Things You Misunderstood

For me it is pretty much any song that has lyrics which is 99% of the reason why I don’t sing out loud. My earliest memory was “Fade To Grey” from Visage, where I thought they were singing about Fanta Grape.

Speaking bout the OP, I always thought Mecca was the place that Muslims have prayed towards, however learned that it’s the qiblah (Kaaba, not sure if it’s the same) which is in Mecca, but wasn’t always. I watched an interesting documentary about the prayer directions of ancient mosques vs ones dated afterwards. Not sure if this is generally accepted in the Islamic faith, so maybe it’s still misunderstood by me.

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What about the Celtic and Ireland goalie of the 1980s and nineties, Packie Bonner? :thinking:

Imagine the reaction that would get now.

#1 - women

#2 - how the world actually works. when you break it right down, the pyramid structure of feifdom and how that has evolved into the ruling of the wealthy over 7-8 billion people is downright scary.

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You’d like to hope that anyone named Patrick in this day and age wouldn’t end up with Packie as their nick name. :rofl:

Like all religions, there was considerable flux in the early practices, often borrowing from pagan traditions that predated it, and so where we’ve settled a modern day interpretation was not always the way it was donw.

The Qibla refers to the direction one must face to pray. The Kaaba is the monument in the center of the Mosque in Mecca that is the current focus of the Qibla. Like a lot of Christianity borrows from pagan traditions and rebrands, there seems to be elements of that with this practice. The site has pre-islamic religious significance that Mohammad seems to have rolled that into his practice of Islam including changing the direction of the Qibla from Jerusalem to Mecca after its conquest and then trying to rebrand that pagan tradition to a supposed earlier Abrahamic one.

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For the longest time until a few years ago, I thought that it was “Punch above the waist.” :sweat_smile:

Even now, my mental picture is still punching at someone’s chest of belly (like boxing) instead of below the waist into the bollocks! :rofl:

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As a bit of an unruly kid my folks where not shy in giving me a good hiding on the numerous occasions i stepped out of line.

The final phasing out of corporal punishment saved me a few times in school… but not when i got home !!

I heard the phrase ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child’ and in my young mind completely reversed the sentiment as a kind of war cry… think i might have been a young liberal.

It wasn’t until i had kids myself i realised Id had it backwards.

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You got it right. It’s a justification for child abuse.

I can remember sitting in my room fuming thinking ‘They mustve heard the saying, shouldnt they be giving me sweets!??’

That would have been much better ! :smile:

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There’s a huge difference between discipline and abuse.

Kids these days are little bastards because they know that they can’t be touched.

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I thought I was special, but clearly I misunderstood.

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There are plenty of ways to discipline kids that don’t involve physical violence.
I grew up in the seventies when there was plenty of violence from all sides and plenty of the kids were little bastards. Violence begets violence.
Lots of people were left scarred in different ways.

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@gasband, of course you’re special Matey.

giphy

:+1::nerd_face:

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There are but we’re not taught them so discipline has become diluted since the Children Act. I don’t support corporal punishment but removing it left a void that has taken years to fill with educating methods of positive parenting. In the interim, a generation has become increasingly disrespectful towards authority and basic bonds of decency that aid a functioning civil society.

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I gonna run for president like Ralph did. Thanks for the affirmation.

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Parenting should be taught in schools. We learned a lot of useless stuff about trigonometry and the corn laws, but nothing about something that most of us would spend most of our lives doing, and which would be the most important thing we did.
Expecting parents to pass on parenting since the demise of the extended family has not worked out.

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100%.

As a starter for ten I would replace some current subjects with something along the lines of:

Religious Studies becomes Cultural Learning, Humanities, Politics, Civics, Ethics, Social responsibility
Replace the 50% of maths learning that is pointless for the vast majority with Business studies/Law/Basic economics
Physics/Biology/Chemistry don’t need to be separated until A-Level - lose some time in the timetable and give more time to computer coding, online awareness etc

Also, I don’t think so much emphasis needs to be placed on kids being able to memorise and retrieve facts, dates, etc as was the case in my generation. It’s not important to know this when everything is so easily checked within seconds now - far more important is the concepts, the actions, the consequences, the human costs, the motivations, causes etc. It doesn’t matter so much as to when Waterloo happened, what matters is why and what lessons can be learned, what repurcussions events have had that continue to be felt today. Particular emphasis ought to be had on teaching history from the other perspective. We learn about colonialism etc from a western (colonial) perspective - we need just as much learning from the opposite end of it.

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Law and Economics is a frickin must. The mind boggles that when students enter the world as adults they don’t have basic legal knowledge and don’t understand scarcity of resources.

I’d also love it if PE wasn’t the bane of nerdy kids but rather an opportunity to actually learn new exercises and sports. As a kid I was never taught football, we were just handed a ball and told to get on with it. As an adult I once went for a complimentary football basics class and it was such an eye opener and so much fun. We did simple passing drills but I learned so much.

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I’d replace RE/PSHE with ‘Life Skills’ which includes practicals on basic plumbing and electrics, budget planning, how to vote (ie researching and discussing different policies to figure out which party reflects your values). How to quit the gym.

There’s probably loads more that should be included.

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