February is a no good, awful month. It's cold, dark, and everyone I know is sick and tired. SICK AND TIRED OF FEBRUARY THAT IS!

What? You think February is the month of love and celebrating our past presidents? Well, my kids hijacked my Valentine's Day (since when did kids get gifts from Cupid?), and as for Presidents, without my wallet in front of me, I can't name more than a handful.

In fact, it's not just February I'm tired of. This whole year has been a stinkbomb. 2020 has underwhelmed my expectations while overwhelming my delicate sensibilities, and I say we get a do-over!

Oh, how sweet, you are a Pollyanna and see the good in everything? Well, in just seven weeks we have had:

Toxic politics.
An Impeachment trial.
Uncontrolled Fires in the Australian Outback.
The passing Kobe Bryant's and eight friends.
Massive melting glaciers.
Crop eating locust swarms.
And the creme-de-la-creme, the Coronavirus.

And don't even get me started on the whole Prince Harry and Princess Meghan Brexit! That's BANANAS!

All of this tragedy has me sitting in a corner, sucking my thumb, and mumbling to myself in a way that my wife calls "deeply concerning."

Yes, as far as I can see, 2020 stinks!

But not everyone agrees with me. It turns out there is a family of well regarded Nordic researchers that believe the world is not going to heck in a handbasket but that it is actually getting better. And they have facts to back it up.

In the landmark book, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World-and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, authors, and TED Talks phenomenon, Hans, Ola, and Anna Rosling offer a radical new explanation of why we forgo positively oriented data in favor of negatively biased opinions.

According to the New York Times, Factfullness, "...reveal[s] the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse)."

As the author Rosling put it, "Our problem is that we don't know what we don't know, and our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases."

To prove their point, they gave a ten question test to tens of thousands of people about the state of affairs in the world today compared to our recent past, and the results were alarming. What was so troubling was the average person's complete lack of understanding about the world around them. In fact, our ineptitude was so laughable that they gave the same test to a group of chimps, and the chimps scored higher! CHIMPS!

You can take the test here.

It turns out that we modern humans are a dark lot and are wanton to believe the worst in people and our world, even when evidence to the contrary is as abundant as it is obvious.

For instance, did you know that in our world:

Literacy is at an all-time high?
Female educational levels are at an all-time high?
Childhood vaccinations are at an all-time high?
80% of our world now has a liveable income?
80% of our world population lives in a first or second world country?
In the last 20 years, the number of people living in poverty has been halved?
The number of deaths due to natural disasters has been halved?
There are fewer deaths due to global conflict than ever before?

Despite what politicians and pundits would have us believe, our schools, our country, and our planet are doing better than we give it credit. And the evidence supports it. EVEN THE CHIMPS KNEW THAT.

Yes, there are still very real and pressing concerns that we as a people face, but let us not forget that our ability to innovate, communicate, and collaborate is limitless and has served us well in dark times before.

I think what happens in the world also happens in music. I think sometimes we tend to see the bad in our profession instead of the good. We focus on our feelings instead of our facts. We see our jobs and our students with the filter of what's not right instead of what is. We look for what we want and not what we have.

It might be human nature, but it's not natural. Remember, the CHIMPS were able to figure this stuff out.

If Dr. Rosling were here, he would remind us to take a breath, turn off the news, and go hang out with some kids. That should cheer us both up.

But he passed away last... February.

UGH. I need my blankie.

Have a great Febru (er...) March everyone!

-Scott