cares about her kids and knows other parents do too. True, she makes blanket assertions without a shred of evidence brought to bear, but you can sort of sympathize ... the basis of the assertions is that "everyone knows (or ought to know) that."
What I found touching was that someone who appeared to be honestly ignorant and drawing conclusions from that ignorance was receiving no apparent help. Everyone was so busy accentuating their own better understanding and deriding hers that ... well, she was left holding the same bag she had picked up in the first place. True, corrective suggestions might slide off her like mercury off a table top, but ....
And I couldn't help but think that this woman's heartfelt ignorance is the stuff Americans are treated to in the U.S. Congress... or some liberal- or conservative-cult convention.
Everyone knows that.
Earnestness is a good beginning, intention is important. But stopping at intention without exploration is a fail.
ReplyDeleteAs to ignorance in congress, less heartfelt than willful i think, but some capacity is at play too i think...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPgZfhnCAdI
Given my life experience, I would assume that the woman had a agenda other than protecting her precious children.
ReplyDeleteA "normal"person would say little John or Marsha was frightened by some dinosaur related sighting on TV, and to bear that in mind when the topic came up.
But removal from the science curriculum? That requires more analysis.
There are people out there that feel their belief system is threatened by the acceptance of history older than about 5000 years. Dinosaurs are among the most threatening things that "attacks" such belief systems.
A good friend taught in a certain Hasidic school in Brooklyn, NY. When the state delivered new science books below my friend could distribute science books he was ordered to rip out certain sections, one section was the chapters on dinsosaurs.
My friend, a rather liberal and free thinking Jew questioned this and the Rabbi principal seemed to sincerely believe that the idea of existence of dinosaurs was absurd. Needing the job and money my friend complied but left the school at the end of his contract.