#common education

[ronearoundblindly]

a jimmy for you 😌🤲🏻💕

Alrighty, I get that I have not posted any real story for Common Education but this pic is giving me vibes. Warnings for zero editing and GOOD CHRIST sexual tension. WC ??? It's not long.

Sad Sack, a Common Education headcanon/thing/idk

So imagine you're older-student-Jimmy Dobyne's history professor and you've had a few instances of realizing that he is not at all like your typical student based on his background. He knows hard labor. He knows early mornings and long days. He does not know partying or really getting out of the comfort zone of similar-minded people. Jimmy's roommate, Steve Rogers, being an artsy nerd is a bit of a stretch as is.

Imagine that the first big paper was due last week in your class, and Jimmy did...okay.

He's good at memorization, like a lot of college freshmen, but he's not been asked to analyze very much. His paper didn't give any insight or opinion, and you critiqued it as nicely as possible because you are rooting for Jimmy (probably more than you should). You want this young man to succeed.

Jimmy does not take it well.

You don't see him two classes in a row which means he's now missed a week. Yes, you videotape lectures for kids like Steve Rogers who have reason to not come into class frequently. Yes, Jimmy hasn't missed any assignments at all and his grade average is perfectly fine.

You're still worried.

So you spend more time than normal at that little bakery you first met him at, arriving a little earlier, staying until the last second before you have to get to your classroom. No Jimmy.

Finally, you brave asking Noah, one of the bakery employees, if he's seen Jimmy around.

Noah looks very confused.

"Yeah," he scoffs, "I love that guy. I haven't had back pain all week."

When you return an equally bewildered stare, Noah points toward the back.

"He's right out there."

You crane your head over the counter and lower your voice. "May I?" You point through the building. "Do you mind?"

You think perhaps...well, you don't know what to think as Noah leads you carefully through the kitchen and to the alleyway beyond.

Sure enough, there's Jimmy, hauling enormous sacks of flour off the back of a truck and just shooting the shit with the delivery men all taking a smoke break whilst your student does their jobs for them.

You don't mean to, but you hiss his name like a disappointed mother.

"What are you doing?" As the other workers around seem more interested in what such a professional, pristine lady is doing out on their loading bay, you step closer to continue asking, "Why haven't you come to class?"

Does he need the money? You thought he had enough of a scholarship to cover living expenses. It's not as if the man still donning his farm shirts and stained henley is a big spender.

He ignores you until tossing the flour onto a dolly Noah then rolls inside.

"Look, Teach--" Jimmy takes off his trademark hat to wring in his hands, calling out to the workers by the truck "--one sec, boys."

He juts his head out to lead you deeper into the alley, then crosses when he realizes that's near the dumpster.

"I'm not..." Jimmy pulls a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket, tapping one out and putting it between his lips. He doesn't light it. "I don't think I'm cut out for this. I don't know why I came here."

"Is this because of one paper? Did something happen in another class?" You stop yourself from ripping the smoke right out of his mouth so he'll look you in the eye.

Jimmy shakes his head and does it for you, rolling his tongue over chapped lips and then holding them in.

"No, ma'am."

You relax a little, waiting for him to elaborate. You're waiting the whole time Jimmy mulls over his cigarette. He takes out a lighter and then thinks better of it and shoves it back in his pants, leaving the hand buried in his pocket.

"Can't have you thinking of me like that," he mumbles. "Like what if I just get worse? What if I'm stupid and...I don't want you to see me that way."

His concern warms you inside, hitting lower than that heat of appreciation should.

You sigh, trying not to allow your smile to read as dismissive.

"You are not stupid, Jimmy. You proved that long before you walked into my class. You're skilled and curious. You work hard. You could never fail that way. You could certainly never--" you clear your throat "--fail me."

He looks everywhere else but at you, shyly adjusting the brim of his hat again.

"You're just saying that."

