Did you know 2 equals 1?

Did you know 2 equals 1? No? Well were have you been, that’s common sense.

1 = a number                                                           

                                                                                   

2 = a number

_________________________

Therefore 2 = 1

A connotation such as this one is what leads to hasty generalization. It’s where assumptions are made without sufficient evidence, like having an impression about a large population, based on personal knowledge of just a few in the population.

Close-minded thinking such as hasty generalization is what contributed to the controversial topics of Ageism, Sexism and Racism.

“All elderly people are groggy and bitter. They hate young people, because they are too vulgar and have no boundaries. ”

Comments like this travel fast and are then repeated to others, until it’s eventually used towards all elderly people. This one comment is then led to Ageism…because someone is a part of a particular age group they are discriminated upon, based off of a generalized assumption.

These same thoughts also led to racism and sexism. “All Middle Eastern people hate America”, “Women are only nurses, not doctors.” From one comment that applied to one or two people in particular is now viewed as something that applies to all women or all Middle Eastern people.

Being a college student I have heard multiple times to be careful and to stay safe. In return condoms are swayed in front of my face to remind me of safe sex. Also the talks about “never leave you’re cup lying around at a party, if you do don’t drink it.” All great advice to keep me from having unwanted children at a young age and preventing me from ingesting a spiked drink, but really NOT ALL COLLEGE STUDENTS ARE HAVING SEX OR DOING DRUGS AND GETTING DRUNK EVERY THURSDAY NIGHT. From a couple experiences that some people have had and a couple of movies, some people actually believe that college consists of nothing but marijuana, sex, and vodka… when really I don’t need any of that stuff to say that I am a college student nor to prove that I do have a kick-ass time without the booze. So CHILL-OUT with the unnecessary generalization, something that might represent you’re friend surely does not represent everyone.  

Hasty generalization is a crappy argument that is made without adequate evidence. It consists of negative connotations that lead to unnecessary discrimination. So in general if you are going to make hasty comments have something to back it up with. Or as it is said, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.

No privacy... No surprise... Just keep it protected.

Well, after reading Allen D. Kanner’s “The Piracy of Privacy: Why Marketers Bare Our Souls,” I now know that I have no privacy what so ever. The expansion of technology has become so sophisticated that just by registering my email, Facebook, and other favorite apps onto my cell phone, marketing and cell phone companies have configured a scheme to create a G.P.S system to persuade me into buying their products. Crazy Right? Just to make a profit, these marketing companies invade my privacy by getting personal information from me such as: “gender, age, race, travel patterns, interests, purchasing history, etc., to customize their commercial ads so that they can try to persuade me into buying their merchandise.”

Personally I do not believe that what the marketing companies are doing is all that bad, since they are only using this G.P.S system to persuade me into buying a product that I might be interested in purchasing. I mean that’s not causing me any harm… Now if I were a shopaholic, then I would be in trouble, but luckily I’m not. The only thing that concerns me with the whole collecting personal information rant is, what else are these marketers doing with my personal information, after they have used it to better their company’s well being? What other type of personal information of mine do these companies have? I hope the information the companies are collecting is NOT an easy gateway for a hacker to steal my hard earned money, or worse, my identity.

Being a college student I know for a fact that some of my personal information has already been seen by a certain number of people, and that my private information is not all that private any more. The only difference from marketing companies having access to my personal information compared to a university is I willingly gave that information to the university, which means I was giving my information with full conscious and full consent. I have not given any marketing or phone company consent or approval of using my personal information so that they may enhance their profits.

All I have to say about this new G.P.S. system is keep a good security on it, because if these systems are hacked, there is going to be a lot of law suits and a lot of chaos.   

A Teacher Promotes Failure As A Way For Success... WHAT?

Based off of her own life experiences with her son, Mary Sherry - writer of "In Praise of the F Word" - believes that threatening a student with a notion of failure is a “positive teaching tool.” A little scare from her son’s teacher motivated Sherry into thinking that such a theory would be a negative reinforcement, and would eventually cause students to succeed and work harder in school.  

 “If you want to do well in life you have to go to college”, 

 “If you want to go to college your G.P.A has to be a 4.0.” This is the type of motivation high schoolers and some middle schoolers receive from teachers, parents, relatives, and maybe even their parent’s co-workers. This idea that the grade you receive in this one class determines the course of your future is a scary reality, and eventually becomes the main goal and the only thing that needs to be completed for some students. This “motivation” deters our focus from actually caring about what we are learning and instead just worrying about what grade we will receive in the end.

Sherry makes this clam that students are handed meaningless diplomas because we are poorly educated. Which makes me question, why would you fail a student if they were poorly educated. Learning works two ways from the information taught and how the information was received.

Although the motive to threaten a student with the idea of flunking worked on her son, does not mean it will work on every student. The mantra of “you need to have this type of G.P.A. in order to succeed,” is what throws students off because we are motivated to accomplish one thing and one thing only… having a 4.0 G.P.A.