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I just got back from drowning my sorrows into a patty melt at a local bar I frequent. I normally go at night, so the daytime servers were new to me. Got a 40ish year-old lady server who was overworked because everywhere is understaffed now. I asked for some tea because I hadn't had caffeine yet, and she looks at me puzzled and says, "like hot tea?" And I say "Yes! Black please, but green is ok too if you don't have it." And she looked at me, still confused, and said, "Well i don't know what that is, but we have regular hot tea I can bring you with some hot water." After she left to put in my order, I couldn't stop thinking about this exchange.
This article gives me the same exact feeling. Whatever is happening that allows adult SERVERS to be unfamiliar with one of the most popular drinks on the planet. Whatever allowed it so so many people didn't even realize Biden had dropped out...is the reason we lost to trump. It's the reason Democrat weren't able to break through on any issue. We were either talking to brick walls, or black holes. It's no ones fault but that servers that she was unaware of black tea. You can't force people to be intellectually curious or skeptical or even open minded. And these same people get to vote. And that's why we can't have nice things.
I never you. I've had to force myself to be able to eat anything since Tuesday night. I'm so furious with my country.
It's an education system and culture problem. You can't force a 40-year-old woman to be curious and critical, but you can plant the seed and encourage the growth of those skills and behaviors in children. That confusion at hearing something different followed by the attitude of putting it in a box and dismissing it ("I don't know what that is, but we have regular hot tea") comes from a lifetime of being told to accept whatever over simplified answer they are told and be quiet whenever they ask questions.
Fostered and inculcated by the plethora of churches across the land, who also DON'T PAY TAXES. They are a cancer, rotting us from within.
considering how stridently the Republican Party has been attacking public education for the past 50 years or so, this is a predictable result. They don't need every American to be incurious and shallow, they just need enough to tilt elections in their favor.
Sitting here in Germany, looking at the shambles of our political landscape, looking over at you, reading this and remembering Trump saying to/about Musk that he's "a genius" and America doesn't have many of them left...i can only laugh at the utterly infuriating powerlessness against such kind of disregard for basically anything that has changed since the dark ages and the utter ignorance. My anger is slowly shifting to sorrow...
And that's exactly why Project 2025 states their desire to get rid of the Dept of Education.
I volunteered with a group to drive people to the polls. One of the ladies I drove was black and not quite elderly, still obviously working a full time job. On our way back from the polling place and after we chatted about what time we'd know the results, she asked, "Do people in Africa get to vote for President, too?" And no, she didn't mean the President of Africa. She was sincerely asking if people in Africa get to vote in US elections.
There is a profound level of ignorance in this country, and it's so staggering as to be utterly paralyzing. I honestly don't know where we go from here as a nation, and I fear folks like that will be the first casualties if the worst comes to pass.
I mean, TECHNICALLY, if you're a US Citizen in Africa, yeah, you can vote absentee for President.
One of my co-workers had to move to Algeria and was working remotely, pretty sure he still voted.
I was once teaching a student introductory programming when I was in my undergrad.
The problem was to draw two circles on the screen of different colours and detect when the mouse is inside of one.
I said, "So our goal is simple: Let's draw a circle somewhere on the screen. Consider what you'd tell me as a human - I've got the pencil, and you want to tell me to draw a circle of a certain size somewhere on this paper. We have three functions. Calling a function will draw a shape. Each function draws a different shape. We have rect(), circle(), and line(). Which of these sounds like the one we want to use? Which would get me to draw the correct shape?"
".... Rect?" "Why?" "It draws a shape." "What shape would rect draw?" "I don't know." "Guess." "A circle?" "Why do you think that?" "We need to draw a circle." "If I said that rect draws a rectangle, which of the three functions would we want to use then, to draw our picture?" "Rect?"
I've now been teaching for many years, and those situations still come up a lot. When I put up a poll in class, with the answer still written on the board, about 25% of people in a 100+ student class will get it wrong - of people who were not only admitted to a competitive university program, but have passed multiple prerequisite courses to be here.
Not only is it unknown gaps in knowledge, there is just a thought process I haven't been able to crack through that some people really can't see what is immediately before them.
Some people are apparently incapable of learning anything except by rote. To them, every problem or situation has one solution, and they have no answer for any situation that has not previously been explicitly spelled out to them and the solution memorized, and failing that they not only won't know what to do but they flat out won't even try. There is no such thing as figuring out a new solution to anything based on logic or deduction. In any process, they will refuse to understand how the result is actually derived from the actions taken, nor what each step does or why it is done.
I've had to work with several people like this over the years and it's both exhausting and infuriating.
In my line of work I have also been forced to interact with people, mostly clients, who cannot understand hypotheticals. Any abstract or non-concrete concept is completely lost on them and worse, usually exposing them to one will make them irrationally angry in response -- which they will immediately direct at you, you nerd.
These people are not only allowed to vote, but also drive cars, own firearms, and have children. It's shocking.
Really great point - purely rote learning is definitely a major piece of this category, if not the category in itself. Basically an inability to move up Bloom's taxonomy from the first level or two. I very recently spent hours with a student who had this exact issue - they tested well, but couldn't even begin to do the applied work unless they were walked through it, precisely, step by step. Zero capability of generalizing, but fully capable of absorbing and recollecting facts... just no understanding associated with it. No connections.
That gave me something to think about, thank you!
