I don’t remember the specifics because it was damn near 40 years ago, but I had a teacher tell the class that everyone has a sort of 6th-sense sight through an invisible 3rd eye in the middle of your forehead. And her example was that blind people will pick out clothes by colors or tell someone they were wearing an ugly tie. Which I’ve never seen, at least not outside of some sort of Hallmark Romance Drama quality religious schlock.
I never had any problem correcting a teacher if they made some calculation error or misquoted something out of the book (I wasn’t an asshole who corrected every single thing, just the ones that might be material to everyone else’s understanding of the lesson).
But when confronted with a teacher spewing utter bullshit, I was at a total loss for a response. I can’t imagine anyone else believed it, either, but what a fucking loon. My sister was/is blind and the only superhuman power she had was being fucking annoying.
I don’t even know if that was the worst/only one, but that’s the one that has always stood out for me.
I guess you could add that American Exceptionalism was taught as a legitimate point of view rather than nationalist bullshit.
I wonder if she had heard of a (controversial) phenomenon called blindsight in which some very specific conditions of blindness some people are said to not consciously see but still have some sort of subconscious “sight”.
As in the eyes physically work and these people have damage to a very specific part of the brain, allegedly.
Anyway she was obviously wrong but that just reminded me so I linked that.
Your teacher was full of shit, but we do have more than 5 senses. You know the taste, touch, smell, hearing, sight. There are two more everyone has:
Vestibular - sense of balance and movement in space (like falling).
Proprioception - you can sense where your arms and legs are relative to your body without looking or touch.
My sister was/is blind and the only superhuman power she had was being fucking annoying.
There’s blind and there blind. Besides actual damage to the eye itself, most definitions of blind are loss of connection of the optic nerve to the visual cortex (the part of your brain which takes nerve pulses and translates them into vision). However recent science has found that even if there is a break/damage to the visual cortex, there are certain visual things that blind person can “see”. The optic nerve makes a couple of stops along the way from the eye to the visual cortex, specifically the Amygdala in the brain. Many that are “visual cortex” blind can still know where someone’s face is and even determine what mood they are in from their facial expression. They can also sometimes dodge object thrown at them. Both of these are Amygdala actions. Its not like they actually SEE the face or SEE the object being thrown, but they “know” if someone is upset or happy without that person even saying anything if their facial expression tells the story. Here’s the science if you’re interested in more.
Since reading these studies I’ve always been curious to talk to a blind person to have them describe their experience with this.
I don’t remember the specifics because it was damn near 40 years ago, but I had a teacher tell the class that everyone has a sort of 6th-sense sight through an invisible 3rd eye in the middle of your forehead. And her example was that blind people will pick out clothes by colors or tell someone they were wearing an ugly tie. Which I’ve never seen, at least not outside of some sort of Hallmark Romance Drama quality religious schlock.
I never had any problem correcting a teacher if they made some calculation error or misquoted something out of the book (I wasn’t an asshole who corrected every single thing, just the ones that might be material to everyone else’s understanding of the lesson).
But when confronted with a teacher spewing utter bullshit, I was at a total loss for a response. I can’t imagine anyone else believed it, either, but what a fucking loon. My sister was/is blind and the only superhuman power she had was being fucking annoying.
I don’t even know if that was the worst/only one, but that’s the one that has always stood out for me.
I guess you could add that American Exceptionalism was taught as a legitimate point of view rather than nationalist bullshit.
I wonder if she had heard of a (controversial) phenomenon called blindsight in which some very specific conditions of blindness some people are said to not consciously see but still have some sort of subconscious “sight”.
As in the eyes physically work and these people have damage to a very specific part of the brain, allegedly.
Anyway she was obviously wrong but that just reminded me so I linked that.
Your teacher was full of shit, but we do have more than 5 senses. You know the taste, touch, smell, hearing, sight. There are two more everyone has:
Vestibular - sense of balance and movement in space (like falling).
Proprioception - you can sense where your arms and legs are relative to your body without looking or touch.
There’s blind and there blind. Besides actual damage to the eye itself, most definitions of blind are loss of connection of the optic nerve to the visual cortex (the part of your brain which takes nerve pulses and translates them into vision). However recent science has found that even if there is a break/damage to the visual cortex, there are certain visual things that blind person can “see”. The optic nerve makes a couple of stops along the way from the eye to the visual cortex, specifically the Amygdala in the brain. Many that are “visual cortex” blind can still know where someone’s face is and even determine what mood they are in from their facial expression. They can also sometimes dodge object thrown at them. Both of these are Amygdala actions. Its not like they actually SEE the face or SEE the object being thrown, but they “know” if someone is upset or happy without that person even saying anything if their facial expression tells the story. Here’s the science if you’re interested in more.
Since reading these studies I’ve always been curious to talk to a blind person to have them describe their experience with this.
How did she think colorblindness worked?