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Sep. 28th, 2018
I wasn't going to post this article
Sep. 28th, 2018 02:09 am"Girls read more than boys, it's awful, how can we fix this!?"
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/why-girls-are-better-reading-boys/571429/
But the commentary I've seen elsewhere positively infuriates me.
I'm all for stocking schools and libraries with a wider range of books to appeal to a greater variety of tastes. We should definitely increase funding with an eye towards this goal.
But it absolutely kills me to see the same people who either a. earnestly explain that we can't have gender parity in films because men and boys won't watch movies about girls and women and then the filmmakers wouldn't make any money (women have to suck it up, I guess) or b. who huffily insist that pushing for more diverse books is insulting because only reading about people who are "like you" means you don't stretch yourself (reading about white people is automatically stretching yourself even if they're basically your clone) are now falling all over themselves to say that of course we can't ask boys to read about girls and never should have suggested it. Boys never have to stretch themselves and never have to suck it up, I guess.
Is this what they mean when they talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations?
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/why-girls-are-better-reading-boys/571429/
But the commentary I've seen elsewhere positively infuriates me.
I'm all for stocking schools and libraries with a wider range of books to appeal to a greater variety of tastes. We should definitely increase funding with an eye towards this goal.
But it absolutely kills me to see the same people who either a. earnestly explain that we can't have gender parity in films because men and boys won't watch movies about girls and women and then the filmmakers wouldn't make any money (women have to suck it up, I guess) or b. who huffily insist that pushing for more diverse books is insulting because only reading about people who are "like you" means you don't stretch yourself (reading about white people is automatically stretching yourself even if they're basically your clone) are now falling all over themselves to say that of course we can't ask boys to read about girls and never should have suggested it. Boys never have to stretch themselves and never have to suck it up, I guess.
Is this what they mean when they talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations?
The foghorn was so loud today
Sep. 28th, 2018 11:46 amit sounded like it must be twice as close to the house as it actually is. (And then after every blast I'd hear some little kid outside carefully mimicking the sound.)
But it later transpired that apparently they're not sending out HS applications this year, you have to pick them up in person (because, in the words of the person in the other office, "they claim they can't get on our new system") and whether or not that claim is strictly valid, if she's been dealing with irritated parents the past couple of weeks I guess I can see why she's in a bad mood. I'm very generously assuming that this was the reason, anyway.
Because her pissiness was directed at me she actually supplanted the first unpleasant person I encountered today, who was probably worse. I just had bad luck! Tomorrow I'll only meet happy, cheerful, kind people.
Because her pissiness was directed at me she actually supplanted the first unpleasant person I encountered today, who was probably worse. I just had bad luck! Tomorrow I'll only meet happy, cheerful, kind people.