I don’t know that i have the patience to do that more than once per person, i end up analyzing their thought patterns to sus out the root cause of the failure to adapt to new thinking. This kind of thing might be based on family culture or inappropriately reinforced assumptions about basic concepts that did not got caught by earlier educators. I will explore their cultural and family backgrounds to figure out how assumptions from there affect these failures to adapt to more dynamic environments.
A new model can be planted over inappropriate beliefs for the context of the new environment (here at work, generalizing is not only okay but necessary), and then it has to be reinforced over many months to keep the previously dominant mindset from reverting and help them build comfort with the new way of thinking.
The great part about this is that people who learn the adaptations this way will naturally teach others with the same maladaptions, and much more effectively. The terrible part is that it is slow and tedious and almost always includes religion or trauma
Yeah, this point about really needing time is pretty real. I recently came to the conclusion that some folks really just need to retake the core courses multiple times (and seeing if we can change this pattern) because it just takes them a long time to unlearn helplessness in the field and adapt.
And absolutely, as you've said, I find those who do adapt go from someone taking our most basic course three times to becoming a top student. Those who don't adapt fall to cheating and/or dropping out. I usually have about 500-800 students per term, and with about 20-30% falling into this category with more each year, one-on-one interventions are rare and you usually only catch them on their second time around once they finally heed our requests to come talk to us.
I'd be curious what other fields work with this so I could go read some papers or other materials on these mindsets, it sounds like there is quite an overlap to what we've been experiencing, I appreciate these insights!
Edit: Oh, and adding that I've spoken to some researchers in trauma informed education and I imagine the overlap here is high in terms of approach - recognizing how different behaviours can be linked to trauma and considering the approaches that can be taken to ease them back into stronger academic habits. It's been a while since my talks, but this could spark some more, as I hadn't quite connected the rote memorizes to this. Seems quite feasible for at least a subset.
Ted talk on it https://youtu.be/9vpqilhW9uI
I struggle to think of what to call it and how to describe it, too. But it really is like a consistent quality. Some sort of reasoning blindness. It's like listening to someone who is colorblind but doesn't know critique a painting.
Yeah, you can feel it pretty quickly in an interaction. I like how the other comment put it, where it seems like they are stuck in rote memory mode. Having a list of facts in their head but no connections between them, no big picture capability. I recently had a student who seemingly refused to read the six bullet points describing a problem, and couldn't comprehend that they described requirements, not step-by-step instructions. Without step-by-step instructions, this group flounders, and what should be insignificant details stand out as blockades they can't get past because they can't distinguish the roles of the details.
Reasoning blindness is an interesting term for it. Bloom's taxonomy of learning, which has its controversies, stands out to me here; it's like they are stuck at recall problems, maybe moving up to understanding a little bit but unable to get into using knowledge in new circumstances, connecting them, or being able to argue points. It works well for certain testing, it's a great skill to be particularly astute in for many lines of work, but it really is a critical thinking nightmare.
Get rect. ;)
I deal with adults like this every day at my workplace. Can’t think, can’t reason, can’t troubleshoot, can’t read documentation, can’t even frame their problem correctly- let alone come up with a solution. Its insanity.
Gods, I feel this so hard. I rose to a management position in a pretty short time for doing, like, what I consider to be the absolute bare minimum of learning how to do the job and solving problems on my own.
I have a worker under me now who has been doing that position for longer than I did at this point and still comes to ask me questions that are basic fundamentals of the job.
This makes me really appreciate my current employer, which actually vets people pretty stringently. It's not 100% effective - nothing is - but by and large, I'm working with a lot of creative critical thinkers every day, many making me feel like a buffoon.
You can’t force people to be intellectually curious, but you can absolutely foster it. The hierarchy of needs is probably totally relevant here; if you want people to be personally invested in developing their brains they need to be and feel physically secure. Unfortunately the USA’s ruling class knows they only have money to lose if more people are educated or desire to become more educated so the education system will continue to rot and we won’t get over that hump.
I need to know what happened after that exchange. Like, after you burned the place down, did the fire department piss on it while high-fiving each other?
It was a pretty bad visit. I ordered ranch with my fries, and my patty melt with only American cuz i don't know why you'd want swiss on a patty melt. They brought me the melt with swiss, and I got blue cheese for my fries. And didn't get a water until i was finished with my melt.
Tipped her 10$ cuz she was overworked and I used to be a server. Yay tip culture.
I was back of house, so I have difficulty with this. Forget tipping people with the IQ of a crayon for shit I don't want.
american culture is such that polite conversations do not permit the topics of religion, sex and politics to be discussed. as a result: evangelicals dominate our political trajectory, abortion is now illegal again; and people didn't know that biden dropped out.
there are also different levels of ignorance when it comes to each topic and it sounds like you've encountered one that's at a slightly deeper level than that of your standard american voter.
Plain ignorance is part of it, but I really don't think it's the driving factor. You don't vote for Trump because you lack some key knowledge, no matter how trivial that knowledge is. You vote for him because you've been inundated with conservative media for decades, and you have no grasp on reality anymore. You really believe Harris is going to hold you at gunpoint and replace your gas heaters with electric. You really believe she's going to sell the United States to China for a hundred bucks. You might even believe there's a war on men, a war on your religion, a war on everything that brings you meaning to your life. If I truly believed the things that conservative media was saying, I'd vote for him too.
It's not just ignorance. It's brainwashing.
A brain that's been washed would qualify as ignorant, for me