Talking to my broskie Mari today, we had a (very hearty) chuckle at one of our (former) twitter followers' predicaments following a "breakup" of her "boyfriend" who just so happened to live on the other side of the world. Communicating exclusively over the internet, it was revealed that this "boyfriend" neglected to give his e-paramour his phone number. He promptly deleted her from Twitter, Facebook, Skype and stopped responding to her emails.
You read correctly, sports fans. He didn't even give her his phone number.
I have been in a similar situation before but I was given her phone number, the phone numbers of her friends, pictures of them, letters and almost everything barring a physical presence. So why do people blatantly see warning signs when they arise and blithely decide to ignore them? Is it because they aren't told a warning sign is one when they see it? Do they need to be told in order for them to act upon it in the "correct" way?
Although seemingly unrelated, I had some free time today (on account of having no job - hopefully I'll inadvertently hack twitter somehow and gain some attention for myself) and read more of my perpetually renewed copy of Postman and Weingartner's Teaching as a Subversive Activity. There contained was an example of a class of students being forced to sit an exam again after several students were caught cheating, stealing the exam ahead of its sitting. Students' opinions ranged - it was unfair for make all to resit it due to the actions of a few; that it would give them an advantage over others; that sitting it again would impair their chances of passing since they forgot what they studied after the sitting anyway. The content of the test was irrelevant; it was only important the students passed.
Students in the modern era have been asking teachers "will this be on the test?" I always thought it curious and harmful during my high school years, considering I almost always read outside of the curriculum, especially for the humanities. I was ridiculed by others for doing so. It was, in the context of my "education", a complete waste of time which could be better spent "studying" for assessments.
So what did we all learn at high school? I loathe to think it was only information that required to be regurgitated at the right time in the right context. But the more I do remember about those days, the more my suspicions are confirmed. Since "being taught" is a top-down process, we are coerced into "learning" what teachers provide for us. If we didn't, a horrible consequence would befall us (such as ending up cutting onions in a potato factory, as my father would enjoy saying to frighten me.)
If they tell us a warning sign looks like A on a certain exam, then it cannot look like B. It is either A or not A. The Aristotelian law of non-contradiction holds fast in the classroom (in addition to the law of the excluded middle and the is of identity.) But as adherents of GS or other multi-valued empirical systems can attest to, it's far more ambiguous than that.
Affairs of the heart seldom are guided by the head. If the head is empty, then even more so. A warning sign usually doesn't say "Warning" on it. If our schools insist they do, then our schools are derelict in their mission to pass our knowledge on to the next generation so they may expand upon it.