The people in the back of the class

[Guest MormonGator]

9 hours ago, askandanswer said:

do they let you in if LG is not with you?

 If not, I just go to Disney instead. 

[Guest]

On ‎12‎/‎8‎/‎2016 at 9:29 AM, zil said:

aterials ahead of time.¹

Perhaps we should:

a) Stop caring where people sit (or only care as directed by the Spirit)

b) Stop making assumptions about why people sit in the back row and what it means about them as a person

In a Sunday School class where there were about 50 seats and only 20 attendees, I and my roommates decided that we "just couldn't sit in the back row".  So we sat in the second to the back row. Gerald Lund (yes, the one who wrote the Work and the Glory series) was a bishopric counselor in this student ward.  He invited us to come out of the back row.

I said,"We're sitting in the second to back row.(cheshire grin)  Never let it be said that we sat in the back row."

During class, he made a comment about how people don't actually sit in the back row and "one person actually said, "Never let it be said..."  Specifically condemning me.  My roommates, knowing that I had an unstable emotional state, immediately took hold of me and told me to stay calm.  But I was pretty brim with comtempt about it.  All about where I chose to sit for class.

Edited December 11, 2016 by Guest

[Guest MormonGator]

52 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

  He invited us to come out of the back row.

 

Is there anything inherently wrong with sitting in in the back? 

[zil]

47 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

Is there anything inherently wrong with sitting in in the back? 

There are times when it's a problem (12 people meeting for class in the chapel because there's no better room free).  But most of the time, I think someone is making too many ill-founded assumptions.

When a bishop(ric) type would find me and my husband sitting in the back and invite us to sit closer to the front, we would tell them, "We're the expectation couple.  Wherever we sit, we expect the room to fill at least that far."  And it always did.  So someone had to be sitting there.  So why not us?

[Guest MormonGator]

Just now, zil said:

There are times when it's a problem (12 people meeting for class in the chapel because there's no better room free).  But most of the time, I think someone is making too many ill-founded assumptions.

When a bishop(ric) type would find me and my husband sitting in the back and invite us to sit closer to the front, we would tell them, "We're the expectation couple.  Wherever we sit, we expect the room to fill at least that far."  And it always did.  So someone had to be sitting there.  So why not us?

I like to sit in the back. People wrongly (and frankly-foolishly) think it's because I'm quiet or shy. In reality, it's strictly personal preference. Growing up in church (Catholic, not LDS) we always sat in the front and I never liked it. 

[Guest]

5 hours ago, MormonGator said:

Is there anything inherently wrong with sitting in in the back? 

FOR US:

Well, the only reason we thought of it at all was that in class, you're told that if you sit in the back row, you don't hear the instructor as well and don't get as much out of the class.  But this class was very wide with only five rows to begin with.  So, the fourth row was plenty close to hear everything.

(now that I'm actually counting the seats in my mind, I realize it was probably 100 to 120 seats).

FOR HIM:

Many of his generation believed that sitting in the back row meant you were a rebel who was trying to hide something.  While not true in our case, that was the common wisdom of his time.

Edited December 11, 2016 by Guest

[Guest]

Back in my old ward we had a really, really boring Elders Quorum teacher who was never prepared to teach for awhile.  I am not going to lie about this, although i should be ashamed - me and my friends liked to sit in the back so we could get away with playing video games on our phones when things got dire.  

Sometimes it was like a LAN party back there...

[Guest MormonGator]

4 minutes ago, DoctorLemon said:

Back in my old ward we had a really, really boring Elders Quorum teacher who was never prepared to teach for awhile.  I am not going to lie about this, although i should be ashamed - me and my friends liked to sit in the back so we could get away with playing video games on our phones when things got dire.  

Sometimes it was like a LAN party back there...

I almost always leave after the first hour but my Kindle is promptly out during it. So you aren't alone my friend. 

[Guest LiterateParakeet]

17 hours ago, Carborendum said:

My roommates, knowing that I had an unstable emotional state, immediately took hold of me and told me to stay calm.  But I was pretty brim with comtempt about it.  All about where I chose to sit for class.

LOL, I can relate to this.  After church today I had this conversation with my daughter:

Me: So I mad this comment in RS today.

Daughter: Uh oh. . .

I'm not generally inclined to comment unless I disagree with something.  But at those times, I try to be diplomatic and add to the lesson not detract. Still, I do worry that the RS teachers have the same thought as my daughter when I raise my hand.    

Today for example, we were talking about faith from the manual.  As often happens in LDS discussions it was implied that having doubts and questions are bad. I couldn't let that go because that attitude makes people feel ashamed when they have doubts and questions, so they don't turn to anyone for help.  They just broad on it alone and either recover or end up leaving the church.  How many could we save if they weren't afraid to share that they are having doubts?  