No, in fact, you shouldn't be saying that. You shouldn't be having any hushed conversation in a back alley with one of your students, but you can't stand the thought of Jimmy giving up. He deserves this. He deserves options and a way to elevate himself. He deserves to choose his own path beyond the plot of farm he's only known.

"Come back to class," you beg, chancing to reach out and grasp the arm--that thick, veiny, strong forearm--which fiddles with a cigarette like a silver dollar dancing between his fingers. You could be hypnotized by those hands, how they move, what they can do. "Please."

He flexes in your hold.

"You want me?"

His deep voice should not spark the high jump your heart does.

"I want you there," you allow, swallowing the lump in your throat.

For whatever reason, you can't for the life of you let go of Jimmy's arm, and your gaze raises. Your apologetic eyes are met with something infinitely more dangerous--confident, clear blue ones.

"Can't let you down then, can I?"

You're trapped, helpless, at the complete mercy of a gentleman you almost wish were naughty.

"So," you whisper, "I'll see you Tuesday?"

"You'll see me whenever you want, Teach."

Oh damn.

You release his arm finally, the breath you had no clue you were holding gusting out like a tidal wave.

"I'm taking this," you say, plucking the smoke from his hand. "It's a nasty habit. You should quit."

But you don't throw it on the ground or dispose of it in the dumpster, no. You're going to need this cigarette after you forcefully release the freight train of tension that just drove its way into your core.

Just as you turn, Jimmy lands an equally incendiary response.

"Yes, ma'am. I can do that for you."

Y'ALL I AM NOT OKAY. WHY. WHY HE END UP SO FUCKING HOTT? HOW???

My god, no wonder I haven't been able to write more than drabbles of these two--I'D FAINT. immediately. D.E.D. Ded.

Anyway, tagging interested parties is beyond my brainpower at the moment, so maybe in reblogs later. Fuk. I need a cold shower.

[Main Masterlist; Light Masterlist; Ko-Fi]

[the-descolada]

That post going around is really depressing to read as someone working in childcare and education as a transfem (and I've been doing so for over a decade now). I don't doubt how scary and how much of a barrier there is for us getting into this field safely, it's fucking bad out there, but I also think that level of doom and gloom can put off a lot of trans women who dream of teaching, even if it will be hard.

Being a trans woman working in education is to hold a vital power that can and will change kids' lives. You will face stress, and fear, and even aggression, and I don't begrudge people to just say no, I can't handle that. But if it is something you care about enough, and you are in a position where you can have a measure of safety, it is so worth it, more than basically anything.

Kids will see you and ask questions. Those questions may be complicated, or uncomfortable, or uplifting, or any mix of that, but the end result is that those kids will walk away questioning what they've learned and what they've internalized at an early age when that is so much easier to turn curiosity into compassion. And that's just the probably cis kids - the kids who will see you and realize wait - this is a possibility for me, your existence resonating with theirs... There is a very real experience where you will see a kid even once or twice and your very presence and acting as a role model and being kind will permanently change the course of a kid's life for the better; it can be like giving kids the chance and knowledge so many of us wish we had growing up.

This obviously goes for any trans educator, not just trans women, and any questioning trans kid, not just trans women. The impact is immense; I've had first graders, mid elementary schoolers, even middle and high schoolers meet me and have their identities start to crystallize that week, and leave the camp on a firm path to realizing they're trans. It is incredibly fulfilling, and it's worth all the frustrating "are you a boy or a girl etc" questions.

[dosesofcommonsense]

I cannot understand how someone would vote for this, but I also know mental illness doesn’t make sense.

[constantly-deactivated]

Cheap Lighting 🤔

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

*tries to organize my thoughts*

*remembers i'm not in school and therefore beholden to neither heaven nor hell nor any man's grading system*

*joyously shredding & tossing all my carefully arranged 3x5 mental notecards into the air like so much beige confetti. raising my arms in victory, cheering raucously until i accidentally inhale bits of homemade confetti*

(*coughing up itty bits of paper like a cat evicting a hairball with a firm understanding of tenants' rights*) wait wat happens next

[booksandbrainsandsoftthings]

Officially forming the theory that the reason more service dog handlers don't use protective gear like boots, goggles, and ear protection on their dog is because the public becomes 3000% more unbearable when they try.

