The coddling of the American mind

[truthfinder]

Even though I am under an union, still treat my co-workers as if they are my siblings.  Yes, we agree and disagree.  

But do I agree?  That I don't know.  I did not read it all.  But I think that college is over done.  And not every person is right for college.

No, it was the fact that "brother and sister" promote a hetero-normative, gender-conforming notion of the world.

[Luigi]

I agree with the article. I could explain why, but it's late, and I'm tired. I don't express myself clearly in that condition. Maybe I'll add some thoughts later. 

 

(Bless me, readers, if I have sinned by including any microaggression in this or previous posts. I firmly resolve,with the help of your trigger lists, to amend my speech and avoid the near occasion of sin.)

[vee]

 

(Bless me, readers, if I have sinned by including any microaggression in this or previous posts. I firmly resolve,with the help of your trigger lists, to amend my speech and avoid the near occasion of sin.)

[Gabriela]

And not every person is right for college.

This is the main problem in higher education today: too many students who don't really belong there.

 

I like what one of my history professors did when she was about to show some art from the ancient world that depicted sexual acts. She mentioned that she would be showing the pictures and that anyone who did not want to see them could look away or leave the room during that short part of the lecture. To me, this seems a more sensible method than using a trigger warning.

That is a trigger warning. But one that I can understand and get on board with. I still remember, when I was in college, one of my professors was a raging liberal who forced us to watch a bunch of brutal rape scenes in movies she assigned. Some of those images are still burned in my mind. I wish I'd never seen them. Common decency dictates in such a case that you give students another option.

 

No, it was the fact that "brother and sister" promote a hetero-normative, gender-conforming notion of the world.

How does "brother and sister" promote hetero-normativity? I understand the gender-conforming bit, but not the hetero-normativity. Unless we're all incestuous now.

[Era Might]

I wonder how much of this has to do with class. I went to a public university as well, but it was mostly working-class and urban, not predominately white/suburban. It was in a liberal city, but I never experienced any of this stuff. Probably the most useful example from my experience was a class on the Harlem Renaissance, which (not surprisingly) attracted more black students, and so the discussions at times clearly had a different "edge" from other classes. But the discussions were never "controlled" or "out of control," though I can imagine that might be different in a class full of white students and a few black students. IDK.

But, regardless, a university is an artificial society...nobody would expect a Yale graduate, for all their "smarts," to walk into the hood and become a drug kingpin, or have any credibility among skilled immigrant construction laborers. Even the "real world" of educated people, like politics, is a world that exists in reality, not in the university...the university doesn't teach you how to make backroom deals and use people for your own gain (or, more benignly, how to Make Friends and Influence People lol). I love reading biographies because it's fascinating how people emerge. Stalin, for example, was no university revolutionary...he was from the streets of Georgia, and although he was intellectually very smart, what made Stalin, Stalin was his street smarts, his ability to read through people and build power, versus more respectable intellectuals like Trotsky.

So, of course, the university is its own society...with its own codes, politics, etc. Just like prisons, just like marriages, just like politics, etc. So I think definitely we should be concerned about the stifling of freedom in the university, but the university is designed to "coddle the American mind" and produce professionals who speak the language of that social class...nobody goes to college to be an authentic working stiff, although occasionally there are people who know both worlds and straddle the line authentically.

[truthfinder]

 

 

How does "brother and sister" promote hetero-normativity? I understand the gender-conforming bit, but not the hetero-normativity. Unless we're all incestuous now.

I'd say I'd like to know that too, but I really don't. 

[Gabriela]

I'd say I'd like to know that too, but I really don't. 

I think your "comrades" probably just dropped a lot of liberal-loaded words to prevent anyone from objecting to the change.

[elizabeth09]

This is the main problem in higher education today: too many students who don't really belong there.

Are you saying that people just go just because it gives them something to do? 

[Luigi]

Are you saying that people just go just because it gives them something to do?

A lot of students go to college because they don't know what they want to do, and/or all their friends are going to college, and/or their high school counselors convince them that college is the next step (high schools get brownie points for the percentage of students who go to college), and/or their parents more or less force them to go. Many of them have no idea how the system works, what the expectations are, and so forth.

College should be available to everyone, but that doesn't mean everyone is ready for college upon graduation from high school (some people would do better to wait a year or two  - in some cases, longer - before they go to college), nor that everyone will benefit from college (personally, I think you everyone can benefit from college one way or another, but it might not be cost effective).

