Mr. Furedi, an emeritus professor at England's University of Kent, argues that the ethos prevailing at many universities on both sides of the Atlantic is the culmination of an infantilizing paternalism that has defined education and child-rearing in recent decades. It is a pedagogy that from the earliest ages values, above all else, self-esteem, maximum risk avoidance and continuous emotional validation and affirmation. (Check your child's trophy case.) Helicopter parents and teachers act as though "fragility and vulnerability are the defining characteristics of personhood."
The devastating result: Young people are raised into an "eternal dependency." Parenting experts and educators insist that the views of all pupils must be unconditionally respected, never judged, regardless of their merit. They wield the unassailable power of a medical warning: Children, even young adults, simply can't handle rejection of their ideas, or hearing ones that cause the slightest "discomfort," lest they undergo "trauma."
It is not surprising to Mr. Furedi that today's undergraduates, having grown up in such an environment, should find any serious criticism, debate or unfamiliar idea to be "an unacceptable challenge to their personas." ...
Closing down free discourse and decent variety of thoughts does not really close down the free mind. What it does is two things: drive that discourse and other reasoning in to shut quarters where similar individuals essentially resound back what that discourse and thought is influencing the speaker and mastermind to think they are right, since everybody concurs with them in those shut quarters. And the second point is the speaker and scholar effectively working to advance influencing their discourse and thought more to well-spoken and convincing when they go up against their idealogical rivals rather than the ones who are doing the opressing talks.
ReplyDeleteThey never built up their capacity of influence, as in argumentative papers to write my essay fast about. That is the reason we have in the previous decade an entire slew of traditionalist speakers like Sarah Warner, Peter Rodriguez, Martha Emeralds and others to give some examples who regardless of whether you can't help contradicting them grudgingly need to concede they have a point.