“Staying ignorant is a choice in a time of information.”
That explosion of wisdom was dropped on me by a grade eleven learner on a Zoom call on Friday. i was in a conversation with a number of young people talking about leadership when Katie threw that one into the mix.
After a bit of a morning Google it looks like the original author might be someone who i used to enjoy reading in the form of Donald Miller:
It is quite a simple statement and yet so profound. And while it doesn’t apply to everyone, because of access and data and connectivity and all of that, it typically applies to the majority of people i engage with on social media. And so it feels contextually relevant. If you’re reading this, for example, it applies to you.
And seems to manifest in a number of different ways of which here are three:
- If i have been alerted to a current news story and write a Facebook status about it, someone will inevitably jump on and ask, “Who is Penny Sparrow?” GOOGLE IT! IF you see a name you don’t recognise that is obviously at the heart of a news story, it will take you three seconds to open a tab and stick the name into Google and find everything you need to know. Or at least the bones of the story. And if you don’t feel like you have the time to do that tiny bit of work, then you don’t have enough time to engage with me doing the work for you [because i will have to do a Google and a cut and paste in any case to get the information to you].
- Before you share an article or provocative headline [and this applies doubly if it is the news of a high profile person’s death] spend a few seconds doing a quick Google [can you spot the theme here?] trying your best to ascertain if it is true or not. Before you join the crowds of Fake News distributors. If it is important enough to pass on, then surely it is worth spending a few seconds extra doing your best to see if it is true or not? For me i have found one of the best ways of this is inputting the key names or words of the incident into Google and the word ‘Scam’. Because if something is a known scam or hoax, there will likely be a few articles talking about that. Snopes.com is another site that is helpful in terms of figuring out if a story is legit or not.
- The Race Conversation is a space where well-meaning white people tend to go to their black, indian and coloured friends to ask them to tell them how/where they have been racist. i have heard from many friends how exhausting this is for them. You have some white people who have finally realised they need to do work on their own anti-racism and they ask their friends of colour to do the work for them. This is not okay. Especially when there is so much out there for people who are trying to learn how to deal with their own racist tendencies and thoughts and behaviours. One place is the fifty short videos i am working on in my ‘Race with me’ series of which you can find the first ten over here. But from Layla Saad’s ‘Me and White Supremacy’ to Robin DiAngelo’s ‘White Fragility’ there are a number of books and videos and podcasts that will help you to do the work .
All this to say, the statement is true. Staying ignorant is absolutely a choice in a time of accessible information. Do the work!
But Katie wasn’t done.
Another quote she dropped which i think she said she got from a teacher went like this:
Normalise changing your opinion once you’ve learned something new.
This one seems to be a little harder to track down with a range of names attributed to it, including Cheech from ‘Cheech and Chong’ drug comedy fame. So who knows? But it is also worth reflecting on.
i don’t think too much more needs to be said about this one.
What might the world look like if we took this one seriously? To so many ‘changing your mind’ seems to be seen as a sign of weakness. Whereas it is quite the opposite. To change your mind following new information shows maturity and growth and learning which are all good.
To be able to declare: I used to think that way, but having learned some things, I have now changed my mind and think this way. So much strength in there.
Maybe we should all be spending a lot more time listening to grade 11’s. They seem to hold the future keys in their hands. And voices.
What is a quote or saying you have heard recently which has caused you to pause and maybe reflect and change? Drop it in the comments below. Bonus points if it comes from someone younger than you! Age is sadly never a determiner of wisdom.
Hi
SNOPES is a Soros funded site: https://twitter.com/pepesgrandma/status/1201249722163453952
He provided early funding soo Snopes is a no go, its fake fact checking. Hope that helps…
Cheers,
Elaine
Thanks Elaine, but looks like your link is the dodgy one. Google ‘Soros connected to Snopes’ and there is enough information to prove that this is not true, including the very organisation cited in the article claiming to connect the two debunking the whole thing. So your response is pretty much proving the post i just wrote. Instead of linking to something you’ve heard and believe to be true, do a bit of a deeper work and the real truth will reveal itself fairly easily.
Brett
This would be a good idea for grade 11 learners as an experiment.
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich; a great equalizer.
The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A (substituting grades for dollars – something closer to home and more readily understood by all).
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.
As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the third test rolled around, the average was an F.
As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
To their great surprise, all failed and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
It could not be any simpler than that.
i don’t know Obama’s policies enough to know whether he was a socialist or not although a quick Google [again, if people just follow the advice in this post!] seems to strongly suggest that is Fake News which means this whole post of yours is not accurate. The rampant capitalism we have [where billionaires get so much more wealthier after the pandemic that has seen spikes in unemployment and the poor and middle class really struggling] definitely does not work [except for a precious few] and so something new needs to be tried. Who is to say socialism and capitalism are the only two ways of doing this anyway? Some kind of hybrid between the two or a completely new third way could be agreed upon that would benefit the majority of the people. i doubt we will ever find a foolproof system because people tend towards greedy and selfish, but we should be able to find something a LOT better than what we have now.