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> If you ask current students, and many administrators and faculty, what the goals of their colleges are, you will have to wait some time before hearing “knowle
by cbanek 7y ago
> If you ask current students, and many administrators and faculty, what the goals of their colleges are, you will have to wait some time before hearing “knowledge.”
And yet, costing more than ever. For what? It's not like people are learning a lot more by paying a lot more.
When I was in college I thought it was more interesting and valuable from the conflict on campus. I'll call it conflict, too. People who were actually having differences with each other, and saying them, many times passionately if not angrily. Now it seems like people are so worried about offending each other they'd rather say nothing at all, which seems to defeat the point of having a diverse campus. If you have a diverse campus but everyone says the same thing, is it really diverse?
I also think the skills of being able to deal with, work with, and learn from people that are different from you (and possibly outright hate you, for reasons that may or may not be "valid") were some of the more valuable skills I learned in college. College was a lot more real world than say, high school. When you get out into the real world, nobody cares about your safe spaces, trigger warnings, and microaggressions. You have to find your own way, and fight for your own causes.
- hos234 7y agoWhat has changed since you were in college, is that everyone is much more hooked into a network, where every misguided thought or utterance is broadcast to everyone on the network, and immediately pseudo evaluated through likes/views/retweets/upvotes etc. That was never the case, when I went to college and said/thought/did misguided things all the time. It's the wrong architecture to educate anyone. The only thing such environments, do is produce insecurity, defensiveness and rebellion on large scales. The reaction to which is "safe spaces, trigger warnings, and microaggressions". And then we get reactions to those reactions, rather than focusing on the underlying change in architecture that has happened.
- cbanek 7y ago> every misguided thought or utterance is broadcast to everyone on the network, and immediately pseudo evaluated through likes/views/retweets/upvotes I really think you're spot on with this one. Plus, not only are they evaluated, they are persisted on the internet forever to remind people of your previous misguided thoughts. And you are what your search results say you are. Making mistakes is a natural, healthy part of learning. It seems like everyone is trying hard to not make mistakes, instead of learning from those mistakes.
- qball 7y ago>where every misguided thought or utterance is broadcast to everyone on the network, and immediately pseudo evaluated through likes/views/retweets/upvotes etc. You're not thinking maliciously enough. If you give a population not only an enhanced ability but also the excuses to concern troll for political points (which the Internet has wholeheartedly enabled, and that a certain political faction favors because of the lip service it pays to the disadvantaged regardless of whether or not it helps them) then that's exactly what you're going to encourage, and that's where the insecurity and defensiveness has come from. Amplify the wrong voices, reward those voices for being amplified, and you have a tiny cabal of bullies running the world under the banner of "progress". Fortunately, generations that have seen this bullying happen are starting to rebel against it (and everyone in the generation in which that behavior is dominant are mostly just trying to keep their heads down and avoid being targeted by the bullies), so I think there's still hope for education and the American way in general even though it might appear to waver for a bit.
- jamesrcole 7y ago> When you get out into the real world, nobody cares about your safe spaces, trigger warnings, and microaggressions. Is this because such things will never fly there, or because they haven't yet thoroughly propagated there? My concern is it's the latter.
- cbanek 7y agoIt's possible it could spread to general society, although I think: 1. Not everyone goes to college and gets indoctrinated like this thinking it is the way the world should be 2. America at least has free speech, which I really hope doesn't change (even for the people I hate and disagree with), and I think that is the opposite of all this safe space stuff. 3. We're so politically polarized, if anything I think the left could go this way, but the right probably won't. I don't think there will ever be a general safe space where everyone agrees. So IMHO, it just won't fly.
- matt-attack 7y agoExactly what I was thinking. At some point imagine when these kids hold all the jobs at CNN, all the positions in Congress, etc. We could see massive change.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mmjaa 7y agoJust look at history, its very clear: safe spaces are unsustainable. The petroleum-economy is a safe space, and its rapidly killing us all.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoI can assure you these things are all well and truly propagating through Silicon Valley's larger companies.
- notacoward 7y agoCan confirm. A lot of it's welcome and overdue, but there is also at least the potential for the kind of chilling effects the OP describes.