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November 4 • Cultural Insight

Use Your Common Sense Day

Use Your Common Sense Day, celebrated on the 4th of November, was created by the patron saint of practicality, Will Rogers. The day serves as a humorous but poignant reminder to rely on practical judgement and basic instinct in an increasingly complex and technology-dependent world.

Use Your Common Sense Day Lesson Visual

Speaking Discussion

  • Why do people follow Google maps into a lake even when they can see the water?
  • Should common sense be a graded subject in schools?
  • Is expert advice always better than gut feeling?
  • If the internet died for a month, which of your friends would survive based on common sense?
  • Is common sense just a set of prejudices we learned before we were 18?

Activity 1: The Survival Coach

The Task: You are a survival coach for silicon valley techies. You take them to a forest with no phones. You have 3 minutes to teach them the basics (Fire, Water, Shelter) using only common sense. How do you explain nature to someone who lives in the metaverse?

Activity 2: Rapid Fire Debate

Justify in 30 seconds: 1. 'Algorithms are smarter than human intuition.' 2. 'Common sense is just a way to avoid thinking deeply.' 3. 'We are becoming a species that is 'Technically Brilliant' but 'Practically Useless'.'