We has got “a” new deegree pogrom!!! It is cawled You Studdies,, be-cose awl yiu gots to studdy “Is” Yore Selff!!!! Haow coool is “that”!”!??
Nhow yiu “can” spend five (^5^) yeers jist studdying Yore Selff!! The Deen she sayed “We has to Do “this” becuase Nothing Studdies it “is” tooo Harrd foar lots “of” “the” Stoodints! And sumb of Themb thay jist wowned up drinkin Fromb “the” Goal Fissh Pond and not lurning nothing and a fyew Of themb thay got Sick and thare famblys thay sooed The Collidge”!”!!
Butt frist they tryed jist “givving Out” deegrees foar nothing at awl “and” the Collidge it got sooed foar That tooo!!!!! Iff ownly “we” cood Get Rid “of” Famblys we wood awl be Beter Off!!!!
The grate Thing abowt You Studdies is,, It Is ***Flunck-Proof***!!! I meen haow can yiu possablee fale You Studdies!!!! Butt jist to maik Sure it “is” sucksestfull, the Stoodints thay whil be aloud to Graid Thembselffs!!! And jist In Caiss “that” doughnt whork ether, Stoodints who stil doughnt gett It,, thay whil has Mentaurs to hellp themb studdy thayrselffs!!!!!
I wunder iff i awt To chainge my Majer….?
I’m afraid a lot of colleges have been doing the equivalent of “you studies” for a long time. Students are being asked “How do you feel about this” instead of “What does this mean” or “How does this work” or “How does this relate to X,” and so on. By the time I retired, I realized that a large and growing minority of my students not only hadn’t been taught how to construct a logical argument but had been taught that logical arguments were bad because they were tools of the patriarchal racist heteronormative blah blah blah hegemony. I imagine that growing minority is now the majority — and the new minority is afraid to speak up.
Keep praying, sing louder, and keep working. What else can we do?
Some years ago, I registered for, and started, a certificate course in programming a specific family of networking hardware, from a local community college. One of the questions asked how I felt about a certain computer command. WTH?! I “feel” that if I enter the command properly, the computer will do what I want it to. I dropped that course, and passed the industry certification on my own. This was the most ridiculous thing I had ever seen.
But the ramifications of this are much greater. If I am asked to implement a new security measure, or build a new network, my feelings are meaningless. If we must reduce everything to feelings, I feel that if I don’t do my job, I will lose my source of income, so when I’m asked to take on a project, I feel grateful that I have a job.
I have experienced having subordinates resort to their feelings when asked to perform a task. As a rule, I would back the people whom reported to me, without exception, provided that they were working in accordance with their assignments. However, once someone decided that their feelings were part of the equation, they were on their own. Sorry, sunshine, but the workplace isn’t some self help workshop.
What is this “feelings” BS supposed to accomplish? I have avoided schools for some years now, so I never got exposed to that. What is it for? Do “educators” honestly not suspect what fools they are?
I don’t get it. Personally, I do not seek external validation, at every turn. This isn’t to suggest that I eschew external validation, but I see external validation as secondary to the strength of my own convictions. When people give a lot of attention to their own feelings, and choose to air their feelings at every opportunity, they are centering on themselves, instead of realizing that they are but one person, among billions, and that the feelings of others exist, as well.
When I go to the grocery store, the feelings of the person at the cash register have nothing to do with the transaction. I try to be considerate, but my purchase is a morally neutral transaction. I want stuff, the store has stuff and the cashier accepts money, in exchange for the stuff. How could it possibly be any simpler?
What I see happening, all around me, is an attempt to turn everything into a moral issue. If we dig deep enough, we can find something morally objectionable about everything. We live in a fallen world, and we can’t have moral perfection in this state. What we can do, is strive to make our contributions to civilizations as positive as possible.
When colleges implore their students to examine their feelings, they are inverting the process. If we want to feel good about ourselves, the starting point. Is to do things that benefit others. My job helps people, and there are people whose lives are better, in small part because of the contributions of my occupation. That feels good. Yes, I am paid for my contributions, and that pay is used to buy the goods and services of others. Essentially, we all take in one another’s laundry, at some point or another.
As I write this, today, I feel good, because I am able to do something useful, and I am able to support myself from my skills and knowledge. How could I improve upon that?
Sometimes it takes a true Diversity expert to find something to complain about.
I always told my students from the beginning that I didn’t want to hear about their “feeeeelings” on a topic (yes, I always screeched the word), but only about their ideas and the support for those ideas. Whenever a student slipped and said “I feel” in a paper or exam, I wrote in the margin, “Do you have a rational basis for this emotional reaction?” I added a smiley face to take some of the sting off, but they got the idea — and it actually became a kind of in-joke among us. One of my students told me she’d had a dream in which she was telling someone to use her brain, not her feeeeeelings — and she’d actually screeched the word the same way I always did. 🙂
However, I wasn’t so cheerful about the misuse of the words “feel/felt/feelings” in essays about Hamlet. I would point out that Hamlet spends the whole play trying to distinguish between his feelings and reality, and to say he “feels” something when he’s actually reasoning through an idea and refusing to go mindlessly with his emotions is to misrepresent what’s going on in the play. No smiley face here, just a call for revision — or, on an exam, points off.
Could you have knocked off points for wrong feelings?
By the way, the reason I haven’t been around much today is that by the time I got home from shopping, I was so exhausted that all I wanted to do was stretch out on the couch and sleep. I’m still tired. So I may not be back again until tomorrow afternoon — if I’m not too tired after my Saturday morning housecleaning. Too many chores, too little sleep.
It’s exceedingly cold and damp out here in Joisey today, and I’m running on empty… I feel your pain.