I'd deeply fear you as a teacher. You're good-natured, so that helps, but I am the opposite (potentially just because I am a boy). I thrive in the disorganization and chaos. I'd imagine a grueling process that works against my inherent nature, but one of those "miracles" of life where somehow things turn out for the better.
Good teaching thrives when people forget that they're being taught something and instead are just focused on learning. Good rigor to me is fixated on making the person look at the project and not the person across from them. I remember reading (in college) an essay by a scientist who was forced to examine a fish tirelessly for weeks on end and the only thing the professor said was "look harder. Study it". Or something to that effect. It took him weeks before his conscious mind and self subsided and that magical moment of integrating intuition and sight came into being. He could actually FEEL the work being done. That kind of learning can only be done when the project is the focus, not the people involved. Sadly it feels as though nowadays the "rigor" is a social convention where the project at hand is set down so the person in front of them gets appeased...
If only I could inspire people to get creative with their examinations of "the woke". If anything was a real topic to just sit there and pay close attention to without the "artificial aids" of social media and hyperbolic news outlets, it would be them. I think if people were willing to sit there for a bit longer and more quietly, they would see a collective of deeply disenfranchised people being given a platform to have a voice and meaning in their lives rather than just looking them in the face and saying "ghastly". Where the "woke" have gone wrong, general indifference to the American dream of embodied liberty has gotten a lot worse. Better to wear a pride flag than have no sense of pride at all (even if the only solution is to throw away the wrongly colored flag for the right one haha). Better to serve a banner of the many than the banner of the one as more and more people are doing these days.
If weather in January was a consideration, you never would have made it to MN! In some respects, Winter is a great time to be outside, especially in the woods - no ticks, mosquitoes or biting flies. As my daughter leaves soon for college, I hope she runs into some rare professor that still holds to a philosophy like this.
I was coming from Michigan, so was well familiar with the weather of the upper midwest. (Although I cleverly spent some of my winters in grad school doing research in Madagascar.) Winters in the Pacific Northwest can be dreary, for sure, but as people seem to say everywhere that the weather isn't ideal: there's no bad weather, just bad clothing. (I don't actually agree with this, but it can be used to inspire a person to get over their inertia and get outside on days that it feels preferable to stay warm and dry.)
"Bad clothing" I rode motorcycles year 'round and the answer was to have good kit, and a lot of it. Rainy Februarys were not so bad if I had enough foul weather gear to have a dry set to wear and a damp set drying for tomorrow.
Heather, I profoundly regret never having you as a teacher, although at the time our situations would have likely been reversed due to our ages. The willingness to admit that one's ideas may be wrong and the enthusiasm for finding new data that refute those ideas is the essence of "science" although I prefer to think of them as the best way to navigate unfamiliar situations. My own dismay when I took Algebra I in middle school, where for a term it had been drilled into me that negative numbers had no square roots, only to learn at the end of the term that there was a whole branch of mathematics dealing with "small i" the square root of negative 1 really put me off. At the age of 13, the idea of a subject that you couldn't learn the rules of like using a cookbook was more than a bit intimidating for me. By the time I graduated from HS the "unknowabilty" of much of the world was something I was at ease with. I sometimes wonder how my life would have been different if I had embraced mathematics with as much enthusiasm as I would embrace classical physics later. With a better math background I might have gone into modern physics in college instead of going to work as a technician from a trade school. Or not. There were A LOT of considerations that went into my rejection of higher education in favor of something that would put money in my pocket. But the willingness to question my own beliefs has served me well all my adult life.
Coming from a technical / engineering background I always figured the instructors job was to teach me to wield tools that I may use to create. The ingenuity, the creative muse, is the dish I bring to the pot luck.
Later in life I went back to a liberal arts school to get a business degree, and ended up 1 class short of an English lit major. I learned that in that world view there were 2 definitions of literate. There is the functional or technical "literate", as in can you read and comprehend a manual. And there is the cultural "literate" meaning a familiarity with the cultural cannon of writing I.E. Homer through Heather...(I'd add music, film, philosophy...) .
