This reminds me of the college I attended. My college boasted valuing human rights and respect and dignity for all people. Yet, one of the professors at my college was literally the former Ambassador for the Islamic Republic to the United Nations during the 1980s. He specialized in "friendship and forgiveness studies". It is just sobering how these networks exist, yet people still say the Islamic Regime does not pose a threat.

Side note: I honestly want to learn more about this. The history of the English language is really fascinating. The English language is heavily influenced by French actually because of William the Conqueror and the Franco-Normandy invasion of England. Because of this, French was the ruling language of England for a long time. However, eventually the Franco-Normandy ruling class in England eventually integrated into England and started seeing themselves as English and as distinct from the Normandy Kingdom across the channel (kind of like how the Mongols integrated into China during the Yuan Dynasty instead of forcing Chinese to adopt Mongol customs). With this change in perception of identity as well as Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", the English language was revived especially in literature. Because of the integration of other languages like French and German, a lot of native English (Anglo-Saxon) words have been lost. I think only about 4,500 words of Anglo-Saxon origin are in use today. But! We use a lot of these Anglo-Saxon words in our daily lives. Some of the words include: water, apple, two, king, bread, eight, etc. Also, in English, we used to have have honorific "you" which was actually the word "you". The pronoun "you" and possessive pronoun "your" were actually honorific. "Thee" and "thou" were causal. You can see the interactions between the honorific and the casual in Shakespeare. This is also why the Quakers always used "thee" and "thou" because it was more humble and casual. TLDR: Anyways! The history of the English language is more complicated than what it appears it be. Origins of words should not be used to assert a certain narrative.

I can only comment on my personal experiences working in education and working in schools. When I hear about the literacy crisis, I almost always hear it in reference to children and how children are not at grade level for reading in addition to math. In my personal experience, kids are not mastering their foundational skills. Here is the problem: think of knowledge as a pyramid. Your foundational skills are the base of the pyramid. As you go up the pyramid, your knowledge becomes more detailed and complicated. Then, the top of the pyramid represents specialized information you get from years of study. It is really hard to understand and build upon your set of knowledge when your foundation is not strong. (If this makes sense? This might be a bad explanation). Also, something to keep in mind, there is a teacher shortage in the USA right now. Teachers are rapidly quitting education. I'm not saying one is causing the other, but I do think there are some problems that need to be addressed in education.

My second thought is I really like how you mentioned in the story that even though each individual's observation was technically "true" based on their experience with the elephant, it is still just based on their subjective experience. I don't like it when someone refers to their subjective experience as "their truth". Truth has a specific meaning. It is based on proven facts and objective reality. We all live our lives individually. As a result, all of our experiences will be our own. Because our experiences are our own, everything will at least be slightly different for all of us, and we will interpret our experiences at least slightly different too. If we all have our own "truths" that are all at least slight different from one another, then what is truth?

@Hila Lala Absolutely. I love the metaphor of the elephant Hila. What you describe is a great way of approaching people with views different than our own, and I appreciate you giving us all the space to think about it and talk about it.

This is heartwarming ❤️