Uni's warned over 'snowflake' demands.

[FriendofBill]

Hi all,
Saw this article in the telegraph & thought of you.
First became alerted/concerned over the Tara Hudson prison lunacy.
At least there seems to be some kind of push back here?
Surprised to see an article anyway

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/08/universities-warned-snowflake-student-demands/

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/08/universities-warned-snowflake-student-demands/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_em

Mmm! I am not entirely certain what education is for these days.

"The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education." Martin Luther King Jr.

That always seemed right to me. But it has been commodified now, like much else.

"The highest result of education is tolerance" Helen Keller

Something some of today's educational snowflakes should consider!

It reminds me of Sussex university (home of lgbtqietc equality) recently banning sex-based pronouns. No he or she, strictly "they".

www.sussexstudent.com/democracy/policies/gender-inclusive-language/

Quote from link:
gender neutral language must be used in all areas of the student union

Special snowflake alert!

University now seems to be all about how to learn about "me me me".

Chicago university sent a letter to all its new starters explaining it wasn't a safe space, and the purpose of education was to be challenged.

I guarantee they will turn out more employable grads, better able to cope with life, than universities that pander to this bullshit

Students are paying a lot of money for their "education" why shouldn't they be satisfied?

Students are paying a lot of money for their "education" why shouldn't they be satisfied?

That attitude is part of the problem. Students and parents are behaving like customers not people who are being taught to think independently and to make sacrifices in order to acheive goals of self improvement.

This boggles my mind. What did the government think would happen when they chose to commodity HE? They have turned an education into something students are forced to 'buy' and then they wonder why students feel that they have a right to a service. If the government wants universities to be paid for then this is the result. We are taught to expect good service, we are taught that choice equals a rising of the bar and of the service we can expect. It pisses me off that people get all prissy when students behave as consumers. Students haven't chosen to be consumers of education. That has been forced upon them. The patronising concept of the 'snowflake student' is a direct result of the government's greed and desire to commodity education.

So busy ranting there I didn't spell check - commodify, not commodity.

You don't go to uni to think independantly. You become an entrepreneur to do that. You go to uni to become successful 'in the system' and as it's as much a retail system as it is a learning one, why shouldn't students get what they want?

Mide7 "Students are paying a lot of money for their "education" why shouldn't they be satisfied?"

www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/12/law-professor-responds-students-who-complained-about-her-black-lives-matter-shirt

grumpmitchell = link above addresses you, too. Just because you pay for education does not mean you are now a consumer of a good or service. Education, even paid for, is not a commodity.

You go to uni to become successful 'in the system' and as it's as much a retail system as it is a learning one, why shouldn't students get what they want?

Oh, do be brief. If that was your experience of university, then you weren't doing it right.

Xenophile - you didn't even learn how cite correctly at uni

I recently removed my DD from a paid-for EC activity where she was making no progress and was unhappy. I investigated, concluded that the whole concept was based on a false premise (and that learning was not going to happen before that was addressed and rectified) and withdrew my DD. Consumer behaviour. Why universities should be immune from this is unclear to me!

I think times have changed. Uni used to be about being taught to think independently but it's now about getting a job. In my opinion young people don't go to uni to be "challenged" they go to get a name on their cv to open doors.

This New Yorker article alarmed me when I read it last year. Demanding trigger warnings on Greek Mythology??

It makes sense that since Higher Education in the USA has always been a commodity the situation would be even more extreme.

But the things that will make students satisfied in the short term, and employable in the long term are different.

Universities should be measured on post grad employment rates

Why shouldn't students get what they want?

Because, and I'm trying to be kind here...it's very likely that their picture of what will serve them well in the world is...unformed. Nascent. Incomplete. (what I really want to type is "they have no fucking idea what's in store for them", I know I sure as hell didn't!)

But I agree that their arriving at this opinion is no fault of their own, it's a result of the school and home environments that they're being brought up in, and the relentless march of the market through education.

Daily - I suspect you think you're being amusing in some way. Let me disabuse you of that notion.

Chicago university sent a letter to all its new starters explaining it wasn't a safe space, and the purpose of education was to be challenged.

Hooray for a bit of sanity!

So-called 'safe spaces' are dangerous. The only 'safe spaces' should be literal ones - women's refuges etc - and stop this puerile anti-free speech nonsense.

To paraphrase the Rolling Stones . Students may not get what they want at University but they must just find they get what they need. Being challenged isn't meant to be comfortable but is essential for personal & academic growth.

It's not just the whole safe space nonsense, it goes much wider than this. I had a friend ranting to me the other week - she is at the "theoretical" end of her discipline. Her university superiors don't want her teaching courses on this - even though it's the glue that holds the practical side of things together and places everything in context - because the students find it hard, get low marks, then write bad reviews - which affects the university's place in the league tables.

It's a tendency I saw forming 15 or so years ago when I left university teaching, and I think it's got much much worse since then. I loved teaching, I was extremely good at it, I had students come up to me at graduation to say how much they'd enjoyed being stretched intellectually, I even had one student come to thank me for my perfectly timed kick-up-the-arse in his second year which had made him start working properly! But I wouldn't be allowed to teach that way in today's universities.

It reminds me of a situation my dsis found herself in. She is an exam invigilator in schools, colleges and unis. The most demanding students are not the year 10s or the college students who have returned to learning after many years. It is the uni students. One young man protested strongly at not being able to keep his phone with him and switched on during an exam. His reasoning was that he had paid for his course and thus the qualification so it shouldn't matter if he bent the exam rules. In his mind, paying his fees meant he was a customer purchasing a degree. Gobsmacking.

A teacher I know says that it appals him to see the cosseting of the young within the education system. He says they are going to face the toughest realities since the generation who grew up during WWII but are less equipped than any generation in history. It's horrifying.