I'm bias towards the "tools" side of education. It is fine to have a familiarization with the cannon. but without an alphabet and a set of language rules, Homer wouldn't have made it into our hands.
I have adhered to a similar methodology from most of my life( although I had my rear end handed to me in last weeks thread for even suggesting that this was possible and I probably did not state it as poignantly as you have). Although my college education was derailed by the vietnam conflict in 1970 it was probably doomed anyway as I ran into a few teachers that judged me (on what seemed only stylistic terms to my young ego) when I all I really wanted was the *tools* to allow greater access to my own personal potential and journey. To speak to Heathers fondness for spread sheets I had a muse last week about the 'living in a simulation' hypothesis that is floating around. I think its BS, although at times in the last 3 years reality has had a computer game like *feeling*. What if instead of living in a simulation we are actually creating our own mental model (simulation) of the future locally. This model is what we use to roll into tomorrow on our own timeline in the overall fabric of space time. What if this model is *informed* by all the information (in the form of an abstract mental spreadsheet) from our past timeline (how could it be any other way?) to help us make decisions that increase(?) the *probability* of the success of those decisions? Karl Fristen speaks to this in his 'Free Energy Principle" and as I understand it , it is baked in the 'process' our evolutionary cake. The word 'creative' is very important as far as I'm concerned and both yourself and Heather emphasize it in the above. Jacques Monod's 'Chance and Necessity" mused me in a similar way. As evolution has shown us *some* humans do and have done things in a way that might be interpreted in language as better but maybe it was only just chance and necessity?
I’m inspired to freshen up my teaching philosophy, though no one is asking to see or hear it, I look forward to centering myself as I plan Fall courses for those eager Freshmen. Thank you!
You know, one of the first things that comes to my mind in regards to the education system is "what's the goal", and although I enjoy learning and good conversations, I can't get myself to go to school anymore. (I even had a dream about how the educational climate bores me which is the exact opposite effect it should have for me. I love the disorder of novel ideas and the excitement that stems from the truly creative process of genuine philosophy). I think one of the biggest reasons for my willful absence against school is that it's not built for the solutions the world is needing.
I believe Bret was the one to talk about how the world needs novel thinking and creative solutions. A lot of doors have been opened up by recent history, we should be walking in the space of an "enlightenment area". We have countless problems to solve and every means to get it done. Problems make the best people and really working on a cause worth solving (climate crisis) should be deeply validating to our humane spirits. I find it very odd and sad people don't feel unified by a threat beyond one another that benefits all...
I think schools are in many ways to blame for that. They are actively pacifying people. Telling them to seek out secured expectations all the while demanding the bank. In fact, the natural excitement of "what are the potential options if I do X" has been replaced by the very daunting "how do I get out of the hole once I have done X". The threat is still there, it's just a lame threat. Money isn't the defining cause for genius, but that is the world we live in unfortunately. And there's a problem deeper than debt that it causes. It causes young people to be timid and unsure of themselves. "I better please my teacher otherwise these thousands and thousands of dollars I spent will be a complete waste".
That's not education. That's power. And just because the educational system has become a "power, powerless" dynamic in many spaces, it doesn't have to stay that way. All it requires is a lot more integrity from teachers. If the system wants to ruin the next generation, those who want a future just have to be more self critical and aware of their faults. Kids are scared, teachers just need to be scarier than the monsters behind them. That's how you create bravery, not by giving into their fearful minds/compensatory ways of controlling their superiors through political games.
I'll never forget the rather deeply destructive nature of real education. I like to describe it as the "self mastication" machine. You're constantly in the process of chewing on yourself and deciding neither to swallow nor spit yourself out. I still enjoy the process of that "chewing" on things, but I refuse to let others decide how I do it. It's a rather brutal world to know young people at my age are being forced to test themselves and do their best only to have social authorities policing every aspect of their educational process. I just couldn't handle it. What's an education even worth if I don't feel like I am the one learning things? The method of learning at a liberal arts college was enough for me. My life is infinitely better for it, but a degree in modern times wasn't going to take me anywhere.
