I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me
vox.com
vox.com
When I was in school, we watched Schindlers's List. Not when we were young, but when it was thought we were old enough to appreciate it. Talk about a trigger warning. It's literally a graphic portrayal of one of the most terrible things people have done, but we watched it because it's important to be challenged and grow. I worry that's no longer the case. I really really hope I'm just being a typical "old person" and that I'm wrong.
The other area where I fundamentally disagree with the concept of microagression and trigger warnings is that there is a popular concept that people have the right to feel a certain way. They don't. Some people suffer from "Lepidopterophobia", fear of butterflies. Their feelings are 100% real and in fact, should you be around someone suffering from Lepidopterophobia try and be considerate. However as a society we should make no attempt to remove discussion of butterflies from public places or classrooms. People suffering from Lepidopterophobia have no inherent right to keep the rest of us from enjoying butterflies. Under the ADA it might make sense to provide them with reasonable accommodations if a psychiatrist has determined they are suffering from Lepidopterophobia but that's about it.
I'd implore people to try and keep some of these ideas separate in their head. There are people suffering from PTSD and I'm sure there are situations that trigger their PTSD (4th of July explosions, dimly lit jogging pathways, men) and cause them to feel some terrible mental anguish. Society is under no obligation to remove those triggers from their life.
I keep saying that society is obliged to do this and not obliged to do that. I should clarify what I base this reasoning off of. When society decides to keep people safe by outlawing their murder they are saying that a certain behavior is basically never ok because it's intrinsically harmful. Second hand smoke is intrinsically harmful. Peanuts are not, though for many people they are quite harmful.
When somebody avoids a certain topic that makes people feel bad there's no end to that slippery slope. If we decide that one person's internal state is sufficient reason to censor people then there is literally no such thing as free speech anymore. That's a price I'm not willing to pay for one person's comfort.
Education is there to benefit the student, sure, but society has a very large stake in educating its population. Its called a positive externality.
This is a matter of public policy and society should be regulating this stuff. Now try doing that in a partisan political climate, where we can't even agree that creationism should not be on any curriculum.
Ideally the college experience should be a transformative one in which the student has a chance to progress beyond the worldview they grew up with in their parent's home, by learning new things in a fresh, neutral setting.
But when it comes down to it there are always going to be some people who are so entrenched in their current world view that they refuse to consider anything outside of it. In that case there are plenty of options for them. If someone wants to learn creationist worldviews in a college setting and have professors tell him that evolution is "just a theory" then there are religious universities they can go to for that. If they want to learn conservative worldview or liberal worldview only they have options to make that happen. If you are willing to pay money for a flawed, narrow minded education, and there are enough others like you to create a market, then there will be an institution that will serve you in order to get your money.
Of course if the student chooses one of these myopic routes they are wasting their money by missing out on a tremendous opportunity for self improvement by learning about the world and other people's viewpoints on it.
But what do you expect when the student is the "customer".
The consumerization of higher education affects all aspects of collegiate life. Proper discourse is seen as inefficient, prone to upsetting the "workforce", or disagreeable to funding sources. Issues that would be considering opportunities to teach, discuss, or research are now discussed in terms of student gains, funding gains, dropout rates, etc.
> This is a matter of public policy and society should be regulating this stuff. Now try doing that in a partisan political climate, where we can't even agree that creationism should not be on any curriculum.
You're right there really isn't much of a chance of changing this any time soon. As the author puts it, "[right] now, there's nothing much to do other than sit on our hands and wait for the ascension of conservative political backlash...", so we're just gonna have to wait/hope for the tide to turn.