- Did some people in Africa believe that the Gerber Baby Food company was bottling delicious, fresh babies for dinner? Were the Africans who were unable to read horrified?
Now, if your answer was "Yes, the illiterate Africans, relying on the image to infer the contents of the bottle or can thought it contained processed human babies," why did you think that? And how strong was your supporting evidence?
And to keep things deliciously controversial, this reminded me of my own religious beliefs. As a child, I grew up in a Catholic family. We went to church every Sunday and on holy days of obligation such as Christmas, Easter and so on. We had pictures of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary and others in our home. My parents entertained the local priest. Of course, my brothers and sisters and I all went to the best local Catholic schools, where we learned about God, heaven, saints, holy water, transubstantiation, angels, the devil (also known as Satan and Lucifer), that the pope was infallible, and much, much more. I was a good Christian of the Catholic variety. I loved masses, reading the Bible, the wonderful hymns we sang, the incense, the ceremony, the impressively large and architecturally inspiring church, and much more.
Unfortunately, all of the beliefs are false. So, why did I believe such things for so long? My faith started eroding in high school, as my passion for science and reason (not the same thing) grew.
I soon understood why Christians, and every other religion, loves laws against blasphemy, heresy, apostasy and such "crimes" against god, "good" morals and society. Thankfully, from around the time of Copernicus and Galileo proved the popes to be repressive, brutal monsters who loved ignorance enforced by censorship, the Western world has been getting rid of the invading cultural values of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and returning to the much better Western values of Homer and the Greeks.
And the correct answer to the Gerber baby food question? Of course the Africans were not so silly as to believe any such nonsense. There was never any evidence, or even any good reason, to think they would have. See "Label Fable" (2011) for the unhappy details.
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My question is:
Should we (children, students, citizens, human beings) trust authorities such as books, teachers, parents, officials and governments? That is, should we believe what they say? (This is one question: the second sentence, as the adverbial conjunction that is tells us, paraphrases the first, in case the first was misunderstood, as I thought it might be.)
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Reference
Label fable. (2011, May 8). Snopes.com. Retrieved from http://www.snopes.com/business/market/babyfood.asp
I liked the example of textbooks and their authors that we saw in class this morning. They are not always right, and the older they are, the more likely they are to be unreliable and not to be trusted.
ReplyDeleteBut even when they are newly published, they might not be very trustworthy. (I think Quest has some issues, but on the whole, Hartmann has been careful throughout with her information on grammar, and she might have had a reasonable reason for the simplified introduction to coordinating conjunctions that we looked at on page 29.)
DeleteI was much more interested in the Gerber baby food mistake. I also had a strong response to the comments on ethnocentrism, which reminded me of some of your comments on the morality of eating elephant steaks, but that can wait for another blog post.
I still think there still are some benefit to those who have lack of choice. Sometimes Life is hard and can even have no other choice, think of fundamental state service for example. They may not are he best practice of their industry but they can make their work done. That's what I want to pick that example, so you can have your own experience to judge and choose your own decision when you have enough data and maturity. then the answer will be the comment lying below.
DeleteMy main example of an authority is our textbook, Quest. I also give the example of authorities in my childhood who led me to be a Christian for a while: parents, teachers and priests. What does authority mean in this context?
DeleteI've also slightly revised my question to make this clearer.
DeleteAs authorities, teachers often benefit from the ideas of students, and I know we make mistakes, which students can often help us to fix.
Never trust them, since their first mission is to maintain and expand their benefit.
ReplyDelete