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Kindergarten vs. Journalism School
For fun.
During our regular video conversation Friday evening, our five-year-old granddaughter told us about their kindergarten reading projects on history. (I am not a fan of the increasingly academic nature of kindergarten, but academic kindergarten is a trend of more than thirty years, and our grandchildren are growing up in a town of academic overachievers; the dominant employer is a scientific research laboratory; more than 20% of the town’s adult population has a Ph.D. in engineering, chemistry, physics, or other hard science; so I guess an academic focus is almost inevitable.)
Anyway, our granddaughter coherently explained to us the difference between fact and opinion, and supplied many proper examples of the difference. I suggested she should teach all those adults in media who don’t seem to know the difference. She objected that she’s just a little kid in a little town in New Mexico. So we left it. But I remained impressed that my kindergarten granddaughter had a better grasp on differentiating fact and opinion than did so many modern graduates of journalism school.
This same granddaughter had, a couple of years ago when she was learning to use the toilet, emphatically explained to me that she peed differently than her older brother did because she was a girl and he was a boy. Duh, Grandpa!
One time something came up that caused me to ask her if a man could become a mommy. Using the exasperated tone she uses when Grandpa is being particularly silly, she said, “Of course not, you silly goose. A man cannot become a mommy.”
How does a five-year-old have more sense than so many “educated” people?
Published in Education
Are there any important theological questions that have not been asked by a five-year-old?
Curiosity, observation, and common sense? She’ll never get a Pulitzer with that skill set.
Good.
I certainly got more foundational questions when I taught little kids’ Sunday School than I have teaching adult Sunday School.
A precocious five-year-old of our acquaintance used to say things like, “I’m only five years old. That word isn’t part of my vocabulary.” I’m pretty sure that isn’t an exact quote, though. I need to ask my wife in order to get it right.
They tend to call things as they see them.
Mrs Subcomandante says I remembered it about right. She also remembered the time when I organized a game for family night at church. The little one said, “It will be especially challenging for me, because I can’t read.”
She was the youngest of three girls. Her mother wondered if all little kids thought like that, with the difference that this one was able to express her thoughts.
It could be they know the difference, but they have an agenda to push so they pretend there isn’t any.
I support replacing journalists with 5 year olds . More accurate & more adorable.
New Mexico, PhD town . . . Los Alamos?
The kid sounds awesome, and yes, she’s head and shoulders above any MSM “journalist” . . .
Yup. Very weird town.
When I worked at DOE, I got to travel to several national labs as part of my job. The two places I’d live and work if I wasn’t at SRS in SC was Los Alamos (partly because I loved Santa Fe) and Oak Ridge . . .