Diversity course at University of Kent

[andyoldlabour]

The university of Kent is introducing a mandatory 4 hour diversity course for students where it will be concentrating on topics such as White Privilege, Microaggressions and Pronouns.
Apparently seconhand clothes could be seen as an example of "white privilege".
"The course, titled Expect Respect and seen by The Telegraph, includes a white privilege quiz where participants are asked to pick which of 13 options are societal benefits allegedly enjoyed by white people in the UK.
If the student ticks all 13, a gold star is awarded, and if not, a button appears directing them to retry.
Staff have also been emailed by faculty managers to consider adding trigger warnings to exam papers, and carry out “pronoun checks, make a note of them and use them correctly” when meeting new students, such as they/them or ze/zir."

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/wearing-second-hand-clothes-an-example-of-white-privilege-students-told/ar-AAOSULh?ocid=mailsignout&li=AAnZ9Ug

Is anyone suing?

This is ideological indoctrination, pure and simple.

I couldn't resist:

Rod Liddle has something to say about it in today's Sunday Times. (Also a bit about the hypocrisy of Starmer's latest pronouncement about James Bond). Despite having a subscription I'm not sure how to do a share token so if anyone can enlighten me I'll give it a go.

Click on the envelope icon underneath the article and it will open an email with the share token. You'll need to sign into your email account. Copy and and paste.

The Kent module also contains this gem: "Sex is, in fact, a diverse, multi-expressive form of identity, and a full spectrum." There are two possible answers to this on the test, true and false. When you click false, you are told you are wrong.

Oh my word. This is a university? A centre of learning? A place where students can progress their critical thinking?

@Igneococcus

Click on the envelope icon underneath the article and it will open an email with the share token. You'll need to sign into your email account. Copy and and paste.

Couldn't find an envelope or indeed any icon below the article. Found a share thingy above - let's see if this works:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dda2802c-239e-11ec-891d-7de285af3d9c?shareToken=7e5ad1f390173a68bf7242b18257705f

I have a share thingie above and below. I never noticed the one above before.

Oh my word. This is a university? A centre of learning? A place where students can progress their critical thinking?

Worryingly it’s also a place where degrees are offered in both English and biology.

Claire Foges in the Times today:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ef4ac40c-2483-11ec-b294-93d60efb4f97?shareToken=2e43ad9eaa3aae7fe2882d6b04ef81bb

Kent lecturer here, I don't think any of us had any input into the module. Think it was all bought in or devised by the edi people. Our teaching and degree materials are not this bad

Do you, nevertheless, feel a bit embarrassed, drwitch?

@merrymouse

Oh my word. This is a university? A centre of learning? A place where students can progress their critical thinking?

Worryingly it’s also a place where degrees are offered in both English and biology.

And medicine, as I think I mentioned upthread.

Thanks for the share token for today's Times article. She doesn't pull her punches, and nor should she.

Yes and cross, but need to defend our academics who are not responsible for this.

It's all a big fat con; a way for the wealthy to cash in on oppression and retain their cash; a way to divert attention from the selfishness and greed of those with and to imply that a white poor person has some sort of privilege and so the 'haves' can continue having.

Nicely done, I salute the privileged and educated for pulling the con trick of the century

What I also think, Highame, is that it is a form of etiquette to shut out the less privileged and allow them to be excluded. It’s no longer acceptable to sneer at the working class for using the wrong knife and fork but you can despise them for using the wrong language, which is even better. It’s no coincidence that the top private schools are embracing ‘social justice’ (the irony hurts).
That absurd thing about second hand clothes which assumes everyone taking the test is middle class could not be more blatant.

@merrymouse

Oh my word. This is a university? A centre of learning? A place where students can progress their critical thinking?

Worryingly it’s also a place where degrees are offered in both English and biology.

