Even before covid, I was a bit of a new's hound researching news around the world to keep myself informed. It used to be that news anchors (think Walter Cronkite) reported the news and let the consumer decide what to make of it.
Today's anchors color the news with their own beliefs and their respective employers can be ranked on the political spectrum form left (liberal) to right (conservative). There is much talk on the media that the US has become a divided nation and I would argue that the media is much to blame.
I came across the following 2 charts that rank news media on their political biases. Five years ago I really liked CNN but not so much lately. Ditto for Fox News as it was the counter to CNN. I find both of them too far left and right respectively. I now tend to watch US Today, the BBC, and CBS News (Cronkite's former employer). The reason being, they are more neutral in their opinion.
I believe that free speech is endangered as it is getting drummed out by universities and social media. If you dare say something that is politically incorrect, your life will be ruined. Universities, when they try to bring bring a speaker in that is not PC will find that the speaker is shut down by the protestors who do not that person's airs viewed or discussed intellectually.
People who have a high profile have lost their jobs through an ad hoc, off the cuff comment, off tape, but overheard. It seems our current PM Trudope is immune to this which perhaps shows how shallow these protestors can be when it comes to a pretty face.
History is now being rewritten by these protest groups and statues are being torn down and even Aunt Jemina is in the trash heap. The Boy Scouts are gone and the boy's hockey change room is no longer just for boys.
An interesting trend is for transgender (men to women) athletes being permitted to enter the female events and they are cleaning up at the expense of real females. It appears to me that the situation is out of control.
It is also not good to be white today as whites have white privilege and it is their fault. For quite a few years, white males have been denied jobs as society played catch up with quota systems for women and visible minorites in jobs, university admissions, etc. I am not saying this is a bad policy but you have to understand that the best person for the job may not get the job. Black people have argued for years thay they got overlooked by the color of their skin. Flipping that is not the answer.
Some people argue that education is the answer. I would argue that education is part of the problem. Educaion has become feminized. According to Stats Canada:
It appears that males are not really represented in education. Perhaps it is no wonder that many more males drop out of school and don't go on to college and university. One could argue if education is failing our youth then women are to blame as they are running the show.
The new Math curriculum in Ontario shows this influence. The last 10 years brought communication into the evaluation process in Mathematic. It was no longer good enough to get the right answer, but now you had to be able to explain to the whole class how you got that answer. 20% of your final mark was on communication. Now the province has added:
Social-emotional learning skills and mathematical processes
Social-emotional learning skills help students develop confidence, cope with challenges and think critically. This learning reflects current research and the government’s commitment to student well-being and skill-building to help students see themselves as capable and confident math learners.
Touchy feely stuff. I wonder where that came from.
In summary, the past, was far from perfect, but it was the past and is history. If we fail to learn from history, then history will tend to repeat itself. Removing history is not the answer. The answer is to discuss history in it's time and place and learn from it to apply what we have learned to this day and age.
Data plays a huge part in the process. Being objective and not subjective, and not jumping on the traditional media or social media band wagon is not the answer. It leads to a divided country and anarchy.
Anarchy is the state of a society being freely constituted without authorities or a governing body. It may also refer to a society or group of people that totally rejects a set hierarchy.
TTYL
Just getting the right answer has never been good enough in math. Mathematical proofs are important, as is at least showing steps, using correct units and coming up with a sentence to explain what it is you calculated.
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