Instead, I am watching real laborers, the people who actually do the work of the world teach me. I've learned more from construction workers than I will in most liberal arts schools these days. Why teach discipline when you can just witness the grit it takes to build a home for low pay, minimal benefits, but a real sense of accomplishment and integration with one's work?
There might be more philosophy to learn from the men and women with beer guts than those fancy people with their degrees. One just has to pay attention more closely because the way of life is the philosophy, not the book. That's where modern schooling has gone wrong. I can't imagine anybody would advocate for the extreme views of today if they really examined the way of life it was bringing them. But why make yourself feel bad by thinking critically? All of the negative outcomes are too long term to really be noticed. Better to stick to the quick scripts and "memes" of society today even if makes you a command prompt rather than a thriving person and individual.
Are there any colleges left in the US that still teach this way? Your descriptions of past Evergreen classes sound amazing, I wish my kid could get something like that after high school. Where does a creatively minded ADHD kid go to study biology these days without the woke activism?
I posted on this article about my school and my experience if you'd like to read it. It's much more important you equip them with countervailing ideas. Many schools still offer great curricula in the STIM fields but their liberal arts have been gutted entirely. They will have to take those woke courses. And had I taken them now, there would have been tremendous friction between me and the instructors.
I think we will stay far away from the west coast for many reasons. Perhaps our local tech school will be a good place to gain a little maturity before entering university. I agree that the best defense for a kid against irrational ideologies is a strong sense of reality and trust one’s parents are telling the truth. However, who among us never went through that phase of thinking our parents were clueless idiots who had no idea what was happening in the “real world “?
Yes, every child rebels in their own way. To what extent depends on their environment. It sometimes takes you to a dark place to realize you haven't properly questioned your preconceptions and loosely formed ideas from childhood. You must in some way give your child up to the world and have them find their own way. Living in Seattle I had very few friends that had ideas outside the main dogma and leftist think tanks. I never pushed my ideas in light of theirs that ended a friendship, but I never backed down to say what I thought. I think the most important message to imbue is to always speak truthfully and to always raise their voice in light of a falsehood. I believe if they train themselves to lower their head and just get through their classes that when they enter the "real world" they'll have adopted that practice. Like the saying "we are what we eat", we become what we practice.
The technical schools or a local community college are excellent choices. I did two years at community college and the greatest advantage was many students where older, in their thirties. They had a concept of what money and time meant. They formed study groups and worked together to solve the problems. A university is different, the students would rather study late at night alone and my several attempts to form study groups failed. If I could do it over again, I'd join the honors roll. As long as you can stay academically inclined and maintain a 3.5GPA you can find students who have the intent to engage in real education.
I'm curious if you or Dr. Weinstein have ever released something that sets down the thought process you went through when you designed the classes you taught at Evergreen. I suppose that the topic may be of less interest to a general audience, but I'm curious because I was never satisfied with the standard Life Science textbooks that were being used to teach middle school science at different schools I've worked at (basically, I thought they reduced science to an exercise in vocabulary memorization). While I don't teach Life Science any longer, I've often been interested in how one would teach topics like taxonomy and heredity to students in a way that was more first-handed and relied on observation and inference rather than memorizing "kingdom, phylum, class, order, etc." Thanks!
Beautifully stated. While I try to maintain many of these principles, it feels somedays like dodging landmines. If we (Canada appears far worse) continue on this trajectory, I'm not sure where I'll land.
