LogGrad98
Well-Known Member
Contributor
20-21 Award Winner
2022 Award Winner
2023 Award Winner
2024 Award Winner
I found this article and thought it touched on some very important topics. It is nearly impossible to pick out just one quote, and yes it is a long read, but it really hits the high-points of political correctness and our current "freedom-from-offense" culture. Specifically it addresses the fact that this indoctrination is happening on campuses around the country, and is actually student and not administration driven for the most part.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
Here are a few select quotes:
This article had a real effect on me. I think it succinctly sums up what is wrong with the way the politically correct movement has gone, as well as the effect of decades of coddling has had on our kids. The effect of the "abducted child syndrome" parents who feel it is child abuse to let a kid walk 6 blocks to a friend's house and will not hesitate to call the police, for example, helicopter parenting for another. These kids now enter college thinking they have a litigious right to not ever be offended and therefore lose the ability, or never develop it, to think critically.
I thought it was important enough to share on JF. Please take the time to read it. It is worth it. Enjoy JazzFanzerz.
Gee I sure hope I didn't offend anyone.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
Here are a few select quotes:
Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.
This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014–15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions. The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.”
Claims of a right not to be offended have continued to arise since then, and universities have continued to privilege them. In a particularly egregious 2008 case, for instance, Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis found a white student guilty of racial harassment for reading a book titled Notre Dame vs. the Klan. The book honored student opposition to the Ku Klux Klan when it marched on Notre Dame in 1924. Nonetheless, the picture of a Klan rally on the book’s cover offended at least one of the student’s co-workers (he was a janitor as well as a student), and that was enough for a guilty finding by the university’s Affirmative Action Office.
This article had a real effect on me. I think it succinctly sums up what is wrong with the way the politically correct movement has gone, as well as the effect of decades of coddling has had on our kids. The effect of the "abducted child syndrome" parents who feel it is child abuse to let a kid walk 6 blocks to a friend's house and will not hesitate to call the police, for example, helicopter parenting for another. These kids now enter college thinking they have a litigious right to not ever be offended and therefore lose the ability, or never develop it, to think critically.
I thought it was important enough to share on JF. Please take the time to read it. It is worth it. Enjoy JazzFanzerz.
Gee I sure hope I didn't offend anyone.