[Gabriela]

Are you saying that people just go just because it gives them something to do? 

I'm saying most go because their parents are insistent, and it's now "the thing to do" for middle-class Americans, whether they want to or not, or whether they're ready or not. Most use it like time in limbo, to figure out what they do want to do with their lives. It's a damned expensive way to buy some time.

A lot of students go to college because they don't know what they want to do, and/or all their friends are going to college, and/or their high school counselors convince them that college is the next step (high schools get brownie points for the percentage of students who go to college), and/or their parents more or less force them to go. Many of them have no idea how the system works, what the expectations are, and so forth.

College should be available to everyone, but that doesn't mean everyone is ready for college upon graduation from high school (some people would do better to wait a year or two  - in some cases, longer - before they go to college), nor that everyone will benefit from college (personally, I think you everyone can benefit from college one way or another, but it might not be cost effective).

I'm actually of the opinion that very few people should go to college. I think we've been cheated and lied to: We were told all Americans have the right to a "free public education". How far does that get you today? McDonald's? Factory jobs disappeared, and now people have very few viable options left. So they go to college. But college isn't designed to handle the masses, and it shouldn't be. That's what the public education system is for. The public education system should be fixed so that that "free" education is actually worth something on the job market today. Then college won't be seen as the only option, and only those who truly want that education will go get it.

A lot of my students would be much happier as plumbers or electricians or car mechanics or whatnot. But they're in college because they think that's what they have to do. Even with the public education system as it is, we ought to be sending more young adults to technical schools.

Edited November 16, 2015 by Gabriela

[truthfinder]

I don't hear it as much in reading Canadian sources as I have seen in American ones, but there's this insistence on the "college experience".  Now, I don't know what the hell they actually mean by this, but I have the feeling it's a combination of a desire to be free-r from the constraints of ones parents as well as experimenting in various ways while trying to figure out what they're doing in life.  As Gabriela says, a very expensive endeavour.

 

Where I went to uni, it was a wild mix of a standard uni + a trade school.  Most people came from the town and lived in the town with a few staying in the residences. A lot of people who didn't exactly know what they were doing were there only part time and worked at the same time. They either made up their mind and joined fulltime, continued parttime until they finished, or just dropped out completely.  It prevented the really terrible debt situations that some people get into (although there was definitely debt).  There were also a lot of older students (meaning anywhere from mid-late 20s to a couple who were into their sixties).  This proved a positive experience as it really allowed for a truer 'diversity' of students.  

There are certain times when the standard of work handed in is so bad, I question whether the student should have passed high school. I'm not sure exactly what they're teaching kids now a days (well sex ed clearly), but it is not a thorough understanding of proper grammar or a reasoned argument. 

[Gabriela]

I don't hear it as much in reading Canadian sources as I have seen in American ones, but there's this insistence on the "college experience".  Now, I don't know what the hell they actually mean by this, but I have the feeling it's a combination of a desire to be free-r from the constraints of ones parents as well as experimenting in various ways while trying to figure out what they're doing in life.  As Gabriela says, a very expensive endeavour.

 

Where I went to uni, it was a wild mix of a standard uni + a trade school.  Most people came from the town and lived in the town with a few staying in the residences. A lot of people who didn't exactly know what they were doing were there only part time and worked at the same time. They either made up their mind and joined fulltime, continued parttime until they finished, or just dropped out completely.  It prevented the really terrible debt situations that some people get into (although there was definitely debt).  There were also a lot of older students (meaning anywhere from mid-late 20s to a couple who were into their sixties).  This proved a positive experience as it really allowed for a truer 'diversity' of students.  

There are certain times when the standard of work handed in is so bad, I question whether the student should have passed high school. I'm not sure exactly what they're teaching kids now a days (well sex ed clearly), but it is not a thorough understanding of proper grammar or a reasoned argument. 

You're absolutely right. In America, we build golden cities on hills where teenagers come to extend their adolescence. They've been taught to pass tests, so they get to live in the city on a hill. If you ask them to think or write or utter a coherent sentence here, they call you mean and unfair and biased, because all their lives, everyone has said they're exceptional. They're told they're all grown up adults as they continue behaving like children.

