Cognitive dissonance FTW

A friend who owns a few preschools was telling me a story about some of the "hippie" kids. Since hand washing is on the curriculum, the kids have to learn the "proper" way to wash their hands. Basically it just involves more time, a lot of soap and some running water at the beginning and end. (It’s well established that hand washing, in and of itself, can prevent a number of infections and illnesses. FYI: Not the flu, which is a respiratory infection.)

That, of course, isn't what their parents teach. "Hippie" parents teach that using too much water for hand washing (say, more than a second) kills the earth. Disease be damned.

The cognitive dissonance pops up when, on parents night, the kids have to demonstrate what they've learned. That puts the kids in a tricky situation. Do the kids do it wrong according to their teacher or their parent?

I don't remember having to deal with that kind of cognitive dissonance until I was much older. Like High School-aged. Especially at such an early age (3-6) and for something as simple as hand washing. (My parents taught me to do it. It stuck until I was old enough to decide if it was important. I agreed with it at that point, and now I look down my nose at the unclean people who don't wash their hands after they go to the bathroom.)

Nowadays, kids don't have it that easy. Hell, nobody does. Every choice is polarizing. Even choices that used to be simple and straightforward, like grocery or clothes shopping, have becoming these meaningful choices. Do you support sweat shops? Factory farming? Corn subsidies? Corn syrup? A debt-based economy?

No matter what you choose, there is bound to be someone who deeply believes that your choice is immoral. And they can't all be wrong.