So we had just talked about "Doubting Thomas".  I raised my hand and said, "It's understandable that Thomas doubted.  No one had EVER been resurrected before.  I suspect that many of us would have had the same reaction.  And notice that the Thomas still got to see the resurrected Lord.  Sure the Lord explained how Thomas could have done a little better, but He got to see the Lord.  Having doubts and questions is not a bad thing.  It's the attitude behind the doubts and questions that matters."

That's the sort of "contrary" comments I make.  I had plenty of other thoughts that I kept to myself, and it was better for me to do so. If people prefer to listen quietly, let them.  Sometimes the Spirit works best that way.

@DoctorLemon  ha ha, me too.  When I teach the youth, I tell them absolutely no phones (we can borrow scriptures from the library) and I admit to them that I have been know to text in class or use the Internet.  If we adults succumb to the temptation sometimes, youth are much more likely to do so.  Once when I was teaching, my daughter's friend ( a friend of the family as well) tossed her phone away from her.  I laughed and asked her if everything was okay.  She said her phone was tempting her, we had a good laugh over that, and then moved on with the lesson.  

[LadyGator]

On December 11, 2016 at 6:10 PM, Carborendum said:

FOR HIM:

Many of his generation believed that sitting in the back row meant you were a rebel who was trying to hide something.  While not true in our case, that was the common wisdom of his time.

Okay, you found out, this is the real reason that @MormonGator and I sit in the back, he is the rebel… 

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, LadyGator said:

Okay, you found out, this is the real reason that @MormonGator and I sit in the back, he is the rebel… 

Somehow I get the feeling that you're as much or more of a rebel than he is.

[LadyGator]

1 minute ago, Carborendum said:

Somehow I get the feeling that you're as much or more of a rebel than he is.

Never I'm a perfect angel!!! 0:-)

[mirkwood]

Back row = harder to ambush.  I can scan for threats easier too...can't help it...

 

As a side note: I have a degree in English.  I'm about a year short of a second one in History.  No need or reason to go back for another year to spend money uselessly.

 

[Guest MormonGator]

3 minutes ago, mirkwood said:

Back row = harder to ambush.  I can scan for threats easier too...can't help it...

 

As a side note: I have a degree in English.  I'm about a year short of a second one in History.  No need or reason to go back for another year to spend money uselessly.

 

side note: all people who have degrees in English are losers. 
(that's my degree as well) 

Edited December 14, 2016 by MormonGator

[Sunday21]

I heard a news report yesterday that a highly paid job in Silicon Valley is that of a speech writer, paid twice what programmers are paid. At my local university, the undergrad in business has given up having students write a work report for the co-op experience. The work reports were sent to employers and the reports were so badly written that employers would no longer hire the students. Now the students do a poster presentation. 

[Guest]

46 minutes ago, Sunday21 said:

I heard a news report yesterday that a highly paid job in Silicon Valley is that of a speech writer, paid twice what programmers are paid. At my local university, the undergrad in business has given up having students write a work report for the co-op experience. The work reports were sent to employers and the reports were so badly written that employers would no longer hire the students. Now the students do a poster presentation. 

[zil]

2 hours ago, Sunday21 said:

I heard a news report yesterday that a highly paid job in Silicon Valley is that of a speech writer, paid twice what programmers are paid. At my local university, the undergrad in business has given up having students write a work report for the co-op experience. The work reports were sent to employers and the reports were so badly written that employers would no longer hire the students. Now the students do a poster presentation. 

Technology has made people shockingly stupid.*  I know people who can explain something verbally, but can't sit down and type what they just said - it's not that they can't type, they can, it's as if their brain shuts off when their fingers touch the keyboard and they don't know what they (would have) said.  I feel like telling them to record a voice memo into their phone and then transcribe it.

Fortunately, one day, the world will end.

* Back when assembly lines were first coming into widespread use, someone did a study, and what they found is that people will become as stupid as the job allows - not that they'll use their smarts to make things better, nope, the job lets them get stupid, so they get stupid.  I imagine school is the same way - we've beaten innovation and creativity out of the population in general, and just want good little mindless automatons.  IMO, it's a parent's job to do the hard work of training a child to rise above all that.  Unfortunately, a lot of those parents are as stupid as the world will let them be...

[Guest MormonGator]

6 hours ago, zil said:

Technology has made people shockingly stupid

In a way. Like all things in life, it's in how you use it. Without technology you and I wouldn't be here talking. In fact, I wouldn't have ever joined the church. We can also Google the answer to pretty much any question we have (yes, the deep and complex questions need to be figured out on your own, but my point still stands) and we have a staggering amount of information at our fingertips. So technology maybe made us lazy (that's also up for debate) but it hasn't made us stupid. 

