Attention Seeking Parent

I’m not sure how everyone else feels, but personally I think Facebook is one of the most useful tools out there today. At least for me as a quasi-professional musician, Facebook is a powerful networking tool. Many of my professors agree, they publicize their gigs via Facebook events, catch up with old friends that might hire them, and stay in touch with new contacts. It’s invaluable. Granted, not everyone on Facebook uses it for strictly networking purposes so I see where Hingston is coming from, but it’s offensive when she writes in such an accusatory tone as if Facebook is destroying the culture of modern America.

As for the schooling system of our society, it’s unfortunate that there’s still so much generalization across the board. On a large scale (bear with me for a second) humans have progressively become more specialized in their respective trade. So other than the fact that schools want more money for advertising that their student body scored higher on whatever standardized test they administer, why do so many public grade school systems require that every graduate must have acquired 3 science credits, 4 math, 3 social sciences, etc? If someone had a passion to grow up to manage his own landscaping company, is there anything that he’s going to learn in school that’s relevant to his job that he can’t learn on the job? There’s too much emphasis these days on the “universalization” of our society.

Overall, I’d say Hingston expressed a misleading argument. There are so many places she could have/should have used supporting facts rather than general claims (but I’m going to go ahead and contradict myself and not cite any of them) that it just seemed like a frazzled parent needing some attention.

Jon Lacy