The news reporting on Kyron Horman?

In the United States, the media has become the mass sage. I have a textbook for English composition from the 1950s. I was a teacher for 24 years. A colleague of mine and myself were comparing notes about our students. We noted that a once 30,000 word vocabulary has now declined to a 10,000 word vocabulary in today's students. Moreover, we do not teach our students critical thinking.

In that composition book there was a section on clear thinking. It discussed ad hoc reasoning, overgeneralization, name-calling non sequiturs, dichotomous reasoning, etc.

I'm sure if I asked a student today what a non sequitur or a tautological statement was, they wouldn't understand the question. This is sad when a democracy needs critically thinking individuals.

A Newscaster at Fox news several years ago made a statement that 9/11 could have been prevented. I sat there with my mouth open. No one caught the glaring error in logic. 9/11 could not have been prevented because it already happened. Unless someone had a time travel machine, once something happens it is irretrievably into the past. It's a done deal.

I had a student come in late several times and finally I asked him why he was late to my class. He said the US government was persecuting him. I said there is no such being as the US government. I told him government was a form of organization and not a conscious entity. Poetic terminology has slipped into into prose where it does not belong. To personify something is to give life like qualities to an idea or inanimate object . Blaming the government is blaming no one. It's not a conscious entity. I told the young man that he had better find "who" was doing something to him and talk to that person. People do things not non conscious intities.

We all tend to spin things. I remember this funny story from the cold war. The Russians and the Americans were in an auto race. The race was between the Americans and the Russians only. The Americans won. The next day the Russian newspaper had a headline that read that the Russians had come in second place in the race. The Americans had come in second to last. There was no mention that the race was only between the Americans and the Russians. Ah, the art of spin!

Like any story being told it's much more interesting to the audience if the story is developed. That way the public can check each day to see how the story has progressed. The media chooses one story to follow because doing so produces pathos. We want to know what happens to people that we begin to be emotionally involved with You will notice this is done all the time. It encourages the public to tune in tomorrow to view the latest develpments in the story. Compare it to a soar[ opera. .

Most of the missing kids were not at their school when they seem to have disappeared. I don't know the full story, so I'm not sure how many people saw him at the school, but I assume he actually was seen.

It is just more mysterious than a kid walking down the street and a guy in a car grabs him or a non-custodial parent apparently takes their own kid or something. The idea that he was at school and vanished, and his stepmother was the last to see, and she has shown some unusual behavior is probably the reason it has gotten so much attention.