Bullshit. Most schools do incorporate argumentation, logic, analysis, extrapolation, and other higher order thinking skills in their curriculum. When you have students, as I did, whose parents blare Fox News every waking hour, whose family and neighbors spout anti-education crap about how all teachers are “libs” who are trying to indoctrinate kids, and whose time on social media immerses them in bullshit for hours every day, you’re swimming upstream to get logical analysis to stick. Oh, most of them will use those skills in essays and speeches–yes, even some kids not headed to college–but some of them don’t carry it beyond that. And some do, of course, generally those whose parents who value and reenforce those skills.
It’s easy to blame the schools: that way we-don’t have to deal with the more complex, persistent, underlying issues.
Sorry for the rant. I’m just so fucking sick of the expectation that schools will fix all the problems outside the classroom.
I don’t disagree that this is a huge part of the problem, but my own personal experience is that I was never given a critical thinking class, one about how to ignore bullshit, one about constructing logical argument, or anything.
I suspect the people arguing about schools are doing so because of similar experiences in school. If such experiences are common, it would help explain why Fox News et al. were able to get so far in the first place.
Unfortunately, just because something may have helped prevent the problem, it doesn’t mean it will fix the problem once it is full blown and self-perpetuating, so it doesn’t surprise me that, these days, such classes are fighting a steep uphill battle. Honestly, this is the type of thing I think students need to have drilled into them since kindergarten to where it becomes second nature.
The problem with that is that the lack of critical thinking is so widespread that it includes a portion of the very teachers and curriculum designers we’d need to be on board with that sort of change. And that would be the reason we have to address the underlying problem outside of schools first.
Still, those schools who want to at least try should realize that teaching logical thinking as something you do writing an English paper or in Geometry class is not enough. It’s not about teaching you how to think “in school.” It should be about how you can spot bullshit “in real life.”
Such can’t fix everything. But maybe it could help.
This was not even close to my experience when I was in school, admittedly a long time ago, and I have seen no evidence that matters have improved since then, rather the contrary.
The entire reason I think it’s important for schools to teach independent thought is to counter some of the influences at home that you describe. Where else is it to come from? Yes, many parents are ignorant; what is there to do about it except to give their children a chance, through education, to think for themselves? Indeed, where are the answers to the more complex, persistent and underlying issues to come from, if not from people who are able to think for themselves?
You seem to think you are arguing with what I said, but it doesn’t seem that you are, really.
The issue IMO is not to incorporate these key life skills as something that happens by osmosis as a byproduct of more traditional subjects taught in more traditional classes.
It needs to be dedicated classes by that name for that purpose. And it needs to be every semester starting from first grade.
"Then I stopped being a passive nice guy and said, “I’d be more comfortable if you wore one,” and he did. But that’s not the point. The point is, he still seemed to think the mask was for his own protection "
I’ve heard that the main function is to keep.others safe from you but that there is a smaller but meaningful self-preservation effect as well.
The most ridiculous example of how the medical, social and political intersect with the masks, IME, was in a restaurant. I forgot to put my mask on in advance so I had to be reminded to by the hostess at the front of the restaurant. So me and my gf put on masks just long enough to be taken to our table, which was just a few feet from the hostess stand.
Once seated, we were informed we could take off the masks. However if we got up.gor any reason we’d need to put them on. We weren’t required to don our masks when the waiter came to take our orders (this was the most egregious mask-nullifying behavior). Even tho the waiter was wearing one, one look around showed not all the waitstaff did. So we sat there, no mask,telling our waiter our orders. Oh, but I made sure to put on my mask when I went to pee.
You can put on your mask when ordering food. I think it is a courtesy. I do so in drive throughs and I try to do it at restaurants, though I do not always see the server approach in time.
I think it is easy enough to accept that requiring mask wearing while at the table is not a reasonable rule to try to implement, but is something a pragmatic responsible person can at least try to do in consideration of their server’s safety.
You are making the perfect the enemy of the good. Your diatribe here is like arguing that since masks are not 100% effective, they are completely pointless. There is value to any reasonable measures that reduce transmission in a pandemic. The rule that you can remove your mask only while seated at your table is a simple clear one that everyone can understand (and enforce), and that is not open to subjective interpretation in a society where maskholes will seek to exploit any vagueness. And of course that doesn’t prevent you from using your discretion to put your mask on when the waiter approaches your table.
Hey, im doing what they want and im wearing the mask. I did not and do not argue with any establishment re policies pertaining to masks. I am not the one to criticize, really at all. Not unless the virus has evolved a new strain that invades and infects those who speak in less-than-exuberant terms about any situation involving people wearing masks that is, as you say, good but not perfect. Can Covid now smell resigned acquiescence?