Hello Heather, I am a High School Science Teacher in Massachusetts, if you could guide me....what are the main things you would want me to teach my Juniors and Seniors in preparation for College and or Life.... I am currently teaching them Earth Science using the NGSS standards, and Marine Biology using some combo of various Chem, Bio, and Earth Science NGSS standards.... your opinion matters to me. :)
I went to Oregon State and like all degrees I was pushed into taking liberal arts. I considered myself liberal at the time and soaked in many of the ideas about women and feminism. I wasn't aware I was being ill-educated in the ideas of intersectional feminism. The ideas about viewing people based on their race and sex and sexual orientation. During my sophomore year, 2015, my roommate simply questioned me with the brain-busting ideas I had espoused. They weren't based on any of the ideas about treating people as individuals, yet an amelioration of identities. From their, I ventured out online and fell into the dangerous rabbit holes called debates. I was antithetically apposed to the ideas taught to me in principal but none the less tried to integrate them into my thoughts. That is what a good person would do, I thought.
Of course affirmative action was needed to judge for equality as it's understood by third wave feminism. I was told the three pillars of white supremacy stood in their way and only benefited, white christian straight males. I listened to classical liberals and conservatives and most importantly my close friend. I soon had a clearer picture of feminism as my education had come full circle, no thanks to Oregon State. Like clockwork I watched as the ideas embodied by students like me devour your husband at Evergreen. If you are not with giving black people the spaces they never had you must be a white supremacist! After all Brett fits the description, white straight male.
Of course Dr. Heying made a spreadsheet. 🙂
I have an inordinate fondness for spreadsheets (among other things).
I'd deeply fear you as a teacher. You're good-natured, so that helps, but I am the opposite (potentially just because I am a boy). I thrive in the disorganization and chaos. I'd imagine a grueling process that works against my inherent nature, but one of those "miracles" of life where somehow things turn out for the better.
Good teaching thrives when people forget that they're being taught something and instead are just focused on learning. Good rigor to me is fixated on making the person look at the project and not the person across from them. I remember reading (in college) an essay by a scientist who was forced to examine a fish tirelessly for weeks on end and the only thing the professor said was "look harder. Study it". Or something to that effect. It took him weeks before his conscious mind and self subsided and that magical moment of integrating intuition and sight came into being. He could actually FEEL the work being done. That kind of learning can only be done when the project is the focus, not the people involved. Sadly it feels as though nowadays the "rigor" is a social convention where the project at hand is set down so the person in front of them gets appeased...
I remember that fish story from college, too. "The Student, the Fish, and Agassiz." Great story.
You inspired me to find it online: https://firstdrafts.net/physicalscience/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Scudder1879_The-Student-the-Fish-and.pdf
If only I could inspire people to get creative with their examinations of "the woke". If anything was a real topic to just sit there and pay close attention to without the "artificial aids" of social media and hyperbolic news outlets, it would be them. I think if people were willing to sit there for a bit longer and more quietly, they would see a collective of deeply disenfranchised people being given a platform to have a voice and meaning in their lives rather than just looking them in the face and saying "ghastly". Where the "woke" have gone wrong, general indifference to the American dream of embodied liberty has gotten a lot worse. Better to wear a pride flag than have no sense of pride at all (even if the only solution is to throw away the wrongly colored flag for the right one haha). Better to serve a banner of the many than the banner of the one as more and more people are doing these days.
If weather in January was a consideration, you never would have made it to MN! In some respects, Winter is a great time to be outside, especially in the woods - no ticks, mosquitoes or biting flies. As my daughter leaves soon for college, I hope she runs into some rare professor that still holds to a philosophy like this.
I was coming from Michigan, so was well familiar with the weather of the upper midwest. (Although I cleverly spent some of my winters in grad school doing research in Madagascar.) Winters in the Pacific Northwest can be dreary, for sure, but as people seem to say everywhere that the weather isn't ideal: there's no bad weather, just bad clothing. (I don't actually agree with this, but it can be used to inspire a person to get over their inertia and get outside on days that it feels preferable to stay warm and dry.)
