One fears for the future if these students are typical of today’s crop:
Once again, I explained how to answer the question, and once again the student was pleased. The error was just a trivial difference of opinion. “Yeah, I get it,” she said. “I was just thinking of it differently.” You say tomayto, I say tomahto.
No, I wanted to say, you weren’t thinking of it differently, you had it completely wrong; you didn’t understand it at all. But like her many compatriots, she was unlikely to acknowledge that, or admit to a mistake even when she created a version of reality never seen on a map, or in the actions of a blackbird.
Students have always deluded themselves, of course, and hope has always sprung eternal, or at least until final grades appear. And at least some in my classes really do eventually master the material. But confident placidity in the face of error seems to be on the rise.
Maybe it’s all that self-esteem this generation of students was inculcated with as youngsters, or maybe it’s the emphasis on respecting everyone else’s opinion, to the point where no answer, even a mathematical one, can be truly wrong because that might offend the one who gave it.
I fail to see the cause for umbrage. Given that there are going to be ordinances specifying that there be restrooms at all (and there are much more serious depredations on liberty than such ordinances to be concerned with), why not respond to clear demand, and establish a sufficient number of each type? It’s blindingly obvious that (mostly male) architects seem clueless as to the disparity between male/female toiletry issues. When there are consistently long lines for something, it’s an indication of a shortage of supply, and one to which the market seems impervious, given the captive-audience nature of the situation in, say, a sports stadium. I remember when the Getty first opened, it had a serious shortage of bathrooms for both sexes, and as an engineer was appalled at Meier’s apparent lack of common sense, focusing instead on pure aesthetics. It would be nice if the designers would get a clue, but given that they continue not to, I’ve got a lot bigger things to worry about than this.
John Podhoretz says that the Revenge of the Sith, well, sux. But here’s a much different (and longer) opinion, with lots of spoilers, for those who care about such things.
I have trouble worrying about spoilers for a movie like this. I mean, even someone with the minimal mental acuity of Jar Jar Binks ought to be able to intelligently interpolate between movies 2 and 4, such that the major plot points are obvious. The only question is how well Lucas pulls them all off.
I don’t know if this will be the last word on the subject, but Matt Labash certainly has the best take so far on Lord Minniehaha:
All this anarchism has made me thirsty, so I cross the street to get a Diet Coke, and take a coffee order from Churchill and Saito. All I can find, however, is a Starbucks. When I come back to the fair with two venti something-or-anothers, surly anarchists look like they want to kick my windows in, just like they did the Seattle Starbucks back at WTO ’99.
Churchill, to his credit, doesn’t subscribe to any meaningless “praxis of personal purity,” so he takes his coffee (black) with a shrug and lights a Pall Mall. I ask if he’s an anarchist, and though they have an affinity, he says no. He’s an Indigenist. Not quite sure what that entails, I ask him to explain. He’s a wordy bugger, and goes on for a good while about a “consciously synchronous level of population” and a “latitude of action that is governed in a self-regulating manner” and a “unity in the differentiation that’s consonant with natural order.” I figure this would all go down a lot easier if I’d first eaten peyote.
Kofi “Look The Other Way” Annan is slated to give the commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania. Some of the students, unsurprisingly, aren’t happy about it.