BTW, this is neither here nor there but i.did catch the Covid. I was sick for about 9 days and it was just weird. A seemingly disparate collection of vagabond symptoms, none of which, on their own, would be much more than hardly noticeable irritants. But put them together and I felt like, well I don’t even know how to describe it. Far and away the most noticeable aspect was my inability to do a damn thing but sleep for 8 days straight. But it was comfortable sleep. As someone who has dealt with insomnia and sleep.problems most of my life, i.kinda liked it.
But then there was the weird stuff, like my tongue feeling scalded with burning liquid for at least 2 weeks straight. As a lover of spicy food who suddenly couldn’t even tolerate the mild stuff, this pissed me off. And my joints, each joint in my finger felt like I dropped a huge brick on it. But the weird part.is each finger took its own turn. I had fucking polite joint pain! There was other random stuff too, my feet felt swollen and huge, as if there was crazy edema going on but…nothing.
But im fit, healthy and I have no pre-existing problems. But I will wear my fucking mask and most.likely I will bitch about. Even here on the Dope. Ill deal, you’ll deal. We will all deal.
Yeah, I’m tired of wearing a mask, too. But the TSA requires it on our public transportation system since they get federal funds. And they require masks at my dialysis clinic and at doctors’ offices, too. Even though I’m vaccinated, I’ll continue to wear one as long as the CDC recommends and as long as establishments require them.
I was in Las Vegas for work a few days ago. I went into several casinos to wander around & see the sights. During which I looked at a lot of sit-down restuarants inside those facilities. FYI all the buffets are closed by state order; only table service type places are open.
I was amazed to see signs at every one of them instructing on proper mask use:
Lower mask, take a bite or swig, raise mask. Lather rinse repeat until meal is done.
Not that anyone was doing that, but that was being pushed as the right way to play the game.
In my travels around the country and here at home in South FL, the standard seems to be mask on in a restaurant unless seated at your table. Which is what I do. When the server shows up I’ll mask up, or if that’s not practical, at least point my face away from them while speaking up so they can hear me. Seems the minimal polite thing to do.
I have seen almost zero waitstaff, hosts, bussers, etc., without proper masks anywhere in the country. Then again, I’m in big urban / suburban areas; I have to assume Joe’s Diner in Bumfuck AR doesn’t take this libtard hoax disease seriously.
Hey we’re not bumfuck AR but out here.in Flint MI.we can definitely serve you up a heaping.pile of culture shock. Come on out. We’ll steal your car, your copper wiring or the wiring of whoever you’re staying with. Your car radio iwill disappear into our ecosystem and when you leave we’ll give you a big hug goodbye as we expel Covid droplets all over you. It was just an attempt to steal your wallet but hey, fringe benefits ya dig?
My daughter is honeymooning right now, staying in Vegas, but mostly hiking in various parks. She mentioned that Utah is like a different country as far as masks, with horrible compliance.
I hope you didn’t think I was picking on you or disagreeing with your experience. You’d just done a real nice job of summarizing the issue and it reminded me I wanted to tell everybody the story of Las Vegas’s over-the-top attempt at unrealistic mask-in-restaurant behavior. It’d be nice if folks would take it that seriously, but they / we / I aren’t quite there. And are heading away from masking, not towards. At least until COVID-21 shows up.
Everybody is masked indoors. Customers and workers alike. The table games appear to be unchanged although it looked like they had blocked every other seat at blackjack tables. It wasn’t obvious how they spaced folks out at the standing games like craps and roulette. Some tables had plexiglass dividers between “stations” around the tables, but others did not.
Talking with some locals, the make-up of customers has changed a lot. The Asian big spenders are gone - simply vanished. Most American medium spenders are gone. Who’s coming now are mostly working class people wanting a cheap vacation on a some travel + hotel promotion. And this crowd doesn’t gamble hardly at all. So cutting table capacity by 50% isn’t crimping the casinos’ winnings; they still have lots more seats than butts sitting in them.
Thanks. I think I’d prefer every other seat empty. I hate crowded casinos. I’m not quite ready to return, but I do miss the occasional night playing blackjack.
I was in an Arizona casino just Saturday for the Kentucky Derby. There were clear partitions between all of the positions at the poker tables, the one 21 table, the slot banks, and the bar where they had bartop machines. The partitions were about a half-inch thick so they were rigid and the far ends were colored to help you not walk into them – they stuck out far enough you would have trouble if you walked by the machines as closely as in the good old days. Staff and most of the players were masked.
For the cafe that was open and the regular bar tables the usual Arizona mask rules prevailed: Mask on when not at your table with none of the LV baloney about mask up except when taking a bite. The buffet was closed.