We're all used to "aaaaawwww look the the doggo" when we go out with our working animals, but getting

1. Accosted for pictures (whether folks ask or just invade your space and distract your dog)

2. Pointed at like an exhibit

3. Shouted at (OMG DOGGLES, "why is it wearing that" etc)

4. Actively followed around by strangers

Is downright fucking awful.

I know it looks cool. I know some of our gear is specialized. I know pet dogs don't usually wear/tolerate what SDs learn the wear. But for the love of whatever you deem holy, BE KIND ABOUT IT. All of the actions listed above are just fucking rude. Leave people alone. Leave service dogs alone.

Disabled people can exist without being spectacles

[palatinewolfsblog]

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” Alvin Toffler.

[bethanythebogwitch]

Wet Beast Wednesday: common carp

Welcome to the first WBW of fresh-uary. All my Wet Beast Wednesday posts this month will be about freshwater species. And where better to start than one of the most prolific and invasive freshwater fish, the common carp. Introduced worldwide as a food species, the common carp population has exploded due to them being masters of survival. Lets see how they have become so prevalent.

(Image: a common carp seen from the front and side. It is a large fish with a pointed head ending in a downward-pointing mouth with short barbels at the sides. The scales are large and orangeish. End ID)

The common carp, Cyprinus carpio, also known as the European carp or Eurasian carp is a large bony fish with a robust body and large, yellow-brown scales. Common carp have a downturned mouth with two pairs of short barbels, one emerging from the sides of the mouth and one from the lower lip. There are distinct wild and domesticated forms, with the wild ones being longer and slimmer. Most wild type common carp reach an average of 40-80 cm (16-31 in) long and 2-14 kg (4.5-31 lbs), but under the right conditions, they can get much larger. The largest common carp on record weighed 45.59 kg (100.5 lbs). Domesticated common carp can get much larger than wild ones and grow at almost twice the rate. Common carp have also been selectively bred into additional morphs, the most common of which is the mirror carp, so named for its much larger scales. Carp that are missing some or all of their scales are called leather carp and they often lose their scales as the result of a mutation. Mirror carp are especially prone to losing scales. The Amur carp, Cyprinus rubrofuscus, was previously considered to be a subspecies of the common carp before being reclassified as a closely related species. The two species are capable of hybridizing. They can also hybridize with goldfish.

(Image: a common carp seen from the side. From this angle, it is easier to see a small hump behind the head where the back begins. End ID)

Common carp are native to southern Europe and west Asia, particularly in the Danube river basin. Their preferred habitat is warm, still or slow water, but they are notorious for their ability to survive fairly extreme conditions. Carp can live in a wide range of temperatures, in highly polluted water, in more salty water than most freshwater fish, and in low-oxygen water (by gulping air at the surface). They also tolerate very shallow water for their size. I've personally pulled 2-foot long carp out of ankle-deep water. Carp are bottom-feeding omnivores that feed by rooting around in soft sediment. Food includes aquatic plants, algae, fish eggs, worms, small invertebrates like crayfish, and small fish. Carp feeding kicks a lot of sediment into the water, which can reduce water quality and encourage eutrophication. They will pick up sediment in their mouths and pass it back and fourth, using their gill rakers to filter out edible material. They have a set of pharyngeal teeth used to grind up food. Carp can be found solitary, but prefer to swim in small schools.

