Growing under communism made us keenly aware of propaganda. Americans are the most propagandized people in the world and the least aware of it. A major handicap! Since most of my American friends and family have read 1984 and Brave New World in high school, and since most did not “get” these books, I no longer believe the original intent…
Growing under communism made us keenly aware of propaganda. Americans are the most propagandized people in the world and the least aware of it. A major handicap! Since most of my American friends and family have read 1984 and Brave New World in high school, and since most did not “get” these books, I no longer believe the original intent was to educate but, instead, to program people. In fact, most of our schooling here is not education but programming, plus trade education. It seems to me that the more years of schooling one had the less likely one was to discern the psy-op. Schooling did not make us smarter, and most definitely did not make us wiser. The third of the population who questioned and remained skeptical comes from across the spectrum but it would not surprise me the over-schooled as group were underrepresented in that third.
The most activist teachers are invariably those with no life-experience outside institutions.
They have gone through school, then on to college/uni, then getting a teacher's degree or eq. and then back into the school system.
The good teachers by which I mean good at their subjects, good at teaching and separating private from public and also private from professional, are the ones who came late to the profession, first having done lots of other things in/with their lives.
Barring kindergarten and ages 6-8 it was rare to see a teacher under 40 when I started school, and they all - even the ones teaching the kids - had proper PhDs earned in a competitive system. The one exception being gym/PE and shop/HE teachers who instead often were 50+ and had had a real career before settling for teaching as a sort-of slow down before retirement.
While the specifics will vary by nation, obviously, I do believe (while admittedly being biased as all get out), that teaching should be reserved for the 40+ bracket. That would also create competition and selection pressure on modern teachers to shape up.
PS: If you want to see the effects of school vouchers, look at Sweden. It's a cautionary tale. DS
"The good teachers by which I mean good at their subjects, good at teaching and separating private from public and also private from professional, are the ones who came late to the profession, first having done lots of other things in/with their lives." - I think that is true of politicians as well.
I've met some of our MPs in person, back when I had a career.
The ones who are true party-creatures (partigängare in swedish, which can be read as "married-with-the-party" or "partyfucker" [literally] respectively) who joined the youth cadre in their tweens are ... well, just fill this space with every synonym for moron, idiot and conceited you can find.
I will never, ever, forget the man - publicly elected - who for real asked why we don't put mini-propellers connected to dynamos all over EVs.
See, he'd noticed that whenever he drives his EV, the wind blows so why not let that wind power the car...
"Systemet har inga problem - systemet är problemet!"
Old german and swedish anarchist slogan.
"The System has no problem - the system is the problem!"
Never thought I'd feel the urge to shout that again. In my youth, anarchists sometimes held a march on April First in mockery of the upcoming May Day-parades, where the ruling Socialist Democrat Party protested against their own politics, as we say here.
I like the European tradition (also common here in Australia) of a "gap year." Send the child abroad and get educated in different cultures, different ways of living. Backpacking, living dangerously (you still get the parties!), picking fruit, learning how to function in a society very different to what they know. Then, if they are interested in education, and have a drive to succeed at creating something in their lives - it is more real, realizable, and adds meaning to their lives.
The college environment was a really convenient step into structured adulthood, and I remain to this day reticent to just abandon it, but I think that the decision to attend a college needs to be made on the basis of the goal that it's fulfilling.
I got an engineering degree to do a style of technical work it would be quite difficult to teach on the job without a dedicated, corporate education system. I think if you want to be an engineer, a physicist, a chemist, a surgeon, you need to pick up a lot of specific knowledge, and a university is about the only place packaging that knowledge, right now.
Oh, how I wish they'd drop the 'general education' requirements and let students pick the classes they'd like to add to their focus, as they have time and interest, but that's a relatively minor complaint.
I think that, minus a focused drive to a profession that has a specific and substantial body of knowledge that you must master, it's possible that universities ought to be something pursued as a hobby while building an independent life down other channels. I would love to go back and take some history classes and some economics classes at some point, and may yet do it, but I'm not going to let those interests get in the way of the requirements of adult life.
At the most, university ought to be a bridge to independent adulthood, not a shield from it.
