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PTR  ·  2319 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: “Microaggressions”, “Trigger Warnings”, and the New Meaning of “Trauma”

Yikes.

You're quite new, and apparently very easy to upset.

The way this comment reads, you're projecting strongly. Let me walk you through what I (and I assume _refugee_) read when seeing this.

You have a lot of concerns about how to function as an adult, and you want someone/something to blame for your ignorance because it's just too hard/inconvenient/punishing/embarrassing to figure out alone - it's got to be taught, and you want to teach it.

You mentioned previously that a lot of these topics weren't discussed in your family, so nix that source of knowledge. "Next up is the education system!" you think to yourself. "That's where I've been maligned, that's where I'll fix it!"

I'll quote you directly on these next couple examples to give you an idea of how you come across.

    I wouldn't even know where to plug my curiosity probe into

    yet another adult thing I wish I knew

    I'd like an easy, self-evident access to the sources of information

    I can't just look that information up [...] without involving other people.

    I'd feel ashamed asking someone about taxes

    social repercussions

    Fucking embarrassing

    people's activities [...] takes more effort than simply reading and writing

You see that? You sound whiny. You sound weird. What's your phobic deal about talking to a human being about these questions ? And if you fucking can't talk to a human being about this stuff, then why do you expect to be an authority to teach kids about it? What are you going to teach them anyway? That they have to know all of this stuff right the hell now or they're going to look like losers when they're grown up?

LOL.

What refugee was getting at is that it's pitiable that you think you'll ever be a resource to children on a topic about which you've got a disturbingly anti-approach. You'll be passing on latent messages of social embarrassment, perceived repercussions and victimhood, self-hating ignorance, and more to these students.

What you really need to do is realize - like fucking everyone else has realized - that you learn to do these things when you need to do them. All 20-somethings struggle with W-4s, W-2s, passport applications, bills, taxes, &c., &c. for the first time(s). But unless you're very socially inept - and the course of this conversation indicates "maybe" - you learn these things eventually by asking people who know, not by pulling up your scribbled notes from an elective you blew off for easy GPA-padding in high school.

Shit, I was vested for a retirement pension at 23. Did I know what that meant at the time? Fuck no. But you better believe I called Vanguard and Fidelity right away to find which plan I wanted between the two. I spoke to a real human whose job it is to educate me on these topics, and I asked them questions like a regular human would when they're ignorant about something.

See, the issue with your whole outlook on this is you don't realize there's an entire industry out there already called customer service that educates people about this stuff. Get over your speaking-to-a-human-being anxiety and talk to paid (often outsourced) semi-professionals like everyone else out here in the rat race. And the reason your response only required an "LOL" from refugee is because all you need to teach your students is that if they don't know something, there are people they can contact who will answer their questions.

Also, you deserve another LOL and probably a WTF for comparing high school personal finance to a suicide hotline, AA, and healthy living. Like...whaaat??

Your near-pathological anxiety around this topic is concerning. Your interest in teaching children while holding this anxiety is concerning. I don't think you'll do a good job, despite your hopes, because your instincts are based on fear and you will definitely pass that fear on, perpetuating the cycle of vicious ignorance-punishing you perceive. I hope you're more careful than that.

BUT... If this is how you typically react to criticism, then I have no doubt your future school's superintendent will listen to your weirdly aggrandizing arguments and realize, even if high school finance were a good idea, you are not the person to teach it.

But in the end, an under-funded public (or private) high school isn't going to invest in a class that might save it's graduates from slight embarrassment about something everyone else is just calling a toll-free 1-800 number about.