Eyes Open, Minds Open, Memories Lost

I find it very interesting that human beings used to rely almost entirely on our memories to actually remember things. Even a culture as temporally close as the Romans relied almost exclusively on their memories to remember quotes and day to day activities (scrolls aren't the easiest medium to scan for a quote through). Yet here we are today, and we can barely remember what day of the week it is.

I was sitting in class today and discussion turned to the vice-presidential debate. I hadn't had time to catch up on it yet, but I took note of what the people in my class remembered about the debate so that I could discuss their points with myself when I read the transcript later. Do you know what I found out?

They were, universally, wrong about what the candidates had said.

Most specific in my mind is one of the classmates going on and on about how Sarah Palin had used the term "hockey-mom" five times in less than twenty minutes. According to the transcript and my own viewing of the debate, Sarah Palin used the term "hockey-mom" once and it wasn't even in reference to herself (the big point that the student was going on about).

Despite these fallacies, my classmates were taking the points raised at their word and formulating their opinions based on them, and I would have joined them if I weren't such a skeptical personality. Somehow this seems very wrong to me. That at a higher institution of learning, in classes where they are always told to probe for the deeper meaning and to never take anything at face value these students aren't even bothering to get their facts straight when it comes to who they will vote for in November. Did they just not get the lesson that this school is trying to drill into them? Did they not understand that we aren't here to get degrees but learn how to learn on our own, so that we can continue our betterment as human beings beyond the classroom?

Hell, did they even read the mission statement for the school that they're paying $43,000 a semester to go to?