I'm a fan of general ed. While it is vital to be awesome in your specialty - it is also vital to be able to relate to people, history, language (this doesn't mean 'gender studies' or the other fluffy stuff). My father encouraged me to take remedial stuff - like typing, 10-key, writing, history, music, film, literature - which greatly improved my success in the workplace (accounting, also a technical specialty, though not as demanding as engineering!), as well as exposing me to things (I'm thinking about that film class) I would never have considered, and expanding my inner landscape.
I also agree that there are vital lessons to be learned at University. Living away from home for the first time - in a safe, structured environment where food is provided (dorms) and you learn to share your space with strangers. Learning how to organise your time without Mom around to help. SHOWING UP (this is a big lesson). DOING THE WORK (the next big lesson). Realising that you are no longer at the top of your class, and have to work to make it happen.
Australia doesn't do boarding/dorms at University so much, and I think they are worse off for it.
I agree - University as a bridge, not a shield. Too many snowflakes aren't dealing with the lessons in my second paragraph - so maybe University is wasted on them?
Here's what my father would object to (even though he was a Business PhD) - is the businessifying of education. He came from deep poverty and shame about that poverty. For him, education was opportunity, and this profit motive and greed will lock out people like him, who worked his way through 3 degrees in the 50's and 60's (yeah, no grants, no loans).
I actually very much agree with you on the *value* of taking diverse classes. Some of the history classes I took were packed with learning I draw on to this day.
But they didn't contribute to my graduation. The 'general ed' classes that I was *required* to take were things like 'persuasive communication', wherein I learned almost nothing. I was forced to take something like 24 credit hours of non-voluntary 'general education' courses - two full semesters - that I got to pick off a list. Some of them weren't so bad, but it doesn't change that I might have picked things that were much more interesting and useful for me, if I'd had chance.
Emphasize the value of diverse coursework at every opportunity, but stop making *your* (not you, but the University's) priorities central to that diversity. Requiring a full year of non-voluntary, non-productive coursework in order to get a technical degree is extortion.
Some of the classes that affected me outside of my field: Film, Psychology in Literature, The Bible As Literature, Shakespeare I (particularly gnarly prof, that I had to *prove* myself to), Biology, Psychology, Speech, Music Appreciation, Art History.
These helped me with public speaking, which I now do regularly. They broadened my horizons, so that I'm not the little parochial small-town girl that I was. They taught me different ways to learn. They caused me to question my beliefs (debate was encouraged, questions were essential!).
But again, my era was in the early 80's.
Now that it's an expensive diploma mill - I see your point. I wouldn't be surprised if "Diversity studies" is on that list.
When I was at Uni, of course we had mates who were taking the most useless courses they could find. Daddy was paying, or college was cheap, or they were on PELL or other easy arrangements - and I think my tuition was $1700 a term. That's not out of reach, like it is now.
Oh, aren't I the lucky one? I just checked tuition at the alma mater, and it's "only" $5200 a term. Only 3x more (not like 10x or more I've read about here). But there are lots of added fees-per-credit-hour specialties that didn't exist before. Like STEM, medical & nursing.
Mine is a little over $6500 a semester, now, but living on campus is probably that again.
I graduated in the mid-naughts, and my problem isn't entirely that the elective classes were 100% useless as that there was a required list from which to pick. All of my best classes, history and creative writing most notably, were ones I took out of my own initiative. There are *lots* of really useful classes to go take. The "core education" classes are a curated list, and requiring people to take a curated list of classes in order to secure a diploma in an unrelated major - as well-meaning as that may be - remains extortion in my mind.
When I did the calculation, I didn't just look at the dollar costs of *being* there, but also the opportunity costs of *not* being gainfully employed at something else. A BS in a productive field ought to be worth $60-70k a year, if I'm not mistaken, and we're taking that away so that people can take an extra anthropology class selected by the university as *important*. I would much rather see universities get people through as efficiently as possible, and then have a really flexible 'continuing education' path to allow people to opt themselves in to classes they have particular interest in. Those who have the time and space to do it can take whatever they want, once they're enrolled as undergraduates, and they can take four or five years to graduate, if they so choose. Happy for them. But forcing that on everyone is silliness.
The private university I went to now runs $75k / year with room and board. State universities here around $30k. No way to justify spending $180k more for similar educations. The $120k state school cost itself is hard to justify.
Haven't you heard? They are no longer "teachers" but "educators". I believe they changed this to make the job sound more important. I call them teachers.
