I Wonder, if We All Just Took a Minute, and Thought
You know, generally, this blog is intended to be humorous. Light. Frothy. Hopefully, unoffensive. However, after this week in particular, I find myself wondering, what in the world is happening to our country?! I'm confused. I'm worried. I'm alarmed. I'm sad. I'm possibly uninformed.
Stick with me. This is all connected I promise.
Roughly 5-6 years ago, Common Core came into existence. For 5 years people have hated it. Oh sure. It can be confusing. But here's the thing. It's teaching our kids how to think. In this day and age of technology, information is at their finger tips. We can look up anything on the internet. The information is there. Our children don't need to memorize information anymore. My kids are masters of looking up information on the internet. Alexa and I spend a good chunk of time looking up how diamonds are cut, how cotton candy is made, and I don't know what all else. We can easily look stuff up. Andrew is a WEALTH of sports trivia. Why? Because he asks Siri and she googles it. In this age of information overload, they can find out anything, but what they need to learn how to do, is examine the information to see if it's reliable and accurate. Because it's not.
A few months ago I got off Facebook. I suddenly realized how biased all the information coming to me was. My friends are smart, my friends are passionate, my friends would share articles abut the same exact topic, that had TOTALLY different points of view. I started to struggle with what was real. I love my friends. They are knowledgeable. They wouldn't share incorrect information? But see, maybe they didn't read the whole article. Maybe they read the title or the publisher and said, "oh yeah. I agree." Then they shared this article and continued to pass it along through Facebook, and yet . . . they've passed along not quite accurate information. As a thinking person, who is now mistrustful of the information I receive, I think to myself while I read pretty much anything- what is the author wanting me to believe? Of course- I am a teacher, teaching Common Core. I ask my students everyday to examine the wording and the purpose of everything because y'all- journalists are biased. It's not because they're jerks. It's because maybe they write for a liberal paper, or a conservative paper, or a editor in chief who has told the journalist to focus on one particular part of a story, so we only get one portion. The news media is VERY biased. Checking CNN, FOX News, NBC . . . they have an angle and they want you to see their point of view. They're only giving you the facts they want you to know.
After this week, I am wondering what has happened in our country. There is not one singular event, scenario, or cause. It's not that easy. There are a lot of factors. But is some of our confusion due to the information we receive? Are we receiving accurate information? Do we really know the facts? I've seen statistics about how many unarmed African Americans were shot from 2 different articles being passed around on Facebook- both with statistics that were . . . different. How can statistics be different?! If you google: "how many unarmed african americans are shot by police officers" you will see: "Police killed more than 100 unarmed black people in 2015. . .," "Cops killed nearly twice as many whites as blacks in 2015. . . ." "Young Black Men Killed by US police at highest rate in year of 1,134. . . ," and "Study Finds Police Fatally Shoot Unarmed Black Men at Disproportionate Rate. . ." Those articles come from: mappingpoliceviolence.org, The Daily Wire, The Guardian, and the Washington Post. All trusted sources- but all with VERY different facts. How do we know what to believe?
I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what's real and accurate and right. Maybe instead of being mad at each other, we should be mad that we can't find out what's real.
Stick with me. This is all connected I promise.
Roughly 5-6 years ago, Common Core came into existence. For 5 years people have hated it. Oh sure. It can be confusing. But here's the thing. It's teaching our kids how to think. In this day and age of technology, information is at their finger tips. We can look up anything on the internet. The information is there. Our children don't need to memorize information anymore. My kids are masters of looking up information on the internet. Alexa and I spend a good chunk of time looking up how diamonds are cut, how cotton candy is made, and I don't know what all else. We can easily look stuff up. Andrew is a WEALTH of sports trivia. Why? Because he asks Siri and she googles it. In this age of information overload, they can find out anything, but what they need to learn how to do, is examine the information to see if it's reliable and accurate. Because it's not.
A few months ago I got off Facebook. I suddenly realized how biased all the information coming to me was. My friends are smart, my friends are passionate, my friends would share articles abut the same exact topic, that had TOTALLY different points of view. I started to struggle with what was real. I love my friends. They are knowledgeable. They wouldn't share incorrect information? But see, maybe they didn't read the whole article. Maybe they read the title or the publisher and said, "oh yeah. I agree." Then they shared this article and continued to pass it along through Facebook, and yet . . . they've passed along not quite accurate information. As a thinking person, who is now mistrustful of the information I receive, I think to myself while I read pretty much anything- what is the author wanting me to believe? Of course- I am a teacher, teaching Common Core. I ask my students everyday to examine the wording and the purpose of everything because y'all- journalists are biased. It's not because they're jerks. It's because maybe they write for a liberal paper, or a conservative paper, or a editor in chief who has told the journalist to focus on one particular part of a story, so we only get one portion. The news media is VERY biased. Checking CNN, FOX News, NBC . . . they have an angle and they want you to see their point of view. They're only giving you the facts they want you to know.
After this week, I am wondering what has happened in our country. There is not one singular event, scenario, or cause. It's not that easy. There are a lot of factors. But is some of our confusion due to the information we receive? Are we receiving accurate information? Do we really know the facts? I've seen statistics about how many unarmed African Americans were shot from 2 different articles being passed around on Facebook- both with statistics that were . . . different. How can statistics be different?! If you google: "how many unarmed african americans are shot by police officers" you will see: "Police killed more than 100 unarmed black people in 2015. . .," "Cops killed nearly twice as many whites as blacks in 2015. . . ." "Young Black Men Killed by US police at highest rate in year of 1,134. . . ," and "Study Finds Police Fatally Shoot Unarmed Black Men at Disproportionate Rate. . ." Those articles come from: mappingpoliceviolence.org, The Daily Wire, The Guardian, and the Washington Post. All trusted sources- but all with VERY different facts. How do we know what to believe?
I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what's real and accurate and right. Maybe instead of being mad at each other, we should be mad that we can't find out what's real.
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