Freedom of speech, a constitutional right many in the world have fought for and died for. Censorship rhymes with totalitarianism. I think we need to keep fighting for it and the fight starts from how we educate our children. We need to stop infantilising them. It doesn’t “matter” if they fall. They will fall. We need to make it so that they are able to get themselves back up.
“For anyone who believes in free speech, or for that matter education, this emergent backlash against trigger warnings is to be welcomed. However, over the past couple of weeks, New York University investigated a student’s anti-racist art installation for racism, and women’s studies students at North Carolina State University were told they will be marked down if they use sexist words like ‘mankind’ in their essays. In the UK, the academic year has barely started and already Manchester students attending a fancy-dress club night have been banned from wearing bindis and feather headdresses.
The NUS organisers, backed by the Black and Minority Ethnic Students Campaign, argued that ‘to wear an item or to attempt to embody a culture that does not belong to your own personal systems of traditions can be perceived as mockery of others’ culture’. The same argument has been used to ban sombreros from the University of East Anglia.
That restrictions on students’ freedom of expression continue to mount up at the same time as trigger warnings and the culture of ‘coddling’ is being challenged calls into question whether faculty resolutions or even presidential declarations have the power to turn the tide on campus censorship. Current demands for protection from words and ideas stem from the perception of students as emotionally fragile and the proliferation of identity politics within the academy. Unfortunately, neither of these trends is being taken up to any significant extent.
Many of today’s students arrive at university infantilised and unable to cope independently with everyday life. Professor Peter Gray, author of the blog ‘Freedom to Learn’, notes that ‘students’ emotional fragility has become a serious problem’. He argues: ‘They have not been given the opportunity to get into trouble and find their own way out, to experience failure and realise they can survive it, to be called bad names by others and learn how to respond without adult intervention.’ Rather than encouraging students to grow up, universities reinforce this infantilisation through low academic expectations, compulsory workshops in relationships and sexual consent, restrictions on the sale of alcohol and even newspapers, and a proliferation of childish wellbeing initiatives such as petting zoos.
Source
The NUS organisers, backed by the Black and Minority Ethnic Students Campaign, argued that ‘to wear an item or to attempt to embody a culture that does not belong to your own personal systems of traditions can be perceived as mockery of others’ culture’. The same argument has been used to ban sombreros from the University of East Anglia.
That restrictions on students’ freedom of expression continue to mount up at the same time as trigger warnings and the culture of ‘coddling’ is being challenged calls into question whether faculty resolutions or even presidential declarations have the power to turn the tide on campus censorship. Current demands for protection from words and ideas stem from the perception of students as emotionally fragile and the proliferation of identity politics within the academy. Unfortunately, neither of these trends is being taken up to any significant extent.
Many of today’s students arrive at university infantilised and unable to cope independently with everyday life. Professor Peter Gray, author of the blog ‘Freedom to Learn’, notes that ‘students’ emotional fragility has become a serious problem’. He argues: ‘They have not been given the opportunity to get into trouble and find their own way out, to experience failure and realise they can survive it, to be called bad names by others and learn how to respond without adult intervention.’ Rather than encouraging students to grow up, universities reinforce this infantilisation through low academic expectations, compulsory workshops in relationships and sexual consent, restrictions on the sale of alcohol and even newspapers, and a proliferation of childish wellbeing initiatives such as petting zoos.
Source
No comments:
Post a Comment