Blame It on My Faith in Humanity

            It is easy to witness a phenomenon, say a person being blamed for their own rape, and say to yourself, that is just awful, how can people do that, I would never act like that. And this, my friends, is one of the biggest problems of victim blaming. Not that people think it’s awful, but that people can’t conceive of other’s doing it.

            Now some cases are black and white. No one is blaming the person killed in the 9/11 attacks on the world trade center for his own death. “He really brought it upon himself, I mean what did he expect when he decided to go into work that day?” No, the justifications usually come in when the perpetrator is humanized. Clearly the man sitting in his office on floor 63 tapping away at his keyboard had done nothing to antagonize the plane that struck the building. And no one short of an extremist, is justifying the extremist measures of the parties responsible for organizing and carrying out the attacks for the sole intention of taking lives and inciting fear. But that rapist, you played football with him in high school. He seemed like such a nice guy. There is no way that he could actually do that to someone.

            Enter the good guy. The guy that has faith in humanity. The guy that lends you money for gas because maybe you do have a family emergency and are down to your last dollar with 40 miles yet to go. This is the guy that cannot conceive of another human actually committing such atrocities. I admire this guy. Sometimes I am this guy. But sometimes, this guy’s faith in humanity is shaken when someone breaks the rules of basic human conduct.

Our brains are made to organize the world into neat little boxes. And when something doesn’t fit into one of the boxes, we change the thing so that it does. It’s much easier than going out and getting a new box. So, when I am unable to fit the rapist into my box of expected human behavior because they are simply to vile, I try to change them. I try to change the rapist into something else, something that fits nicely.

Maybe the rapist was under the assumption the sex was consensual, maybe the victim did not make clear enough, their discontent with how the night was progressing. Maybe these things fit better with my perceptions of humanity. After all, people can be overzealous at times, and there are plenty of examples from my own experiences of someone falsely believing, that their hints were clear as day, even to someone as oblivious as myself.

So, let’s fix this and stop the victim blaming. I guess by crushing everyone’s faith in common decency. No, that doesn’t sound right. Oh! I know, let’s just all be commonly decent people. It’s great in theory, but that plan never seems to work on the implementation side.

How about some real advice in lieu of a real solution? While we can’t completely eliminate victim blaming any more than we can eliminate trusting people or cynics, we can at least offer support. For most of the people reading this, you are neither a cop, lawyer, nor judge. Victims of crimes, don’t need you to be either, that is what cops, lawyers, and judges are for. So, if someone comes to you as a victim, don’t worry about teasing out their story, trying to see the other person’s side, or even giving them unsolicited advice, no matter how useful you might think it is. You can do all of that on your own time. This, however, is their time, and what they need is someone to listen and support, and you can do all of that without ever making a decision about who is really to blame.

-AMS

Why I Didn't Read Chapter Four Last Night

Teacher: “Okay class, your homework for tomorrow is to read chapter four from the textbook.”

Student: “Sweet! No homework.”

            Today’s topic is efficiency. While not exclusive to higher education, it is certainly a prime example of a realm in dire need and will be the focus of this writing. Let’s look at the above example. Anyone who has ever gone to college, even just for a semester, has been given the assignment to read an entire chapter from a $200 textbook, with no further direction or questions to answer. The instructor simply requests that the students read the chapter. The instructor then spends the next class delivering a lecture on the material covered in that chapter, but in a much more concise manner, with emphasis put on the items that that instructor finds particularly pertinent. The wise student, will quickly notice, that the benefit from reading the material before being presented the same material is not worth the additional time and effort to actually complete the reading. This is especially true, when the student is taking other classes, with real assignments, as well as working, and trying to fit food and sleep into the equation somewhere too.

            So why don’t the readings offer any benefit? First off, they’re dreadfully boring. Anyone who has ever read a textbook can attest, that the authors provide such immaculate detail, that a description of something as tedious as reading a textbook chapter can go on for what seems like four pages. I’ll spare you this level of detail and limit myself to one, but the point I am trying to make is that the same information could be presented in a much more efficient manner. One might question the validity of a textbook written in bullet point format, but the information is much more readily retained by the reader, and additionally, since textbooks are almost exclusively used as a supplement to instructor led lectures, there is really no need for such detail. For instance:

• ·       Textbook chapters are long and overdetailed
• ·       Instructors typically cover the same material in class the following day
• ·       Lacking any real direction, students often get little out of reading an entire chapter

Now take a minute to compare what you just read to what you just just read. Both offered essentially the same information but the latter took significantly less time to read, and you would probably retain more from it. Plus, were you to have any questions or want any further clarification, you could just ask me next class, though I do plan on expanding on those points in the lecture anyway.

To sum up this detailed account of concision, I would like to make the claim that the inefficiency of most college curricula could be removed without significant loss in the quality of knowledge, and would likely lead to increased retention, and certainly prolonged interest.

-AMS