AmberPrince
“Write 3 to 5 sentences explaining Gatsby staring across the bay at the green light of the far pier.”
This is a common type of prompt that most school systems use and in theory it fosters and develops critical thinking. Why would Gatsby stare at the light? What must he be thinking about? Why did the author choose a light? But (american) school systems never actually explain what critical thinking is. Only a set of minimum requirements that students struggle through.
I hated those prompts. They seemed like the teacher was just fishing for a specific answer. Sometimes the color doesn’t mean anything and the author thought it just looked nice. It wasn’t until I had a sociology teacher explain it with a poignant example that it really clicked.
He asked us “Is suspending a student good punishment?” He went on to elaborate that a student that skips class gets detention. Well if he skipped class why would he go to detention? So he skips that and gets suspension instead. This student didn’t want to be in school so the school ultimately punishes him by not having him in school.
Reductive and simplistic, sure. But the idea that you approach a problem or thought from many different angles to see all facets of it didn’t really gel with me until that moment. We need more of that. We need the “why” of critical thinking.
The reason it’s not reasonable is based on how we age pregnancy. The counter starts at the last day of your last menstrual cycle. That means the gestational age of the egg might be two days but you’re already 4 weeks pregnant. On top of that a lot of diagnostic tests cannot be performed that early. My wife needed an amniocentesis due to possible congenital birth defects but by the time we had the initial screening, then the diagnostic test, we were at 16 weeks. Add onto that after a test like that the decision has to be made wether to terminate a pregnancy then the procedure has to be scheduled and performed. All in all you’re looking at 20 weeks or so.
A 15 week ban might as well be a total ban.