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The Snowflake Generation in simple terms

5 years ago

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind-1007733893

This is from 2015 and doesn't really contain anything anyone here doesn't already know, but it's a good overview that explains in very simple language just how broken college environments have become, with an introduction to the outrage culture and their safe spaces and microaggressions and just how damaging and anti-intellectual that is. It would be a good primer for parents etc or anyone in your life that's just out of the loop on this kind of thing.

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The press has typically described these developments as a resurgence of political correctness. That’s partly right, although there are important differences between what’s happening now and what happened in the 1980s and ’90s. That movement sought to restrict speech (specifically hate speech aimed at marginalized groups), but it also challenged the literary, philosophical, and historical canon, seeking to widen it by including more-diverse perspectives. The current movement is largely about emotional well-being. More than the last, it presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological harm. The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally. You might call this impulse vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse.

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Attempts to shield students from words, ideas, and people that might cause them emotional discomfort are bad for the students. They are bad for the workplace, which will be mired in unending litigation if student expectations of safety are carried forward. And they are bad for American democracy, which is already paralyzed by worsening partisanship. When the ideas, values, and speech of the other side are seen not just as wrong but as willfully aggressive toward innocent victims, it is hard to imagine the kind of mutual respect, negotiation, and compromise that are needed to make politics a positive-sum game.

***

“The presumption that students need to be protected rather than challenged in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual.” --the American Association of University Professors

It sort of goes off on a tangent about the benefits of cognitive therapy at the end but whatever. I just find it kind of funny/terrifying that even though it's only been three years, no mainstream publication would dare release anything like this today.

Victim

The Snowflake Generation in simple terms

5 years ago

I’ve never heard of Get Pocket, so I assume it’s not mainstream.

Mizal

The Snowflake Generation in simple terms

5 years ago

The article is from The Atlantic, Get Pocket is some kind of archival thing.

Victim

The Snowflake Generation in simple terms

5 years ago

Ah, okay. I didn’t click into the link. In any case, The Atlantic tends to tolerate a wider variety of viewpoints from its writers than most MSM sources. Here are 2 articles from the Atlantic about political correctness written this year.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/572581/

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/572866/

And a follow up to the article you linked, also from 2018.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/570505/

Chanbot

The Snowflake Generation in simple terms

5 years ago

Atlas Shrugged

undr

The Snowflake Generation in simple terms

5 years ago

I heard about the Ovid's case because it was widely reported (and made fun of) even here in Italy.

This is one of the very few problems my country doesn't have and that I think won't have in the near future. That article and the new one Victim's linked are very interesting as I wasn't really up to date with how the situation in US colleges was. One of the many valid points it brings up is that those trigger warnings can increase anxiety about something that's actually much more innocuous. And yeah, if someone is bound to have an actual medical event caused by PTSD a content warning is not enough.

What's really absurd imo is that those books are read by highschoolers without any complaints, while this is college we're talking about ffs, it should be the pinnacle of learning. How can you learn about literature without reading it?

I know it's not the same thing but a couple weeks ago our Comparative Anatomy professor showed us a pretty disturbing photo without any warning, and only after having finished that part of the lecture he added "Oh yes, sorry if the picture was a bit crude, but you need to see these things." Ngl that photo was a little shocking for a second, but then the fact that it was a lecture and we were looking at it from a scientific perspective made me able to look at it calmly and analyze it as part of the lesson.

It's easy enough to understand that by censoring study material you're cutting off your knowledge.