[Sunday21]

The problem is... that it takes years to teach someone how to write. There is a communication course that teaches some level of ability in writing memos but..if you are at zero in writing skills then you need, yeah, years of practice to develop this skill. If you do not learn it in high school what does a college/university do?

[zil]

21 minutes ago, Sunday21 said:

If you do not learn it in high school what does a college/university do?

Turn you down because you failed the entrance exams?

[Sunday21]

No entrance exams. We do have an average that you need to obtain. But if you are not writing in high school then your lack of ability to write will not affect your average.

Canadian universities, except in major population centres like Toronto (rhymes with Donna) are staying afloat with foreign mainly Chinese students so no they can barely order a hamburger let alone write an essay.

[anatess2]

On 12/14/2016 at 9:50 AM, zil said:

Technology has made people shockingly stupid.*  I know people who can explain something verbally, but can't sit down and type what they just said - it's not that they can't type, they can, it's as if their brain shuts off when their fingers touch the keyboard and they don't know what they (would have) said.  I feel like telling them to record a voice memo into their phone and then transcribe it.

Fortunately, one day, the world will end.

* Back when assembly lines were first coming into widespread use, someone did a study, and what they found is that people will become as stupid as the job allows - not that they'll use their smarts to make things better, nope, the job lets them get stupid, so they get stupid.  I imagine school is the same way - we've beaten innovation and creativity out of the population in general, and just want good little mindless automatons.  IMO, it's a parent's job to do the hard work of training a child to rise above all that.  Unfortunately, a lot of those parents are as stupid as the world will let them be...

This is how I taught my kid to write a book report!  He has no problem telling me about the story but he can't write a book report.  So, I told him tell me what the book is about and I recorded it without his knowledge.  After he finished (I asked some questions too to fill up some holes in the story), I sat him down on the dinner table and told him to transcribe the recording...

A lot of times, it's just a matter of organizing your thoughts into written form, so I also taught my kid to divide his report into sections - beginning, middle, end and then divide those some more if necessary... then write each section.

And then a lot more times it's just a matter of writing the first sentence... the rest just pours out after the initial blockage.

In any case, tech people don't think in the same way one needs to write.  Tech people see the whole quilt in their heads so trying to write it requires having to think about which piecing should be written about first, or if we even have to first talk about the backing before the topping... and then having decided which piecing to write first, having to come up with the grammatical construct to actually write the sentence... I mean, if you pay close attention tech guys talk nerdy-like... sometimes incomprehensible to the average person.

[askandanswer]

Back to the OP

In my stake, where you end up sitting during stake conference makes a huge difference. If you are in the pews, you are more likely to be able to listen clearly and enjoy the conference. If you are in the plastic chairs in the cultural hall, its likely to be noisy and distracting and of reduced value. The sound echoes, the carpet doesn't cover the whole floor, people are more likely to be wandering in and out, and many families with babies and young children and toys prefer to sit up the back so that they can more easily take their young ones out if they feel the need to do so. The people who sit in the back definitely have a different experience, and I would argue, generally a lesser experience, than those who sit near the front. If you're not at conference 25 minutes before it starts, you know your not going to get to sit in the pews.

[dahlia]

Depending on the topic, sometimes you can ask the sisters to sit in a circle, which should facilitate discussion. It has also come up that we should remember that sometimes it is all a sister can do to make it to RS meetings. She might not want to talk and we should respect that.    Personally, when I get to that point, I just go home after Sacrament Meeting. No reason to be an anti-social ..... around a bunch of people who are just trying to be nice.

You have to be careful about including other people's personal stuff in a lesson. I frequently had international students in the grad school classes I taught. When I thought they might have something interesting to share with the class about experiences in their home country. I would always email or talk to them in person and ask if they minded if I called on them to address the topic. You do not want to call on someone like that out of the blue. It's the same as calling on the lone black student and asking him to provide the 'black opinion' on a topic. It's considered bad teaching form.

 

[Guest LiterateParakeet]

Sunday, I thought of you yesterday when I sat in the back of the RS room, LOL!   Last week I had wanted to leave but was sitting near the front, and a friend was teaching the lesson...so I felt trapped.  Yesterday I wanted to be in the back to make a quick, un-obtrusive escape if I felt the need.  

Then the teacher got up and lamented those of us sitting in the back.  I thought, "Too bad, we have our reasons."  Then she said the reason was that her hearing is not good and she was afraid she wouldn't be able to hear the comments.  I remembered that when she taught before they had tried passing around a microphone, but it was cumbersome.  So when I realized, I wanted to make a comment, I got up and moved toward the front of the class and stayed there.

So there you go...you could always claim to be hard of hearing, LOL.