{"id":1214,"date":"2015-08-13T11:24:47","date_gmt":"2015-08-13T11:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/virtualactivism.org\/education\/?p=1214"},"modified":"2016-04-28T10:54:53","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T10:54:53","slug":"are-we-sterilizing-student-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/virtualactivism.org\/education\/are-we-sterilizing-student-minds\/","title":{"rendered":"are we sterilizing student minds?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you know these terms: microaggressions, trigger warnings, emotional reasoning, fortune-telling, catastrophization, mental filtering? Read The Coddling of the American Mind<\/a><\/em>.It is an essay in the Atlantic <\/em>written by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, September 2015 Issue. It is about the sterilization of the student mind before leaving college in favor of an absurd level of political correctness that even affects how and what you teach. I cannot imagine it in teaching literature for example – or the humanities in general [political science, anthropology, sociology, history.]<\/p>\n

The essay tackles the following questions: What exactly are the effects of this new protectiveness on the students themselves<\/i>? Does it benefit the people it is supposed to help?<\/p>\n

Of course in the Trump-winning world where political correctness is derided, the essay might seem like yet another attack on PC. However the authors are quick to note the difference between PC on the one hand and VP or vindictive protectiveness on the other:<\/p>\n

vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong. The harm may be more immediate, too. A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes of depression and anxiety. The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically <\/em>[my emphasis].<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the authors note,\u00a0 “social media makes it extraordinarily easy to join crusades, express solidarity and outrage, and shun traitors.” While this is a general statement it has a profound effect on teaching:<\/p>\n

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..social media has also fundamentally shifted the balance of power in relationships between students and faculty; the latter increasingly fear what students might do to their reputations and careers by stirring up online mobs against them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There is a list of those ‘triggers’ at the end of the article that is noteworthy eg.<\/p>\n