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Not Reading

When I was in graduate school I noticed something about the undergraduates that I taught that caught me off-guard. The Mathematics building was across the street from the University Health Services building which had a walk-in clinic for students, etc. Before I arrived it had been know as DUH. (I'm not sure what the acronym was for, there are several possible choices.) When I asked the students what the building was, they all said DUH. When I asked them where the University Health Services building was, nobody knew. This was despite the sign being quite prominent in the front of the building. Students would see it every day on their way to class and not read it.

I filed this behavior away as one of the many things I don't understand and didn't think about it much until lately. We are yet again having the wedge issue of civil rights for non-hetero couples being up for debate, turning one group of citizens against another group of citizens for political gain, as if one group were first-class citizens and the other second-class. (That sort of thing never ends well. The people that think it do have no empathy for those discriminated against.)

I finally made the connection: people were convinced that the Bible said things that the Bible did not say because they were immersed in a culture that believed that way. DUH, not UHS. 

How do you get someone to actually read the thing that is nominally the foundation of their beliefs?

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