I grew up in a higher education family, PhD father was the first in his family to get a degree of any kind, pulling himself out of poverty. He was very practical in his administration (he was a Dean) - and died before any of this started. I wish he were still alive so that I could hear his opinions on what higher education has become (he retired in the 90's). His speciality was School of Business - so practical applications, teaching a trade, effectively. Is he spinning in his grave? Likely. While I'd love to chat with him, I'm also relieved that he didn't live long enough to see it.
I had a young child in a charter school in Los Angeles back in 2009. That is when it all started. I had moved him to the “progressive charter school for the arts” (yes - even in the name) because the regular public school complained that he wouldn’t sit in his seat and wouldn’t focus and was distracting other children. So I got the diagnosis (ADHD) but did not want to medicate him - and I thought a “progressive” school would just teach him without demanding a drugged up compliant child.
How wrong I was. They gave him ‘red cards’ for jumping outside, they banned playing tag, they did not give the children any exercise and playtime was monitored for ‘bullying’ (even touching another child was considered bullying), he got in trouble for ‘bullying’ his best friend when they were actually playing, they had constant lessons about causing harm and bullying, and they banned him from drawing any tanks or guns. No reading or stories about war or fighting or any kind of violence. They couldn’t manage to teach him to read though - because they believed in this ‘whole word’ way of teaching. That is “child will just pick it up automatically when they get to be 7” - or something. Oh and spelling was out because the child should just be able to spell things they way they sound and they will pick up the correct spelling eventually from reading. When and if they master reading that is. And as long as they are not reading about war or fighting or aggression or death or weapons or comics.
My child was 6 and 7 when he was exposed to this insane way of educating children. I actually moved to the UK when he was 9 which then came with it’s own set of rigid conformity issues but he is 20 now and actually fine and not woke at all. But these poor children who grew up exposed to that insanity and indoctrinated with the idea that they were bad and wrong if they wanted to play with a toy gun or liked comics where the superhero wiped out all the bad guys. And if they persisted in such ‘wrongthink’ they were drugged up to the eyeballs on methylphenidate or methamphetamine. No wonder they retreated to their video games. The progressives and their dumb ideas messed up an entire generation of kids and now we are seeing the consequences as these young adults are in universities.
There was some claim that "vax hesitant" persons tended to cluster about equally in the "only High School" and "PhD" education level spectrum - and were least present in the Masters Degree group. A little different than your claim; start with noting that tons of Public School teachers obtain MEds.
And - note to "1984" groupies: did you know that "Room 101" was something of an inside joke shared by Orwell and his BBC in-group? At the BBC head office, Room 101, at the time, was an ordinary conference room where particularly excruciatingly, boring meetings were held.
I am a PhD in marine biology with an emphasis in environmental tox with a BS in both chemistry and biology. I never fell for this bullshit (their bullshit)
I am interested to know how others in your field or associated areas fared. My suspicion was that perhaps bio-scientists familiar with the subject matter probably fared better but I have no way of knowing.
I wonder if it isn't that the University Professor PhDs are actually outnumbered by industry-employed professionals, and while those on campuses were profoundly pro-vaccine, in my experience, perhaps the ones who left the university and went to go do hard-thinking jobs did better.
Either that or the survey data was flawed. 50/50 in my mind. I hold very low odds that the university professor crowd was a massive reservoir of vaccine hesitancy.
I vaguely remember reading some books in high school. I often wonder how kids can read this as such a young age. Do they get it and how it relates to the world. I remember thinking in the grocery store how much we had. An obscene amount and questioned why we have so much. I also started wondering about what was being told to us, and what was real. It’s always far more complex.
Growing under communism made us keenly aware of propaganda. Americans are the most propagandized people in the world and the least aware of it. A major handicap! Since most of my American friends and family have read 1984 and Brave New World in high school, and since most did not “get” these books, I no longer believe the original intent was to educate but, instead, to program people. In fact, most of our schooling here is not education but programming, plus trade education. It seems to me that the more years of schooling one had the less likely one was to discern the psy-op. Schooling did not make us smarter, and most definitely did not make us wiser. The third of the population who questioned and remained skeptical comes from across the spectrum but it would not surprise me the over-schooled as group were underrepresented in that third.
those running the schools, in particular, seem to be among those driven most mad.
the self-styled "teacher," especially one in a statist system seems incredibly prone to these derangements and desirous of sharing them.
it's why i think "public school" and the idea of state curriculums is so desperately in need of dismantling.
