… … this quote reminded me of an incident in my life.
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment; and I told them they didn’t understand life.” — John Lennon
I was in Katholick Skrule don’t remember what grade — probably 4th or 5th — and there was a lot of “pro-life” stuff going on. Some factual; some propaganda. Facts were facts, but propaganda was “opinions”. The Catholic News, sermons form the pulpit, and some school lessons were about abortion. Anyway, long story short, at some point in time, we were given a test and the “question” was “what is YOUR opinion about abortion”. And, I remember struggling with that. Anyway, I had formed an opinion that it was horrible and anyone who did it must be under terrible metal duress. Either crazy or hopeless. I knew from Heinlein’s Science Fiction (“Beyond This Horizon”) that survival of the species is the Prime Directive, adaption / improvemnt was good, and eugenics was a really tricky subject. <<Yeah, I was a reader of stuff far beyond my age appropriate stuff and my peers!>>.
So, to answer the question, I wrote (and I remember it VIVIDLY): “In my opinion, abortion is morally wrong, but someone must be crazy or under duress to do it. In any event, it’s not my place to judge.”
When the test came back, I got a #$%^&# F!
I protested to the teacher and the principal But got no where.
When I took it home to get my Mom’s signature, she was very disappointed. But when I asked her: “How can my opinion be wrong? Did I not understand my opinion or lied about it?”.
She was speechless. (I believe my uncles were laughing in the background.)
I said: “The question wasn’t “what the Chruch’s opinion was”, the Pope’s, the Principal’s, or what was Cannon Law. (Yeah we had heard about that too!)
So Monday morning, she went into work late and took me to the Principal’s office and had me repeat my argument. Maybe she being there made a difference, you was a feisty gal in her prime. But my grade went from F to A since there was no objective measure of “correctness”. (In fact everyone got some relief as the question was thrown out and rewritten to what the Church’s position was.)
Ever since then, I have never treated “arguments from authority” (one of the logical fallacies) with anything but an opinion subject to verification.
Guess that counts for my crankiness?
— 30 —
Reinke Faces Life 