(Image: a common carp feeding. It has its head to the bottom sucking in corn kernels that the photographer has scattered around to attract them. This one has large, irregular scales, indicating it may be a mirror carp)

Carp reproduce in spring, often triggered by seasonal flooding. They will spawn multiple times during a season, with an average female able to produce over a million eggs per year. Females lay their eggs in shallow water, where they stick to vegetation. Carp in non-vegetated areas will make seasonal migrations to more suitable habitat for spawning. Juvenile carp are vulnerable to predators and rely on vegetation to hide. They feed on plankton until they grow large enough to root around in the sediment. Males reach sexual maturity between ages 3 and 5 and females between ages 4 and 6, with those living in warmer water maturing faster. Carp can live for decades, with the oldest one on record being 64 at the time of death.

(Image: a group of 10 common carp swimming at the surface of the water. Some of them have their mouths sticking out. End ID)

Carp have been raised for food for millennia, with the oldest record of them being farmed being Roman times. This is likely also when the domesticated variety diverged from the wild type. Carp is a major food source throughout Europe and Asia, but is unpopular as food in North America because of how bony they are. The wide use of carp in food has contributed to them being spread across the world. Common carp can now be found on every continent except Antarctica and in every region except for polar ones that are too cold for them. Common carp are one of the most invasive of all fish species and tend to be highly destructive to habitats they are introduced to. Their feeding tends to uproot and destroy aquatic vegetation and native fish eggs while outcompeting native species with similar niches. Carp feeding kicks up lots of sediment in the water and can radically change the conditions of waters they are introduced into. Various carp control methods have been introduced to try to keep their numbers down. These include barricades to prevent them from reaching spawning grounds, capture and kill programs, and the use of poison. In many places carp have been introduced to, fishing for food and sport helps control their numbers. One of the problems with carp in North America is that there isn't a food market for them and many anglers don't target them. Environmentalists have been working on encouraging carp fishing and telling anglers to kill carp they catch to help control their numbers. Carp aquaculture has become a major industry. China produces more carp by weight yearly than all other fish from aquaculture worldwide. Ironically, despite their invasive nature and survivability, wild common carp in their native range are considered threatened due to habitat loss.

(Image: three excited-looking people holding up a giant common carp. The fish is so big that even with all three people standing shoulder to shoulder, the fish extends across all of them. End ID)

[reality-detective]

Barbara O'Neill on Sunscreen 🤔

[mostlysignssomeportents]

American education has all the downsides of standardization, none of the upsides

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

We moved to America in 2015, in time for my kid to start third grade. Now she's a year away from graduating high school (!) and I've had a front-row seat for the US K-12 system in a district rated as one of the best in the country. There were ups and downs, but high school has been a monster.

We're a decade and a half into the "common core" experiment in educational standardization. The majority of the country has now signed up to a standardized and rigid curriculum that treats overworked teachers as untrustworthy slackers who need to be disciplined by measuring their output through standard lessons and evaluations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core

This system is rigid enough, but it gets even worse at the secondary level, especially when combined with the Advanced Placement (AP) courses, which adds another layer of inflexible benchmarks to the highest-stakes, most anxiety-provoking classes in the system:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Placement

It is a system singularly lacking in grace. Ironically, this unforgiving system was sold as a way of correcting the injustice at the heart of the US public education system, which funds schools based on local taxation. That means that rich neighborhoods have better funded schools. Rather than equalizing public educational funding, the standardizers promised to ensure the quality of instruction at the worst-funded schools by measuring the educational outcomes with standard tools.

But the joke's on the middle-class families who backed standardized instruction over standardized funding. Their own kids need slack as much as anyone's, and a system that promises to put the nation's kids through the same benchmarks on the same timetable is bad for everyone:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/28/give-me-slack-2/

Undoing this is above my pay-grade. I've already got more causes to crusade on than I have time for. But there is a piece of tantalyzingly low-hanging fruit that is dangling right there, and even though I'm not gonna pick it, I can't get it out of my head, so I figured I'd write about it and hope I can lazyweb it into existence.