Not to worry about the English degrees. The Expect Respect Crew are working on a new version of the Canterbury Tales to replace the old white supremicist and cisheteronormative tool of oppression. #CHAUCERMUSTFALL

The Drag Queen's Tale
The Asylum Seeker's Tale
The Wife Of Mogadishu

When I read the St Andrews material, the first thing I thought was that some of the ideas seemed dangerously close to infecting someone with distorted thinking, the very kind of distorted thinking that leads to significant mental health problems.

Take this, for example: "acknowledging your personal guilt is a useful start point in overcoming unconscious bias”.

We currently have an epidemic of mental health issues in this country. A decent proportion of that is down to people experiencing FOG (fear, obligation, guilt) over situations and relationships that they have no control over, where appropriate boundaries have dissolved.

Yet here we have a university telling students they should acknowledge "personal guilt". Over what? A crime they have committed? A person they have wronged?

No, over an unconscious bias they may hold, which is, by default, unconscious.

This shit is Kafkaesque/Stalinesque. Unconscious bias is portrayed as a social and moral thought crime, and they are asking students to denounce themselves to themselves and experience "personal guilt" over something that is not an actual crime nor may have affected anyone else.

It's like a new version of original sin, or Catholic guilt. The assumption here is that "you are a bad person, even if you didn't know it and treat people you meet well."

People spend thousands trying to rid themselves of these thoughts. They go to support groups, counselling, spend hours reading self-help books to try and eradicate these feeling of guilt and poor self worth.

And here is a university trying to fucking install it!

It's a travesty, this. It really is.

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel

What I also think, Highame, is that it is a form of etiquette to shut out the less privileged and allow them to be excluded. It’s no longer acceptable to sneer at the working class for using the wrong knife and fork but you can despise them for using the wrong language, which is even better. It’s no coincidence that the top private schools are embracing ‘social justice’ (the irony hurts). That absurd thing about second hand clothes which assumes everyone taking the test is middle class could not be more blatant.

Absolutely. It’s shutting out older people too which is very convenient.

Such sanctimonious shit.

Would not be at all surprised to learn that the people behind this are well-off and privately edcuated types of various ethnicities doing what their class has always done to higher education, moulding it to the shape of their values to promote their social and economic hegemony just like Gramsci and Stuart Hall told it.

And yes to packing.
Shame and guilt are not great motivators. It’s like someone’s trying to manufacture another health crisis to sell antidepressants.

And It’s again trying to put people in their place.

"Agreed. Think Dominic Cummings: a (white) man with power. He could afford to look scruffy and not follow the rules because he was already in a position of power."

This doesn't always scan though. Look at Boris: very privileged, very powerful, but there are constant disparaging remarks about his scruffy appearance. Same with Michael Foot and the mythic donkey jacket at the Cenotaph, also Corbyn got the same flack. Cherie Blair got a lot of stick for dressing badly.

It really depends on the audience.

dd is in the process of applying to university (St A is on her list) and, to me as a non-British person who did all her education including tertiary elsewhere (dp as well), so much of the process feels designed to keep the plebs out. Those fecking personal statements, how is a kid growing up somewhere in rural Scotland like dd ever going to compete with the kid who mentions their MP uncle in line two of their statement (in one of the examples dd looked at) and their extensive travels or their gazillions of work experience placements. Lockdown for the last years of high school didn't help either. One is talking about their love of practicing with the English warbow . I absolutely hate all about it.

Well I grew up in AFN- Scotland and managed ok. I was so oblivious!

It wasn’t only until I was sitting in the union bar with classmates who went grouse shooting, to RAF balls, whose daddy had bought them (and each sibling) a flat, and whose mums had names like Arabella and Marianna, thought ‘hellooooooo...’

I didn't mean once they are at university Kittenkong I meant specifically in their personal statements.
I was a postdoc at St A for a few years but I think the staff and students in the natural sciences are fairly indistinguishable from those at science departments elsewhere. There was one undergraduate student who was dropped off for lectures in a car driven by a chauffeur, to the great amusement of everybody.

I don’t actually remember what I put in a personal statement. I remember having an interview and blarbing on and on about god knows what. Maybe they just offered me a place to stop me talking...