Something for you to consider:
The most activist teachers are invariably those with no life-experience outside institutions.
They have gone through school, then on to college/uni, then getting a teacher's degree or eq. and then back into the school system.
The good teachers by which I mean good at their subjects, good at teaching and separating private from public and also private from professional, are the ones who came late to the profession, first having done lots of other things in/with their lives.
Barring kindergarten and ages 6-8 it was rare to see a teacher under 40 when I started school, and they all - even the ones teaching the kids - had proper PhDs earned in a competitive system. The one exception being gym/PE and shop/HE teachers who instead often were 50+ and had had a real career before settling for teaching as a sort-of slow down before retirement.
While the specifics will vary by nation, obviously, I do believe (while admittedly being biased as all get out), that teaching should be reserved for the 40+ bracket. That would also create competition and selection pressure on modern teachers to shape up.
PS: If you want to see the effects of school vouchers, look at Sweden. It's a cautionary tale. DS
"The good teachers by which I mean good at their subjects, good at teaching and separating private from public and also private from professional, are the ones who came late to the profession, first having done lots of other things in/with their lives." - I think that is true of politicians as well.
Oh absolutely, only even more so.
I've met some of our MPs in person, back when I had a career.
The ones who are true party-creatures (partigängare in swedish, which can be read as "married-with-the-party" or "partyfucker" [literally] respectively) who joined the youth cadre in their tweens are ... well, just fill this space with every synonym for moron, idiot and conceited you can find.
I will never, ever, forget the man - publicly elected - who for real asked why we don't put mini-propellers connected to dynamos all over EVs.
See, he'd noticed that whenever he drives his EV, the wind blows so why not let that wind power the car...
omg lololol
John Taylor Gatto explains this whole area superbly. The error is embedded in the operating system.
"Systemet har inga problem - systemet är problemet!"
Old german and swedish anarchist slogan.
"The System has no problem - the system is the problem!"
Never thought I'd feel the urge to shout that again. In my youth, anarchists sometimes held a march on April First in mockery of the upcoming May Day-parades, where the ruling Socialist Democrat Party protested against their own politics, as we say here.
Absolutely agree. And universities should be the first to go.
To borrow a couple of slogans from the other side, we need to "Defund Academia" and "Reimagine Teaching."
My wife and me are trying to figure out what the right decision is regarding encouraging our children to attend university.
Every time we contribute to their 529's we have more reservations.
Hard because both of us come from poverty, but have 2 degrees each.
I'm not sure it's worth it anymore. My alma mater is literally 20X more for tuition than it was my freshman year in 88'.
I'm so disappointed. They used to teach you how to think. Now it's what to think.
Hard decision. Although, from my own experience, given today's quality of education, I'd probably just went straight to hustling at 18.
Although the partying was fun!...;)
I like the European tradition (also common here in Australia) of a "gap year." Send the child abroad and get educated in different cultures, different ways of living. Backpacking, living dangerously (you still get the parties!), picking fruit, learning how to function in a society very different to what they know. Then, if they are interested in education, and have a drive to succeed at creating something in their lives - it is more real, realizable, and adds meaning to their lives.
The college environment was a really convenient step into structured adulthood, and I remain to this day reticent to just abandon it, but I think that the decision to attend a college needs to be made on the basis of the goal that it's fulfilling.
I got an engineering degree to do a style of technical work it would be quite difficult to teach on the job without a dedicated, corporate education system. I think if you want to be an engineer, a physicist, a chemist, a surgeon, you need to pick up a lot of specific knowledge, and a university is about the only place packaging that knowledge, right now.
Oh, how I wish they'd drop the 'general education' requirements and let students pick the classes they'd like to add to their focus, as they have time and interest, but that's a relatively minor complaint.
I think that, minus a focused drive to a profession that has a specific and substantial body of knowledge that you must master, it's possible that universities ought to be something pursued as a hobby while building an independent life down other channels. I would love to go back and take some history classes and some economics classes at some point, and may yet do it, but I'm not going to let those interests get in the way of the requirements of adult life.
At the most, university ought to be a bridge to independent adulthood, not a shield from it.