The thing is, there's a reason that standardization takes hold in so many domains. Agreeing on a common standard enables collaboration by many entities without any need for explicit agreements or coordination. The existence of the ANSI/SAE J563 standard automobile auxiliary power outlet (AKA "car cigarette lighter") didn't just allow many manufacturers to make replacement lighter plugs. The existence of a standardized receptacle delivering standardized voltage to standardized contacts let all kinds of gadgets be designed to fit in that socket.

Standards crystallize the space of all possible ways of solving a problem into a range of solutions. This inevitably has a downside, because the standardized range might not be optimal for all applications. Think of the EU's requirement for USB-C charger tips on all devices. There's a lot of reasons that manufacturers prefer different charger tips for different gadgets. Some of those reasons are bad (gouging you on replacement chargers), but some are good (unique form-factor, specific smart-charging needs). USB-C is a very flexible standard (indeed, it's so flexible that some people complain that it's not a standard at all!) but there are some applications where the optimal solution is outside its parameters.

And still, I think that the standardization on USB-C is a force for good. I have drawers full of gadgets that need proprietary charger tips, and other drawers full of chargers with proprietary tips, and damned if I can make half of them match up. We've continued our pandemic lockdown tradition of my wife cutting my hair in the back yard, and just tracking the three different charger tips for the three clippers she uses is an ongoing source of frustration. I'd happily trade slightly sub-optimal charging for just being able to plug any of those clippers into the same cable I charge my headphones, phone, tablet and laptop on.

The standardization of American education has produced all the downsides of standardization – a rigid, often suboptimal, one-size-fits-all system – without the benefits. With teachers across America teaching in lockstep, often from the same set texts (especially in the AP courses), there's a massive opportunity for a commons to go with the common core.

For example, the AP English and History classes my kid takes use standard texts that are often centuries old and hard to puzzle out. I watched my kid struggle with texts for learning about "persuasive rhetoric" like 17th century pamphlets that inspired anti-indigenous pogroms with fictional accounts of "Indian atrocities."

It's good for American schoolkids to learn about the use of these blood libels to excuse genocide, but these pamphlets are a slog. Even with glossaries in the textbooks, it's a slow, word-by-word matter to parse these out. I can't imagine anyone learning a single thing about how speech persuades people just by reading that text.

But there's nothing in the standardized curriculum that prevents teachers from adding more texts to the unit. We live in an unfortunate golden age for persuasive texts that inspire terrible deeds – for example, kids could also read core Pizzagate texts and connect the guy who shot up the pizza parlor to the racists who formed a 17th century lynchmob.

But teachers are incredibly time-constrained. For one thing, at least a third of the AP classroom time seems to be taken up with detailed instructions for writing stilted, stylized "essays" for the AP tests (these are terrible writing, but they're easy to grade in a standardized way).

That's where standardization could actually deliver some benefits. If just one teacher could produce some supplemental materials and accompanying curriculum, the existence of standards means that every other teacher could use it. What's more, any adaptations that teachers make to that unit to make them suited to their kids would also work for the other teachers in the USA. And because the instruction is so rigidly standardized, all of these materials could be keyed to metadata that precisely identified the units they belonged to.

The closest thing we have to this are "marketplaces" where teachers can sell each other their supplementary materials. As far as I can tell, the only people making real money from these marketplaces are the grifters who built them and convinced teachers to paywall the instructional materials that could otherwise form a commons.

Like I said, I've got a completely overfull plate, but if I found myself at loose ends, trying to find a project to devote the rest of my life to, I'd be pitching funders on building a national, open access portal to build an educational commons.

It may be a lot to expect teachers to master the intricacies of peer-based co-production tools like Git, but there's already a system like this that K-8 teachers across the country have mastered: Scratch. Scratch is a graphic programming environment for kids, and starting with 2019's Scratch 3.0, the primary way to access it is via an in-browser version that's hosted at scratch.mit.edu.

Scratch's online version is basically a kid- (and teacher-)friendly version of Github. Find a project you like, make a copy in your own workspace, and then mod it to suit your own needs. The system keeps track of the lineage of different projects and makes it easy for Scratch users to find, adapt, and share their own projects. The wild popularity of this system tells us that this model for a managed digital commons for an educational audience is eminently achievable.

