this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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Wow that is bullshit. Reminds me of the teacher who failed a student for drawing a digital clock in a square that prompted 'Draw a clock showing 4:30 pm.'
Kid wasn't wrong at all. Poorly worded question.
Further, please enjoy my own bitching about bad teachers all the way up into college:
I had a college professor for Political Science give me a shit grade for only one of the multiple papers required of the class.
Why?
I referenced US Army soldiers out right stating, on video, and with legit newspapers covering this, that they were being instructed to guard opium/poppie farms in Afghanistan, back when even liberals were pretending that was not happening. It was a paper on conflict goods, such as blood diamonds, and she pretended I was a conspiracy theorist.
Next year I had an Econ professor give my group and I got a crap grade (got nearly 100% on every thing else) on a report and presentation about Iceland's response to the Financial Crisis of 08.
Why'd he do that?
Because Iceland's actions and the subsequent effects on their economy did not fit into any of the possible policy choices (send all the corrupt bankers to fucking prison) and outcomes that his macroeconomic paradigm allowed to be possible, and functionally disproved it, as according to the model he was teaching us, this should have resulted in basically a total collapse of their economy. (There were some short lived negative effects, but faaar from what we should have expected)
I got a BS in Econ and a BA in PoliSci, double majored in 4 years, and what I learned was the only way to excel in either of these fields is to pick some kind of ideology to pledge your allegiance too, suck up and kiss ass and you'll go far.
Your last point is pretty much the most likely way to excel in life too, unfortunately.
You're lucky if you do actually like the person you have to suck up to.
Too bad I am autistic and can't even pull that off the few times I've tried.
Oh well.
I'm sure it must be more difficult for you :( just to try and keep you going though, it's definitely a numbers game and those of us who don't have any concerns sometimes misread too.
Tbh, the recovery is probably more important than the execution in this scenario.
That is an unfortunate reality. People don’t want innovation, unless it affirms their existing beliefs. Hollywood has done the world such a disservice in portraying this ideal that if you’re right, and persistent, that you can overcome this type of bullshit. That’s romantic, sure. Everyone would love to prevail the impossible. But life doesn’t work that way.
Actually, it’s not Hollywood that’s at fault. It’s parents’ fault. Parents teach little kids that if they tell the truth, work hard, dream big, and all of this other fluffy stuff, then they will be successful. That they can be anything they want, if they want it enough. That, and, Santa, Tooth-fairy, Easter Bunny, “I don’t have a favorite child” are all lies we tell our kids; in the guise of protecting them from the harsh realities of the world, when I. Reality we are all selfishly trying to relive some innocence we lost many years ago.
If we really wanted to protect our children, we would teach them young what to expect out of life, and how to traverse the fucked up societal highways to be successful. It’s not about doom and gloom, but teaching kids to recognize the power structure of whatever situation they’re in, and how to work it to their advantage (e.g., working with the grain, versus going against it) would do them well.
Anyway, I’m ranting now. My apologies. Carry on.
It goes deeper than parents being nostalgic. The veneer of meritocracy is load-bearing to neoliberal ideology, especially post-WWII. If we, as a ~society~, acknowledged that no matter how big kids dream and how much they work they'll probably never make it more than maybe one or two steps up the social ladder, our entire social model would collapse.
At its most fundamental level, that's what the war against "wokism" is. It's the privileged correctly identifying and targeting the existential threat that is the mere acknowledgement that we do not live in a meritocracy.