Remember when the thing was to teach VIRTUE? Teach them virtue! So when the students are, essentially, taking up a moral view and acting on the basis of a moral view, which is to express disagreement and disapproval of certain views--that they have arguments are immoral (they can make arguments about their views!) this is bad because....they aren’t open-minded or something. And in fact, they are pretty fair to most views in my experience. I cannot be at all times (like now) because this swill has been shoveled at me for decades so I do lose patience with it. I don’t know why these people expect the students to be completely value-neutral about everything, to not let their values inform their responses to things. I also notice that the right has lost interest in the idea of teaching virtue or ethics or anything like this.
The whole thing is ridiculous, to be added to the gigantic ridiculous pile of invented narratives that serve some ideological purpose. The obvious solution is to give people job security but we have TENURE and this is not enough? (All universities should protect the speech of untenured people, preferably through unions). To anyone who has ever had to stand up for their ideas, and been in the minority, as some of us have many times, this is all absolutely ludicrous. The demand for deference to ideas is ludicrous, and the idea that if you have an unpopular view you are being persecuted if people disagree with you --even vehemently --is also ludicrous. It reminds me of the demand to execute vigilante justice. How do I manage to get through the day without the need to execute vigilante justice? Many of us seem to manage it and function without lethal means even though we are physically weak. In fact, we’re usually the ones who don’t seem to carry around weapons. Similarly, many of us with unpopular ideas have managed to be solo and powerless in institutions and have expressed our ideas, and simply been brave about it. And these professors with tenure cannot do that? It is absurd. They are the ones who are demanding to be coddled. I almost want to come up with some offensive view and teach classes just to prove I can do it --my students would deal with it in the usual way by saying I am wrong, and nothing else would happen--but it really wouldn’t be fair to my students to run such an experiment. I also hate the way they blame the things administrators do on students. This narrative only makes sense to certain kinds of people, although I admit there’s (for lack of a better term) a ‘generation gap’ and yes, maybe sometimes communication between someone my age and someone the age of the students doesn’t go off without a hitch. Perhaps professors and students get on each others’ nerves at times. But that’s life. I wish I could blow off their nonsense but unfortunately their nonsense has fueled many people vicious attacks on higher education recently so unfortunately I have to pay attention to it.
Remember when the thing was to teach VIRTUE? Teach them virtue! So when the students are, essentially, taking up a moral view and acting on the basis of a moral view, which is to express disagreement and disapproval of certain views--that they have arguments are immoral (they can make arguments about their views!) this is bad because....they aren’t open-minded or something. And in fact, they are pretty fair to most views in my experience. I cannot be at all times (like now) because this swill has been shoveled at me for decades so I do lose patience with it. I don’t know why these people expect the students to be completely value-neutral about everything, to not let their values inform their responses to things. I also notice that the right has lost interest in the idea of teaching virtue or ethics or anything like this.
there's always been a tension in education I think between teaching virtue and teaching deference, or in conflating the first with the second.
The whole thing is ridiculous, to be added to the gigantic ridiculous pile of invented narratives that serve some ideological purpose. The obvious solution is to give people job security but we have TENURE and this is not enough? (All universities should protect the speech of untenured people, preferably through unions). To anyone who has ever had to stand up for their ideas, and been in the minority, as some of us have many times, this is all absolutely ludicrous. The demand for deference to ideas is ludicrous, and the idea that if you have an unpopular view you are being persecuted if people disagree with you --even vehemently --is also ludicrous. It reminds me of the demand to execute vigilante justice. How do I manage to get through the day without the need to execute vigilante justice? Many of us seem to manage it and function without lethal means even though we are physically weak. In fact, we’re usually the ones who don’t seem to carry around weapons. Similarly, many of us with unpopular ideas have managed to be solo and powerless in institutions and have expressed our ideas, and simply been brave about it. And these professors with tenure cannot do that? It is absurd. They are the ones who are demanding to be coddled. I almost want to come up with some offensive view and teach classes just to prove I can do it --my students would deal with it in the usual way by saying I am wrong, and nothing else would happen--but it really wouldn’t be fair to my students to run such an experiment. I also hate the way they blame the things administrators do on students. This narrative only makes sense to certain kinds of people, although I admit there’s (for lack of a better term) a ‘generation gap’ and yes, maybe sometimes communication between someone my age and someone the age of the students doesn’t go off without a hitch. Perhaps professors and students get on each others’ nerves at times. But that’s life. I wish I could blow off their nonsense but unfortunately their nonsense has fueled many people vicious attacks on higher education recently so unfortunately I have to pay attention to it.