So when students are being asked to study the rhythm of text by counting the numbers of words in the sentences of important speeches, they could supplement that very boring exercise by listening to and analyzing contemporary election speeches, or rap lyrics, or viral influencer videos. Different teachers could fork these units to swap in locally appropriate comparitors – and so could students!

Students could be given extra credit for identifying additional materials that slot into existing curricular projects – Tiktok videos, new chart-topping songs, passages from hot YA novels. These, too, could go into the commons.

This would enlist students in developing and thinking critically about their curriculum, whereas today, these activities are often off-limits to students. For example, my kid's math teachers don't hand back their quizzes after they're graded. The teachers only have one set of quizzes per unit, and letting the kids hold onto them would leak an answer-key for the next batch of test-takers.

I can't imagine learning math this way. "You got three questions wrong but I won't let you see them" is no way to help a student focus on the right areas to improve their understanding.

But there's no reason that math teachers in a commons built around the (unfortunately) rigid procession of concepts and testing couldn't generate procedural quizzes, specified with a simple programming language. These tests could even be automatically graded, and produce classroom stats on which concepts the whole class is struggling with. Each quiz would be different, but cover the same ground.

When I help my kid with her homework, we often find disorganized and scattered elements of this system – a teacher might post extensive notes on teaching a specific unit. A publisher might produce a classroom guide that connects a book to specific parts of the common core. But these are scattered across the web, and they aren't keyed to the specific, standard components of common core and AP.

This is a standardized system that is all costs, no benefits. It has no "architecture of participation" that lets teachers, students, parents, practitioners and even commercial publishers collaborate to produce a commons that all may share and improve upon.

In an ideal world, we'd get rid of standardization in education, pay teachers well, give them the additional time they needed to prepare exciting and relevant curriculum, and fund all our schools based on need, not parents' income.

But in the meanwhile, we could be making lemonade of out lemons. If we're going to have standardization, we should at least have the collaboration standards enable.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/16/flexibility-in-the-margins/#a-commons

[ronearoundblindly]

'Common Education' Masterlist

Jimmy Dobyne x professor!Reader

Summary: Jimmy Dobyne finally takes a chance on going back to school in his mid-20s. He's got a lot to adjust to in New York City, not least of which is his huge crush on his history professor.

Warnings: TBD but this story will be 18+ Only!!

Romance 🔥 || Smut 🦆 || Angst ⛈ || Fluff 🌼 || Dark Fic 🌘

Posted Drabbles:

*Premise*Kissing In The Rain (5) 🌼🔥 *Kneading Assurances (1) ⛈🌼 *Hamptons Beachside (3) ⛈🔥 *Strange New World (10) *Dirty Headcanon

Full Story:

Freshman Year, Fall Semester 🌼🔥

Freshman Year, Spring Semester 🌼🔥🦆⛈

Summer Break 🌼🔥🦆

Sophomore Year, Fall Semester 🌼🔥🦆

Sophomore Year, Spring Semester 🌼🔥🦆

Study Abroad 🌼🔥🦆⛈

Junior Year, Fall Semester 🔥🦆⛈

Sabbatical 🔥⛈

Senior Year, Fall Semester 🔥⛈

Senior Year, Graduation 🌼🔥🦆

[Main Masterlist]

[los-plantalones]

I wanted to highlight this because I knew it would come up as SOON as I mention common milkweed (asclepias syriaca), which is a milkweed from the Eastern and Central US.

Indigenous peoples, respected ethnobotanists, and veteran foragers eat milkweed by the bucket! If other people knew how amazing of a plant it is – there is something edible and delicious about it at every stage of growth, it is very easy to plant / spread its seeds, and it grows almost like a weed – they would love and cherish it.

