Another Inconvenient Truth

Remember back when you were little and believed everything you were told? Because grown-ups have all the answers and are always right and should never be questioned. Then you get to high school and have that one hip teacher who makes you think differently about things. You start questioning what your parents and teachers tell you. You get yelled at for being a troublesome teenager and stop questioning, b/c who cares, it’s just algebra and keyboarding. Then you get to college and the questioning flares back up. This time, it’s welcomed and natural; ta-da, you’re an adult! 

Okay, so maybe it takes more than the urge to ask “why?” that makes us an adult. I mean, the most annoying stage for little kids is the endless stream of “why?” when you just want them to shut up. But a curious nature shouldn’t be shushed w/ the notion that the parent/teacher/oldest person in the room is always right.

One of my teachers this semester is always hammering it into us to question everything. Don’t take anything at face value, make sure you know who’s funding the documentary, journal, report, etc; I wholeheartedly agree with this. My problem is that she only brings this up when you mention something that she doesn’t agree with. 

This class is always getting off on tangents that can be entertaining, but mostly make me want to jump out of my seat and be like, wtf guys, we can get out of here 20 minutes early if you stop going on about your mom/sister/boyfriend who no one cares about. One of the tangents today was global warming. I’m not an Al Gore advocate or anything, but I think there’s a little scientific evidence supporting this inconvenient truth. I remark incredulously that the teacher doesn’t believe in it and she goes off on me about me checking my facts and how I can’t believe everything I read. 

Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, I’m not even mad at it. What makes me mad is that she can’t take anyone questioning her opinion. What are these articles and news segments she’s seeing that are simply undisputable? Later in class she’s lecturing from notes she has which are literally a print out from the internet. I’m sitting right next to her and looking at the pages in disbelief; it’s in freaking Comic Sans and the author has the sentence structure capability of someone taking freshman English, no footnotes or accreditation to be found. Who am I to question this level of expertise?