"Kids today"

[Dan H]

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.”

...

In 2013, a task force composed of administrators, students, recent alumni, and one faculty member at Oberlin College, in Ohio, released an online resource guide for faculty (subsequently retracted in the face of faculty pushback) that included a list of topics warranting trigger warnings. These topics included classism and privilege, among many others. The task force recommended that materials that might trigger negative reactions among students be avoided altogether unless they “contribute directly” to course goals, and suggested that works that were “too important to avoid” be made optional.

...

The comments are all really great as well. I think this one is on to something:

I hypothesize that colleges are coddling students because their goals have shifted from one of providing higher learning to a business model that milks students for every drop of grandpa's inheritance and irremovable student debt they can. With teachers being easy to replace, why wouldn't college administrations fire them then risk losing the tuition?

You keep your customers happy. If that means treating them like infants, so be it, I guess.

[Indy]

I don't think anything in that first paragraph you quoted has anything to do with "heads of various schools modifying their business practices." It says they were in a presentation where people gave them examples of microaggressions. There was nothing there saying they are changing the way they do business.

Same thing with the 2nd paragraph. Putting out a "resource guide" including info about trigger warnings, that was later pulled, isn't leaders changing their business models.

As for the last statement, the key word is that the author is "hypothesiz[ing]" this is why anyone is even talking about microagressions and trigger warnings.

I guess we just see this differently. I saw it as an opinion piece saying why millennials suck, with lots of "sources" of examples saying that political correctness has gone too far and it hurting our world. And maybe my life is sheltered too much from millennials (even though I interact with them almost every day at work), but I just don't see it.

Are you seeing this Dan in the people you work with? Are they so offended by non-offensive comments that they are unable to work in your industry without being coddled?

[Dan H]

Not so much, but at 37 I'm one of the younger people in my division.

I don't think the piece is saying millennials suck at all, it's saying that by pandering to these over-the-top expressions of PC we are creating a dangerous precedent as a society. I mean, seriously, finding Things Fall Apart to be triggering? That's insane, it's a classic of African literature. I read it in high school, for Pete's sake! And the great irony of it all is that a lot of this is coming from the same people who (rightly) decry bans of library books!

[Nodack]

I saw a good movie last night called Midnight In Paris with Owen Wilson and directed by Woodie Allen.

Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is a screenwriter and aspiring novelist. Vacationing in Paris with his fiancee (Rachel McAdams), he has taken to touring the city alone. On one such late-night excursion, Gil encounters a group of strange -- yet familiar -- revelers, who sweep him along, apparently back in time, for a night with some of the Jazz Age's icons of art and literature. The more time Gil spends with these cultural heroes of the past, the more dissatisfied he becomes with the present.

He is a aspiring novelist with zero confidence who somehow goes back in time at midnight every night and meets all these famous people like Hemingway, Picasso, Cole Porter, etc and gets to hang out with them. He is blown away and wants to stay in that time period. His life isn't that great. His fiancé treats him like dirt and isn't generally happy. He is writing a novel, but has no confidence in his abilities. He meets a girl from that time and kind of falls in love. The two of them one night go back even further one night and she gets to go to a time before hers and falls in love with that time period. He questions her on why she would think the earlier time was better than her time period with all the greats in it. She doesn't think her time period is anything special. She hangs out with Picaso and Hemingway all the time who are both in love with her, but she is bored with her time period. Owen Wilson is like, "Are you crazy, look at all the greats from this period." She is like, "Meh". The earlier time period for her was a better time period.

That's when Owen Wilson figures out that people from their own time period dream of the past as something special and aren't that excited about the times they are living in now. He finally realizes that life is what you make it in any period. He dumps his fiance and falls for another girl in Paris and lives happily ever after in his time period.

I liked the message of the movie. People are the same in any time period. Lots of things change over time, but people are generally the same IMO. People living in whatever age in the past that was so golden probably didn't see it as rosie as we do after the fact. We see our times as troubling times with all the outside threats, politics, economy, violence, race relations, etc. In reality there will always be all those things happening in any time period. Kids today will grow up talking about how they had so much more respect for things than the new kids of today do. The new music of the day will be awful compared to the music that they grew up listening to that their parents hated. Our parents hated our music, their parents hated their music and so on and so on...

Today is what we make it. It is our Golden age. You only get one life. Might as well enjoy it some instead of freaking out over all issues. The issues will always be there no matter what. You can't make people act the way you want them to act. Rule #1, never stress over what you have no control over.

[Ghost]

The whole idea behind "PC" speech and trigger warnings is not to coddle anyone. The goal of education (and really, of ALL communication) is to get your message (the content the students are supposed to learn) across to the audience (the students) in a way that will be accessible to them, so that they understand it. If something in that content is going to prevent a student from processing it, or if it is presented in a way that creates a barrier to them processing it in the necessary way, this is a failure of the person delivering the message -- not in the person who isn't understanding it. Communication is a two-way street, and you can't just vomit information in any way you want an expect it to be understood. (That said, a fair bit of the burden is also on the audience, who needs to make a good faith effort to understand the message that is intended beyond the means of delivery -- but considering how bad most adults are at this, I'm not surprised that kids have a hard time with it).

When I was in college, education was pretty traditional -- professor up in front of the room, spewing facts at us while we madly try to take notes/not fall asleep. Sure, there were office hours where you could go to actually talk about things, but for the most part, there was no point. There was no teaching us how to actually think (with the exception of a handful of really exceptional profs/assistants that I had).

I feel the trend today is moving to correct this. "PC" speech and trigger warnings may rub some people the wrong way, because "Dammit, we didn't have to worry about that and I turned out just fine." But that doesn't mean there isn't a better way to learn. Common Core math is a perfect example. It teaches multiple ways to tackle a problem, helping students to actually understand what is going on rather than just a slow process to memorize that, while effective, is arcane and weird to most people. And BOY do people like to rant about the "new math!" But it's a lack of understanding (or willingness to think about) of it that causes the outrage, just as with the concept of "PC" speech and trigger warnings -- when in fact, it really is more effective than the old ways.

[Flagrant Fowl]

I teach university students in Korea, and while they have their own cultural and generational quirks, they're nothing like the author described.

The risk-reward of teaching at a public institution is depressing these days. I was frequently wrecked with nerves during the short time I spent teaching public school in Oregon. Even in a liberal state, addressing about something as basic as evolution is a chore.