Thursday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Most young men are single - most young women are not" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The thread, which was started with the original poster linking to an article in "The Hill" discussing a survey showing that 60 percent of young men are single while nearly half that number of women are unattached, gained a whopping 23 pages of responses in less than 24 hours. Given the length, there is no way that I am reading much of it. But, from what I see on the first couple of pages, discussion is divided between those blaming men for their own bad luck and those thinking these numbers don't add up. The numbers do raise the question of just with whom the women are involved? The answer seems to be a combination of "each other", "the same guy", and "older men". Another explanation suggested was that men and women view relationships differently and while a woman might answer a survey question by saying that she is in a relationship, the guy with whom she is involved might not view things the same way and, therefore, answer by saying he is not in a relationship. If this is true, the disparity might not be as stark. It would be kind of ironic if a guy dating three different women resulted in three women saying they are in relationships and one man saying he was not. This thread is ripe to attract DCUM's Incel Battalion, but I didn't read enough to see if they actually showed up. Even without their overt appearance, some posters were already arguing that society is biased against young males. In contrast, several posters insisted that young men need to put down their phones and start paying attention to other people if they don't want to end up single.

The next thread, at 10 pages, is not as daunting as the previous one, but still too long for me to read much of. Posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum and titled, "All these rejections and deferrals reported on DCUM and CC are shocking and discouraging", the thread was started by the worried mother of a high school freshman who is discouraged by the college admissions results about which she has been reading. In the responses that I read, posters told her that there were plenty of college opportunties if students looked beyond the traditional elite schools and others advised that things were the same as always but just looked worse once you had skin in the game. On the other hand, some posters insist that test optional applications policies, grade inflation, and uneven grading policies during COVID have radically changed the admissions environment. For some reason, several posters fixated on the SAT exam and whether or not it was different than in previous years. There have been many threads dealing with admissions and all of them tend to result in posters complaining about what they view as unfair admissions policies. Skimming the thread suggests that most of those complaints have been repeated here. One thing that is clear is that admissions to competitive colleges is fraught with uncertainty and the results often belie explanation. This lends itself to numerous theories aimed at explaining why certain students were accepted while others were not. Then, in the midst of this, there are always a couple of old codgers who show up to proclaim that back in their day only the truly qualified were admitted to top schools whereas today, coddled underperformers are taking up all of the spaces.

The third thread that I will discuss was titled, "How late is too late to wake up when vacationing with other fams" and posted in the "Travel Discussion" forum. Who would think that this topic would generate so much discussion? There seems to be general agreement that parents should wake up at the same times as any of their young children rather than expecting other adults to attend to them. Beyond that, it seems to be mostly a question of simply being on the same pages as others. Conflicts could arise if one family's plan was to get up early and accomplish as much in the day as possible while another family's plan was to sleep in and have a leisurely day. This is apparently a really big issue for some people because posters report that they refuse to vacation with other families or have stopped doing so because of it. Several posters argue that good communication is a simple solution for avoiding such problems. At some point this thread turned into a debate about eating breakfast together and whether or not that was an enjoyable communal activity or a controlling action that was oppressive to some. This, is turn, led to a discussion about bacon. I think the upshot is that if you go on vacation with another family and you decide to sleep in, neither you nor your child should expect any bacon.

The last thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum. Titled, "Anyone else educated by FCPS and sees the decline?", this thread is another in a series of threads lamenting what apparently has been the complete collapse of Fairfax County Public Schools, which — if these threads are to be believed — are little more than a smoking wreck these days. I was somewhat surprised that virtually nobody objected to the suggestion that the schools are in decline. The arguments were about what is responsible for the decline. Those responding found many targets to blame. Some blamed attempts at "equity" which is currently in vogue as a target of criticism, some blamed large class sizes, others blamed changing teaching styles, and still others blamed students' short attention spans. There is fairly widespread agreement within the thread that schools today are not at the level they used to be. In response, many posters either advise or describe utilizing tutoring and other supplementary ways to improve their kids' education. Much of the discussion on the thread goes beyond the confines of FCPS and addresses education generally. At least one college professor repeatedly stresses that her students today are far behind those of the past, particularly in writing skills. There is a clear division between those with children in AAP classes and those enrolled in general ed, with the AAP parents mostly being more satisfied. As I mentioned, there have been a number of threads about the alleged decline of FCPS and this thread largely duplicates a number of others. I've heard some suggestions that there may be an organized effort to tarnish the reputation of FCPS and there are certainly certainly pretty well-funded groups focused on critiquing the school system. I'm not sure that these threads are part of such campaigns, but I would not necessarily rule it out.