Ace of Spades summarizes a not-so-surprising discovery: [F]emale-to-male transgenders are discovering that “Male Privilege” actually doesn’t exist, and that the actual privilege belongs to women.
Source: ‘Gender,’ Envy and Self-Pity
Read the whole post. It is good. I do want to follow a digression in the article and ‘ditto’ this digression:
Incidentally, here’s something about me: I don’t watch YouTube videos. If you want to tell me something, write it. For any literate person, reading is far more efficient than listening to the spoken word. I am an extremely fast reader, and could fully comprehend the transcript of an entire 15-minute video in less than two minutes, and why should I waste that additional time? This is why I’m sometimes confounded by the fame, such as it is, of YouTube “celebrities.” There are people out there who have hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers and rate as “celebrities” within whatever niche of fandom they appeal to, and I’ve never heard of them, because I don’t watch YouTube videos. And when I see someone like Carl Benjamin (a/k/a, Sargon of Akkad) making a really good point in a YouTube video, I am tempted to yell at my computer: “WHERE’S THE F–KING TRANSCRIPT?” Like, you couldn’t even be bothered to write up your argument as a blog post? If you believe what you’re saying on your YouTube channel is important, wouldn’t it reach a wider audience and have more impact if you took time to publish a transcript, or at least a synopsis of your argument? But I digress . . .
Amen. I don’t watch YouTube videos either, with one exception: Learning a new skill or craft. I’ve been learning guitar off of YouTube videos. Also honing my woodworking skills with videos. That’s it. I can learn in several ways but some things you just have to be shown how to do. Opinions, history, philosophy, legislation, news… I want to READ it! I read and comprehend quickly. I was reading college level in fourth grade. (Doesn’t mean I understood it all, of course.)
The problem here is education, or the lack thereof, of the English language today. Most YouTubers probably can’t write a proper sentence. (or write it in cursive.) Those old ‘diagram a sentence’ exercises I had throughout school are probably not taught anymore. As for writing in cursive:
Some argue that cursive is no longer relevant because it isn’t included in the Common Core State Standards. But these standards only include those skills that are testable and measurable in the classroom; they don’t address basic foundation skills, like handwriting or even spelling. That said, the Common Core emphasizes the importance of expository writing to demonstrate understanding of key concepts, and fast, legible handwriting is the technology universally available to students to facilitate content development. Cursive, therefore, is vital to helping students master the standards of written expression and critical thinking, life skills that go well beyond the classroom.
Add in the fact that Johnny can’t read:
In 2015, said APR writer Emily Hanford, only 56 percent of Bethlehem students were proficient in reading, so Kim Harper was charged with finding out why.
The problem?
The teachers were talking about how students should attack words in a story. When a child came to a word she didn’t know, the teacher would tell her to look at the picture and guess.
Word-guessing. The teachers apparently had no idea how to teach reading. They thought if they could just throw words at the students, they would figure it out. They all had education degrees but none of them had ever been taught how to teach children to read.
Reading and writing go together. If you can’t do either you end up on YouTube talking way too much instead of writing down your arguments in clear, concise, logical paragraphs.
Like Robert Stacey McCain says in the article, I digress. But I thought I was the only one annoyed by this reliance on videos and just had to rant.
