How many of you know someone who speaks as though they’re absolutely right about a topic they know nothing about?
If you’re nodding your head or smiling, then that let’s me know I am not alone (if you’re not, you’re probably that person, sorry to break it to you 🙂 I hope we can still be friends). But in all seriousness, we’ve all been in that situation where our classmate or co-worker and sometimes even a friend (although we hope not), happens to be speaking about a topic they couldn’t know less about, even if they tried. That, ladies and gentlemen, was my experience this past summer. I decided to take a Race and Ethnicity class and as informative as it was, I was stuck in a room for three hours listening to a student make such outrageous claims, it was wonder he didn’t write fiction novels for a living.
I’ll give you an example.
We were speaking about the wealth gap between whites and African-Americans to which this kid responded and I quote, “The reason the wealth disparity is so massive is because white people and black people define success differently. Whereas white people define success by the white picket fence and the American dream, black people define success by becoming athletes.”
Yeah. Okay. I don’t know about you, but I don’t play sports. My freshman year of high school, my hand-eye coordination was so bad, my tennis coach suggested I join theater (mind you, no one got kicked off the JV team. Until me, of course).
After talking to a bunch of students in my class and subsequently other students at my college, I realized we all felt the same way: we wanted to contradict what the kid was saying, but we felt like we didn’t have enough information to do so both accurately and without continually causing offense. These students wanted to get involved, but they felt as though they didn’t have enough information to get started.
Out of this frustration GenBloom was born. I’m not going to bore you with the tech stuff (that’s all in the ‘About’ tag), but I’m hoping it will serve as an answer to this problem. I have spent night after night wishing I could go back to that moment in class and say exactly why it is what he was saying was bullshit (pardon my language), but I can’t. I can only move forward and gather my arsenal of knowledge so the next time I’m in a similar situation, I can use it as a teaching moment, both for the student (because seriously dude, athletes?!) and myself.
So use GenBloom to it’s fullest. Create an account. Read all the great articles. Get excited over what you learn, but most of all, share them because no one likes the feeling of not knowing something.
Also, sharing is caring.
P.S. Like what I wrote? Hate what I wrote? Have comments/criticisms/ideas for the blog? Email us! blog@genbloom.com.
P.P.S. Just wanna say hey? We’d love to connect with the GenBloom community! Email us at hey@genbloom.com. Hope to hear from you soon!
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