"Bad clothing" I rode motorcycles year 'round and the answer was to have good kit, and a lot of it. Rainy Februarys were not so bad if I had enough foul weather gear to have a dry set to wear and a damp set drying for tomorrow.
Heather, I profoundly regret never having you as a teacher, although at the time our situations would have likely been reversed due to our ages. The willingness to admit that one's ideas may be wrong and the enthusiasm for finding new data that refute those ideas is the essence of "science" although I prefer to think of them as the best way to navigate unfamiliar situations. My own dismay when I took Algebra I in middle school, where for a term it had been drilled into me that negative numbers had no square roots, only to learn at the end of the term that there was a whole branch of mathematics dealing with "small i" the square root of negative 1 really put me off. At the age of 13, the idea of a subject that you couldn't learn the rules of like using a cookbook was more than a bit intimidating for me. By the time I graduated from HS the "unknowabilty" of much of the world was something I was at ease with. I sometimes wonder how my life would have been different if I had embraced mathematics with as much enthusiasm as I would embrace classical physics later. With a better math background I might have gone into modern physics in college instead of going to work as a technician from a trade school. Or not. There were A LOT of considerations that went into my rejection of higher education in favor of something that would put money in my pocket. But the willingness to question my own beliefs has served me well all my adult life.
Your view is interesting.
Coming from a technical / engineering background I always figured the instructors job was to teach me to wield tools that I may use to create. The ingenuity, the creative muse, is the dish I bring to the pot luck.
Later in life I went back to a liberal arts school to get a business degree, and ended up 1 class short of an English lit major. I learned that in that world view there were 2 definitions of literate. There is the functional or technical "literate", as in can you read and comprehend a manual. And there is the cultural "literate" meaning a familiarity with the cultural cannon of writing I.E. Homer through Heather...(I'd add music, film, philosophy...) .
I'm bias towards the "tools" side of education. It is fine to have a familiarization with the cannon. but without an alphabet and a set of language rules, Homer wouldn't have made it into our hands.
I have adhered to a similar methodology from most of my life( although I had my rear end handed to me in last weeks thread for even suggesting that this was possible and I probably did not state it as poignantly as you have). Although my college education was derailed by the vietnam conflict in 1970 it was probably doomed anyway as I ran into a few teachers that judged me (on what seemed only stylistic terms to my young ego) when I all I really wanted was the *tools* to allow greater access to my own personal potential and journey. To speak to Heathers fondness for spread sheets I had a muse last week about the 'living in a simulation' hypothesis that is floating around. I think its BS, although at times in the last 3 years reality has had a computer game like *feeling*. What if instead of living in a simulation we are actually creating our own mental model (simulation) of the future locally. This model is what we use to roll into tomorrow on our own timeline in the overall fabric of space time. What if this model is *informed* by all the information (in the form of an abstract mental spreadsheet) from our past timeline (how could it be any other way?) to help us make decisions that increase(?) the *probability* of the success of those decisions? Karl Fristen speaks to this in his 'Free Energy Principle" and as I understand it , it is baked in the 'process' our evolutionary cake. The word 'creative' is very important as far as I'm concerned and both yourself and Heather emphasize it in the above. Jacques Monod's 'Chance and Necessity" mused me in a similar way. As evolution has shown us *some* humans do and have done things in a way that might be interpreted in language as better but maybe it was only just chance and necessity?
I’m inspired to freshen up my teaching philosophy, though no one is asking to see or hear it, I look forward to centering myself as I plan Fall courses for those eager Freshmen. Thank you!
Heather
Universities were created in Middle Ages by the Church to counter act the impact of Islam.
Islam was clearly superior in natural philosophy, technology and Aristotllian logic, etc..
Raphael’s painting shows (some) churchmen open to other ideas.
Anselm taught ‘faith seeking understanding’.
Aquinas combined biblical doctrine with Aristotle’s logic.
This synthesis produced scholasticism, which dominated university teaching for a thousand years.
The values of ‘science’ comes from the devout religious ‘faith’ of these Christians.
