Spinning demo day

[altivo]

This one at the Colonel Potter house in Crystal Lake, sponsored by the Crystal Lake Historical Society. The usual mix of curious kids, adults who have some idea what it's about, and people without a clue where their clothes come from or that wool comes from animals even. My favorite was the youngish woman who asked me if the two alpacas were lambs.

Me: "Well, no. Actually, I think those two are full grown, but if they were babies they would be called crias."

She: "But I thought baby sheep were called lambs."

Me: "They are. But these are alpacas. The sheep are over there. *points*"

She: "These are still sheep, though. Right?"

Me: "No, alpacas are in the camel family, like llamas."

She: "I thought llamas were sheep too."

Me: *sighs as she walks toward the sheep*

There's always one. Otherwise it was pretty nice. Sunny but we had shade from big oak trees, not too hot or windy, and the only nuisance was the traffic noise from the nearby intersection of Terra Cotta Rd. and IL-176. The motorcycles were particularly obnoxious and disruptive. With the warm weather, they were also much too numerous.

Comments

[calydor]

That sounds like a story right out of (the customer is) notalwaysright.com

It's kinda sad to see adults with no clue about things I originally learned from reading comic books when I was little. Yeah, sure, comic books aren't a source of vast knowledge, but at least they contain a lot of basic facts to build stories around.

[altivo]

I think it's a combination of factors at work. US education is declining in quality as schools drop "irrelevant information" from the curriculum. A simultaneous decline in respect for education means that kids learn less of what actually is offered, and receive less pressure to learn. A cultural focus on the superficial contributes as well, and what media coverage there may have been on related subjects is rarely as accurate as it should be. I would no longer be surprised to see a news story in print or on television that confused llamas and sheep, for instance.

When adults can no longer locate their home state or city on a map, it's less surprising that the city dwellers can't tell a sheep from a cow.

[schnee]

Hey, look at it this way: at least you helped educate somebody.

[altivo]

Sadly, I doubt that she retained any real information from that exchange. In fact, she may have ended up deciding that I just didn't know what I was talking about.

That's becoming more and more common here, what with the politicians, press and news media actually denying scientific facts when it suits their politics to do so.

[schnee]

She may, or she may not. (Well, I obviously wasn't there.) Even if she did, she was uneducated about these matters beforehand, so there really is no way she could've been more so afterwards.

And we ARE talking about someone who a) actually shows up and b) actually asks questions — two things that usually indicate a desire to learn, or at least an interest. Chances are there were many others who were similarly uneducated/ignorant but didn't ask; and chances also are there were even more who were similarly uneducated/ignorant and who didn't even show up in the first place.

But I have a feeling this is going to turn into a discussion of the state of US-American politics/society/etc. again, and I'm not really keen on that again.

[calydor]

Sadly it's been scientifically proven that people who think something wrong is fact are more unlikely to change their mind than someone who's right about the same fact.

In other words, it is EASIER to tell someone that red is blue than red is red. Go figure.