I'm a fan of general ed. While it is vital to be awesome in your specialty - it is also vital to be able to relate to people, history, language (this doesn't mean 'gender studies' or the other fluffy stuff). My father encouraged me to take remedial stuff - like typing, 10-key, writing, history, music, film, literature - which greatly improved my success in the workplace (accounting, also a technical specialty, though not as demanding as engineering!), as well as exposing me to things (I'm thinking about that film class) I would never have considered, and expanding my inner landscape.
I also agree that there are vital lessons to be learned at University. Living away from home for the first time - in a safe, structured environment where food is provided (dorms) and you learn to share your space with strangers. Learning how to organise your time without Mom around to help. SHOWING UP (this is a big lesson). DOING THE WORK (the next big lesson). Realising that you are no longer at the top of your class, and have to work to make it happen.
Australia doesn't do boarding/dorms at University so much, and I think they are worse off for it.
I agree - University as a bridge, not a shield. Too many snowflakes aren't dealing with the lessons in my second paragraph - so maybe University is wasted on them?
Here's what my father would object to (even though he was a Business PhD) - is the businessifying of education. He came from deep poverty and shame about that poverty. For him, education was opportunity, and this profit motive and greed will lock out people like him, who worked his way through 3 degrees in the 50's and 60's (yeah, no grants, no loans).
Bernie has a point.
I actually very much agree with you on the *value* of taking diverse classes. Some of the history classes I took were packed with learning I draw on to this day.
But they didn't contribute to my graduation. The 'general ed' classes that I was *required* to take were things like 'persuasive communication', wherein I learned almost nothing. I was forced to take something like 24 credit hours of non-voluntary 'general education' courses - two full semesters - that I got to pick off a list. Some of them weren't so bad, but it doesn't change that I might have picked things that were much more interesting and useful for me, if I'd had chance.
Emphasize the value of diverse coursework at every opportunity, but stop making *your* (not you, but the University's) priorities central to that diversity. Requiring a full year of non-voluntary, non-productive coursework in order to get a technical degree is extortion.
May I have the era of your education please?
Some of the classes that affected me outside of my field: Film, Psychology in Literature, The Bible As Literature, Shakespeare I (particularly gnarly prof, that I had to *prove* myself to), Biology, Psychology, Speech, Music Appreciation, Art History.
These helped me with public speaking, which I now do regularly. They broadened my horizons, so that I'm not the little parochial small-town girl that I was. They taught me different ways to learn. They caused me to question my beliefs (debate was encouraged, questions were essential!).
But again, my era was in the early 80's.
Now that it's an expensive diploma mill - I see your point. I wouldn't be surprised if "Diversity studies" is on that list.
When I was at Uni, of course we had mates who were taking the most useless courses they could find. Daddy was paying, or college was cheap, or they were on PELL or other easy arrangements - and I think my tuition was $1700 a term. That's not out of reach, like it is now.
Bernie has a point.
Oh, aren't I the lucky one? I just checked tuition at the alma mater, and it's "only" $5200 a term. Only 3x more (not like 10x or more I've read about here). But there are lots of added fees-per-credit-hour specialties that didn't exist before. Like STEM, medical & nursing.
Mine is a little over $6500 a semester, now, but living on campus is probably that again.
I graduated in the mid-naughts, and my problem isn't entirely that the elective classes were 100% useless as that there was a required list from which to pick. All of my best classes, history and creative writing most notably, were ones I took out of my own initiative. There are *lots* of really useful classes to go take. The "core education" classes are a curated list, and requiring people to take a curated list of classes in order to secure a diploma in an unrelated major - as well-meaning as that may be - remains extortion in my mind.
When I did the calculation, I didn't just look at the dollar costs of *being* there, but also the opportunity costs of *not* being gainfully employed at something else. A BS in a productive field ought to be worth $60-70k a year, if I'm not mistaken, and we're taking that away so that people can take an extra anthropology class selected by the university as *important*. I would much rather see universities get people through as efficiently as possible, and then have a really flexible 'continuing education' path to allow people to opt themselves in to classes they have particular interest in. Those who have the time and space to do it can take whatever they want, once they're enrolled as undergraduates, and they can take four or five years to graduate, if they so choose. Happy for them. But forcing that on everyone is silliness.
Well said. Your points are precisely why we're torn.
And the "social" aspect. Which I think helped me in life just as much as the education itself.