Such as Galileo, kepler, newton, Boyle, hook, faraday, Maxwell, etc..
‘Science’ can only explain what is. Never can teach what should be.
Scientific’values’ come from Middle Ages reverence for God’s demand of honesty, integrity, sincerity.
Loss of faith leads to faith in nothing.
Greek world self destructed.
Christendom returning to Greek philosophy will do the same.
Thanks
Just a good link to a video about this subject but from a far more "pseudo sciencey" field like psychology. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FVtuXZeWAI
You know, one of the first things that comes to my mind in regards to the education system is "what's the goal", and although I enjoy learning and good conversations, I can't get myself to go to school anymore. (I even had a dream about how the educational climate bores me which is the exact opposite effect it should have for me. I love the disorder of novel ideas and the excitement that stems from the truly creative process of genuine philosophy). I think one of the biggest reasons for my willful absence against school is that it's not built for the solutions the world is needing.
I believe Bret was the one to talk about how the world needs novel thinking and creative solutions. A lot of doors have been opened up by recent history, we should be walking in the space of an "enlightenment area". We have countless problems to solve and every means to get it done. Problems make the best people and really working on a cause worth solving (climate crisis) should be deeply validating to our humane spirits. I find it very odd and sad people don't feel unified by a threat beyond one another that benefits all...
I think schools are in many ways to blame for that. They are actively pacifying people. Telling them to seek out secured expectations all the while demanding the bank. In fact, the natural excitement of "what are the potential options if I do X" has been replaced by the very daunting "how do I get out of the hole once I have done X". The threat is still there, it's just a lame threat. Money isn't the defining cause for genius, but that is the world we live in unfortunately. And there's a problem deeper than debt that it causes. It causes young people to be timid and unsure of themselves. "I better please my teacher otherwise these thousands and thousands of dollars I spent will be a complete waste".
That's not education. That's power. And just because the educational system has become a "power, powerless" dynamic in many spaces, it doesn't have to stay that way. All it requires is a lot more integrity from teachers. If the system wants to ruin the next generation, those who want a future just have to be more self critical and aware of their faults. Kids are scared, teachers just need to be scarier than the monsters behind them. That's how you create bravery, not by giving into their fearful minds/compensatory ways of controlling their superiors through political games.
I'll never forget the rather deeply destructive nature of real education. I like to describe it as the "self mastication" machine. You're constantly in the process of chewing on yourself and deciding neither to swallow nor spit yourself out. I still enjoy the process of that "chewing" on things, but I refuse to let others decide how I do it. It's a rather brutal world to know young people at my age are being forced to test themselves and do their best only to have social authorities policing every aspect of their educational process. I just couldn't handle it. What's an education even worth if I don't feel like I am the one learning things? The method of learning at a liberal arts college was enough for me. My life is infinitely better for it, but a degree in modern times wasn't going to take me anywhere.
Instead, I am watching real laborers, the people who actually do the work of the world teach me. I've learned more from construction workers than I will in most liberal arts schools these days. Why teach discipline when you can just witness the grit it takes to build a home for low pay, minimal benefits, but a real sense of accomplishment and integration with one's work?
There might be more philosophy to learn from the men and women with beer guts than those fancy people with their degrees. One just has to pay attention more closely because the way of life is the philosophy, not the book. That's where modern schooling has gone wrong. I can't imagine anybody would advocate for the extreme views of today if they really examined the way of life it was bringing them. But why make yourself feel bad by thinking critically? All of the negative outcomes are too long term to really be noticed. Better to stick to the quick scripts and "memes" of society today even if makes you a command prompt rather than a thriving person and individual.
Are there any colleges left in the US that still teach this way? Your descriptions of past Evergreen classes sound amazing, I wish my kid could get something like that after high school. Where does a creatively minded ADHD kid go to study biology these days without the woke activism?
