gog
2mo ago
Yesterday, I heard a woman casually, as though it were self-evident, explain an undesirable outcome in her life with "because I'm a woman." I have heard this used by many women to explain: -Why they are not managers -Why their students cannot read -Why they follow pointless workplace rules that no one ever enforces and most employees don't follow -Why they live in fear of the disapproval of superiors -Why a waiter was rude to them -Why a waitress was rude to them -Why they must conform to community norms
Though the explanation sounds like a confession ( "I can't be a manager, I'm just a girl!"), in all cases it is an accusation, intended to imply that the patriarchy is manipulating things behind the scenes, or that "everyone knows" men never get punished/demoted/frowned upon, so only women have to actually worry about their behavior/reputations/whatever. I have been shocked both by how readily this explanation is confirmed/affirmed by other women present when it is offered, and also the wild confirmation bias on display. The women are not managers, but they never applied for the job, and their bosses are women. They have never been reprimanded at work, but neither has anyone else. The male students can't read, but neither can the female ones. None of this is considered. It boggles the mind.
Nevertheless, it is a fact about how a certain class of Western woman explains the world to herself. If people so privileged are so certain of how the deck is stacked against them, what hope is there for people with stronger evidence for that belief about themselves? How does a standard right-thinking (from "to right-think") respectable Westerner expect anyone else to transcend their culture or overcome oppression or break the cycle when their default, axiomatic explanation for why they only make 100k and three trips to Mexico per year is "society cheated me." What is a black kid supposed to think? Or a kid on a reservation? "I'll give it my best shot"? I have heard black dissidents make this argument against the idea of systemic racism- that even if it is real, thinking about it stops black people from trying things. But how can self-exculpatory models of the world be eradicated in people with somewhat credible claims to oppression when they are so popular even among the most privileged members of society? How do the "it's the culture" people expect the culture to change if the winning culture tells itself the same story as the losing one?
gog
4mo ago
I'm not trying to morally compare the current Canadian government to the Nazis, but I was thinking the other day about how they are comparable in terms of "commitment to the bit". The war was well-lost and everyone knew it, but they were still rounding up Jews until the very end. We see that now and think "Guys, take the hint, throw in the towel," but Jew-gassing was just THAT important to the Nazis.
It looks like the current government is finished. Pretty much everyone hates them, Canada is (relatively) crumbling around us, and the government is trying to do things like find a path to citizenship for illegal migrants. I used to console myself with the knowledge that they were a bunch of bad-faith virtue signalers, but their laser focus on moremoremore immigration- to the exclusion of many, if not most, other issues- makes me think they really do believe in this stuff. Talk about commitment to the bit.
I worked at pretty mid-tier daycare in Canada. It was bad.
The studies that show daycare is good for child development use highly curated daycares, with like 1:4 adult-to-child ratios. These studies actually simulate a mom staying home with her kids. MY daycare was a charity daycare run by a church, so to help single mothers, they took everyone. I worked with the 3-year-olds, and the worst ratio was 1:21 (illegal). A normal day was 1:12. In either case, the kids were supervised, I guess, but the priorities were no fingers in power outlets, no vomit, no urine, etc. Learning to count or something was a complete impossibility.
-The kids could talk, but it was garbled and they couldn't tell you what they had done the night before. Conversation was difficult, so their language development was definitely stunted. A child psychologist once told me that language abilities develop most in early childhood- if that's true, daycare damaged these kids' brains. I would meet kids who stayed home with their moms and those kids would tell me what WOULD HAVE happened if something the night before had turned out differently.
-One kid in the one-year-old room cried LITERALLY all day, 8-5, for about her first month. The metabolic stress alone must have affected her, and the noise and tension affected the other kids.
-One kid didn't talk for the 5 months I worked with her. Not word to me or anyone else.
-The one-year-old room was a pen. The kids sat on the ground with toys pretty much all day. The ratio was better, but the workers were occupied with diapers and feeding most of the time, so interaction was limited.
-About 8 kids (out of around 50) were at the daycare from 7 am to 5 pm. A little kid sleeps about 12 hours, so that leaves either 2 hours with their parents or sleep deprivation. Both of those are bad for kids.
-Since the kid spends the majority of his waking life at the daycare, the workers are raising him. I thought I needed resume padding for teachers' college (incorrect), but the other workers were low-IQ, 5th-generation underclass hillbillies under the stress of just being in a room with so many feral kids, let alone trying to manage them. Since middle-aged women generally don't like the cold, and Canada is cold, the kids spent very little time outside.
I am now a highschool teacher, and while I am certain that intelligence is fixed and genetic, I am confident that IQ depends on nurture. Exposure to puzzles and vocabulary and general knowledge and grammar are extremely important. It takes years and years to acquire that stuff and you can't speedrun it when you realize that it's missing. My kid is 9 and just finished Algebra 1 on Khan Academy. I don't know how that compares to actual school algebra in the US, but in Canada that's pretty good (she can't rotate shapes to save her life though, so that's 1 point for the nature crowd). At this rate she's going to have math powers. She has extreme reading powers. It is possible, and some even say probable, that she will not be able/interested enough to spin that into some high-paying job, and she might turn out a bored housewife or HR-lady-that-none-of-the-other-HR-ladies-like-because-they-think-that-she-thinks-she's-better-than-they-are, and the Nurture Assumption crowd will say "See, Gog? Similar outcomes to other women with parents like you."
But quite apart from money, or propensity to addiction and crime, how do you think her model/experience of the world differs from that of one of the kids who went to that daycare, and which model/experience would you prefer your child to have? What sorts of questions will she wonder about, compared to the daycare kids? How will she experience movies and music and advertising? How many more topics of conversation will she be able to discuss? How much more will she bring to the romance table? None of that just develops because of genetics. Daycare is bad.
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