If more people were encouraged to utilize it, they would be less likely to get rid of it in their yards. They might even start growing a whole patch. It’s a sustainable food source. We would be helping its insect friends who are HARMLESS to our gardens but important for the environment.

It’s not like, say, ramps that are overharvested every year and have disappeared from huge stretches of land where they were once abundant. Ramps grown from seed take SEVEN years to mature. Milkweed grows and matures the same year.

People eating milkweed don’t contribute to monarch butterfly decline. The use of herbicides, Big Agro, cities just mowing down whatever the hell they want are to blame.

That said, it’s still important to forage in an ethical way. Never strip a plant of all its flowers, leaves, or fruit. Never harvest an entire patch of plants from a single area. Check for beneficial insects and leave them alone. If a native plant has gone to seed, help spread those around.

This is NOT a callout — this is important information that I want everyone to know. Eating milkweed will NOT harm the monarch butterflies.

Learn More:

The Forager’s Harvest

Learn Your Land

Part 1 | Common Milkweed

[canon-gabriel-quotes]

Completely normal out of context and out of character clips

[dosesofcommonsense]

The reason why School Choice has been resurrected as a hot topic is the close association between teacher unions and the DNC, as well as many mentally ill individuals teaching and indoctrinating students to their views.

[bloggingboutburgers]

Respectfully about that comic about sensoring the word sex, as a sex promotor in second year (it's a function parallel to the student council here in Argentina that works on the subjects about the sex education and it's function in society),

OMG YES

I am tired of having people older than me be ashamed of speaking about the subject properly and yet still trying to give "the talk". It's so refreshing to have a blunt biology teacher that says and calls things by their most proper or "formal" name, the common name, and even the coloquial ones (such as "forro" for the condom).

And the worst part is that I see students older than me that use them as a toy and toss them into the sewers, but then turn red as a tomato when you ask them to explain something related to it. Or when they giggle about it and grow sheepish when you ask them to put it in a banana. It's ridiculous, oh my God.

Yeah, EXACTLY!!! That's the part that grinds my gears the most about this whole thing – how hypocritical the whole thing feels, whether it's even intentional or not. People know what they're talking about. They clearly have it in their head quite a bit. So why are they so afraid of, like... words? Just words?

Words have tremendous power; it can be power to hurt, but it can also be power to grow, know more, protect oneself, be more honest with one another, you name it. I'd much prefer it if people knew more words than less, even if it includes some they're "not supposed to know". That feels much better than the alternative. Heck, there's a reason why the dystopia in Orwell's 1984 involves diminishing the general population's vocabulary. Discouraging people from using their words does more harm than good, I'm convinced of it

[cursedvida]

I understand a knee jerk reaction to nomae, but I also think they are not considering how ADVANCED Noa is. We're repeatedly told and shown how intelligent he is. Starts w/him fixing his mother's fish hut, to fixing the shock weapon, to coming up with the idea of using the water to flood the bunker. He even outsmarts Sylvia into drowning himself. In a world with already evolved and intelligent apes, Noa seems even more, and all this without advanced education.

In fact, what disturbs Mae the most is seeing how intelligent Noa is and his ability to absorb information and put it into practice. In the end, the apes have become very human, which means there must also be apes with above-average intelligence and high intellectual abilities. Noa fits this well because he clearly shows much more cognitive development than his friends. I think if at first it seems like everyone is at the same level, it’s because Noa has never left his village, he hasn’t seen beyond or experienced the world, he hasn’t been able to nurture himself with more than the limited information available in his isolated environment. Let’s say he hasn’t been able to develop his skills. Going out into the world makes it clear that he has a lot of talent and that with very little he can develop a lot, and Mae sees this quite clearly, which poses a threat.

Noa is not just an evolved ape like all those around him, who after 300 years have managed to build their own societies and develop collectively. He also shows an intellectual capacity far superior to the average of his peers. But well, people keep treating him like a defenseless animal with barely any cognitive abilities and infantilizing him just to hate on a ship. That demonstrates the general maturity level of some people, lol.