"My alma mater is literally 20X more for tuition than it was my freshman year in 88'."
Whoa!! 😲
I should check out my own school and see how the tuition today compares to when I went there.
I think you'll be surprised. Although it has been roughly 35 years since I started college
The private university I went to now runs $75k / year with room and board. State universities here around $30k. No way to justify spending $180k more for similar educations. The $120k state school cost itself is hard to justify.
Haven't you heard? They are no longer "teachers" but "educators". I believe they changed this to make the job sound more important. I call them teachers.
I call them indoctrinators.
And some of them child grooming perverts
I grew up in a higher education family, PhD father was the first in his family to get a degree of any kind, pulling himself out of poverty. He was very practical in his administration (he was a Dean) - and died before any of this started. I wish he were still alive so that I could hear his opinions on what higher education has become (he retired in the 90's). His speciality was School of Business - so practical applications, teaching a trade, effectively. Is he spinning in his grave? Likely. While I'd love to chat with him, I'm also relieved that he didn't live long enough to see it.
I had a young child in a charter school in Los Angeles back in 2009. That is when it all started. I had moved him to the “progressive charter school for the arts” (yes - even in the name) because the regular public school complained that he wouldn’t sit in his seat and wouldn’t focus and was distracting other children. So I got the diagnosis (ADHD) but did not want to medicate him - and I thought a “progressive” school would just teach him without demanding a drugged up compliant child.
How wrong I was. They gave him ‘red cards’ for jumping outside, they banned playing tag, they did not give the children any exercise and playtime was monitored for ‘bullying’ (even touching another child was considered bullying), he got in trouble for ‘bullying’ his best friend when they were actually playing, they had constant lessons about causing harm and bullying, and they banned him from drawing any tanks or guns. No reading or stories about war or fighting or any kind of violence. They couldn’t manage to teach him to read though - because they believed in this ‘whole word’ way of teaching. That is “child will just pick it up automatically when they get to be 7” - or something. Oh and spelling was out because the child should just be able to spell things they way they sound and they will pick up the correct spelling eventually from reading. When and if they master reading that is. And as long as they are not reading about war or fighting or aggression or death or weapons or comics.
My child was 6 and 7 when he was exposed to this insane way of educating children. I actually moved to the UK when he was 9 which then came with it’s own set of rigid conformity issues but he is 20 now and actually fine and not woke at all. But these poor children who grew up exposed to that insanity and indoctrinated with the idea that they were bad and wrong if they wanted to play with a toy gun or liked comics where the superhero wiped out all the bad guys. And if they persisted in such ‘wrongthink’ they were drugged up to the eyeballs on methylphenidate or methamphetamine. No wonder they retreated to their video games. The progressives and their dumb ideas messed up an entire generation of kids and now we are seeing the consequences as these young adults are in universities.
There was some claim that "vax hesitant" persons tended to cluster about equally in the "only High School" and "PhD" education level spectrum - and were least present in the Masters Degree group. A little different than your claim; start with noting that tons of Public School teachers obtain MEds.
And - note to "1984" groupies: did you know that "Room 101" was something of an inside joke shared by Orwell and his BBC in-group? At the BBC head office, Room 101, at the time, was an ordinary conference room where particularly excruciatingly, boring meetings were held.
I’ve seen this thrown about but I suspect this may be limited to certain PhD’s, perhaps in biological sciences. All PhD’s I know fell for it.
I am a PhD in marine biology with an emphasis in environmental tox with a BS in both chemistry and biology. I never fell for this bullshit (their bullshit)
I am interested to know how others in your field or associated areas fared. My suspicion was that perhaps bio-scientists familiar with the subject matter probably fared better but I have no way of knowing.
I wonder if it isn't that the University Professor PhDs are actually outnumbered by industry-employed professionals, and while those on campuses were profoundly pro-vaccine, in my experience, perhaps the ones who left the university and went to go do hard-thinking jobs did better.
Either that or the survey data was flawed. 50/50 in my mind. I hold very low odds that the university professor crowd was a massive reservoir of vaccine hesitancy.
I vaguely remember reading some books in high school. I often wonder how kids can read this as such a young age. Do they get it and how it relates to the world. I remember thinking in the grocery store how much we had. An obscene amount and questioned why we have so much. I also started wondering about what was being told to us, and what was real. It’s always far more complex.