I think it was Credo (sorry, Credo, if I'm wrong!) who recently said that Millennials aren't buying into the system. I disagree 100%. They're completely buying into the system. It's just a different system than we had growing up. They play the test game and the grade complaint game and rely on it to get them through. They don't want the kinds of jobs in the kinds of organizations we had because technology should have changed all that long ago, and it has to some extent. Systems are big, so they take longer to change than individuals, but they see what the system's becoming, and that's what they want. That's not revolutionary. It's exactly what we did.

I think what students need today is to know deprivation. In most cases, the problems boil down to people being spoiled. The students I have who have known real trials in life don't care if they get a B. They do their best and keep a good attitude and prioritize the right things in life. I'm afraid to say I really feel like America needs a big, BIG war—on its own soil—or a total economic collapse before Americans will wake up to the realities of life and get their priorities straight.

Edited November 17, 2015 by Gabriela

[Ice_nine]

I'd like to read this whole article, but my American mind is too coddled.

[Era Might]

There are certain times when the standard of work handed in is so bad, I question whether the student should have passed high school. I'm not sure exactly what they're teaching kids now a days (well sex ed clearly), but it is not a thorough understanding of proper grammar or a reasoned argument. 

I mean this as a serious question: does it take 12 years to teach someone how to make a reasoned argument? I don't think so...which is to say, I don't think the problem is a failure in pedagogy. When I was a kid wrestling was a big thing...we'd recap it in the lunchroom, argue about matches, etc. Kids know how to argue, reason, compete, debate, etc. I don't think the educational process really adds anything to that...building a "reasoned argument" in an essay is about learning a code for speaking in an academic setting, not about one's intelligence, creativity, interest, etc. Same with proper grammar...it doesn't enliven any kid's life in any real way. A kid who speaks like a country bumpkin is speaking from his nature...to "clean him up" is just to make him more presentable for the job market, which may be necessary, but it doesn't enrich his life or make proper grammar or reasoned argument anything he should take any particular interest in as a kid...what does he know about the job market? That's for adults to mold him into over 12 years...but in the process, they probably knock his natural, common sense out more than they instill format and process. Would "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" be worth reading if Huck talked in proper grammar? And yet, in "teaching" the novel in school, there's this bizarre irony where Huck Finn is being taught in order to civilize these kids for the job market. How should a young kid from the ghetto feel when the main business of his life is to clean himself up so that he can be presentable for an adult world that has no presence or basis in his real life community and experience? This is a bit different from the context of the OP, but I think it's the same process in universities...young people are being instilled with format and process...which, even if it's in the name of noble ideals like equality and diversity, still amounts to artificial programming for society.

And just to add, RE: your reference to sex ed, that's a great point...because if there is anything more absurd in life, it's the idea that sex can be taught. But you can't teach sex anymore than you can teach reasoned argument and good speech, because when you teach them, they turn into empty code and process. They are things that have to spring from our natures, but schools are meant to mold us into a mass or common nature.

Edited November 17, 2015 by Era Might

[NadaTeTurbe]

Gabriela, you said : "where teenagers come to extend their adolescence", and that's what bother me with the concept of "campus". here, college is a school, period. People have their rooms in the city, there's no music/sport (in fact, there's a little, but people prefers to do it with association than with college), there's only school. It means that if, like me, you don't want to see only people of your own age, it's possible - I volunteer with adults, I play music in an adult group, etc... There's not this mindset of "young people living with young people and spending their time with other young people". I don't know if I'm clear. I'm not. There's private school here who want to imitate the concept of campus. I visited one, once, and it felt... childish. I'm 19, I don't want to be treated like a teenager or a young adult. You can't become an adult if you're not treated like one. 
Also, I agree so much with you. In France, you have normal school until 14. At 14, you can choose between a "CAP" to learn a manual work (cook, plumber, etc...), or school. At 16, it's the same, you can choose between a "baccalauréat professionnel ou technologique", who are more concrete, or normal school (baccalauréat général = it's hard). And there is SO MUCH people who would have been so happy at a CAP or a baccalauréat professionnel, but they are in a baccalauréat général, where they are bored, bad students. All what ? Because everybody say that CAP students and manual works are for stupid people, wich is so wrong. My brother did a CAP to be a cook, it was his choice, and the mothers of other students in his class stopped to speak with my mother because she was "the mother of the boy who will do a CAP". Now my brother is a cook, he had always had a job and he have a very good salary... not a looser.