I posted on this article about my school and my experience if you'd like to read it. It's much more important you equip them with countervailing ideas. Many schools still offer great curricula in the STIM fields but their liberal arts have been gutted entirely. They will have to take those woke courses. And had I taken them now, there would have been tremendous friction between me and the instructors.
I think we will stay far away from the west coast for many reasons. Perhaps our local tech school will be a good place to gain a little maturity before entering university. I agree that the best defense for a kid against irrational ideologies is a strong sense of reality and trust one’s parents are telling the truth. However, who among us never went through that phase of thinking our parents were clueless idiots who had no idea what was happening in the “real world “?
Yes, every child rebels in their own way. To what extent depends on their environment. It sometimes takes you to a dark place to realize you haven't properly questioned your preconceptions and loosely formed ideas from childhood. You must in some way give your child up to the world and have them find their own way. Living in Seattle I had very few friends that had ideas outside the main dogma and leftist think tanks. I never pushed my ideas in light of theirs that ended a friendship, but I never backed down to say what I thought. I think the most important message to imbue is to always speak truthfully and to always raise their voice in light of a falsehood. I believe if they train themselves to lower their head and just get through their classes that when they enter the "real world" they'll have adopted that practice. Like the saying "we are what we eat", we become what we practice.
The technical schools or a local community college are excellent choices. I did two years at community college and the greatest advantage was many students where older, in their thirties. They had a concept of what money and time meant. They formed study groups and worked together to solve the problems. A university is different, the students would rather study late at night alone and my several attempts to form study groups failed. If I could do it over again, I'd join the honors roll. As long as you can stay academically inclined and maintain a 3.5GPA you can find students who have the intent to engage in real education.
Hi Dr. Heying,
I'm curious if you or Dr. Weinstein have ever released something that sets down the thought process you went through when you designed the classes you taught at Evergreen. I suppose that the topic may be of less interest to a general audience, but I'm curious because I was never satisfied with the standard Life Science textbooks that were being used to teach middle school science at different schools I've worked at (basically, I thought they reduced science to an exercise in vocabulary memorization). While I don't teach Life Science any longer, I've often been interested in how one would teach topics like taxonomy and heredity to students in a way that was more first-handed and relied on observation and inference rather than memorizing "kingdom, phylum, class, order, etc." Thanks!
Beautifully stated. While I try to maintain many of these principles, it feels somedays like dodging landmines. If we (Canada appears far worse) continue on this trajectory, I'm not sure where I'll land.
Thanks for sharing.
Hello Heather, I am a High School Science Teacher in Massachusetts, if you could guide me....what are the main things you would want me to teach my Juniors and Seniors in preparation for College and or Life.... I am currently teaching them Earth Science using the NGSS standards, and Marine Biology using some combo of various Chem, Bio, and Earth Science NGSS standards.... your opinion matters to me. :)
I went to Oregon State and like all degrees I was pushed into taking liberal arts. I considered myself liberal at the time and soaked in many of the ideas about women and feminism. I wasn't aware I was being ill-educated in the ideas of intersectional feminism. The ideas about viewing people based on their race and sex and sexual orientation. During my sophomore year, 2015, my roommate simply questioned me with the brain-busting ideas I had espoused. They weren't based on any of the ideas about treating people as individuals, yet an amelioration of identities. From their, I ventured out online and fell into the dangerous rabbit holes called debates. I was antithetically apposed to the ideas taught to me in principal but none the less tried to integrate them into my thoughts. That is what a good person would do, I thought.
Of course affirmative action was needed to judge for equality as it's understood by third wave feminism. I was told the three pillars of white supremacy stood in their way and only benefited, white christian straight males. I listened to classical liberals and conservatives and most importantly my close friend. I soon had a clearer picture of feminism as my education had come full circle, no thanks to Oregon State. Like clockwork I watched as the ideas embodied by students like me devour your husband at Evergreen. If you are not with giving black people the spaces they never had you must be a white supremacist! After all Brett fits the description, white straight male.
Beautifully stated indeed.