Tag: higher education

kaizykat:

bluepeets:

https://twitter.com/jnthnwwlsn/status/1066854113500192769

ID: A Twitter thread by Dr. Jonathan Wilson, an adjunct professor at Marywood University and the University of Scranton. It reads:

I’ll chime in with so many others today: In my decade or so teaching college, I’ve never had a student ask for a “trigger warning” or “safe space.”

You know what I *have* had students say?

I’ve had a combat veteran make sure I understood he needed a seat in a far corner – where he could see the doorway at all times

I’ve taught the history of the Holocaust in a class where a student had just disclosed that her father was murdered a week before the semester started.

I’ve had a military veteran apologize for missing class due to a court date related to anger management problems.

I’ve had excellent students suddenly struggle just to get to class after experiencing sexual violence or the suicide of a friend during the semester.

I’ve had a student call me in tears after she forgot to complete an exam – a side effect of her cancer treatment. She was trying to finish her college degree in the time she had left as an example to the granddaughter she was raising.

These kinds of stories are *typical* for instructors at America’s colleges – that is, the ones most students attend. Indeed, I’ve mostly taught in relatively privileged circumstances.

So when the question of “sensitivity” and “political correctness” on campus come up… maybe don’t take the claims of reactionaries working at (for example) NYU’s business school at face value.

And – speaking as someone who takes a lot of pride in delivering vivid lectures – if any professor claims that so-called trigger warnings will spoil the dramatic effect of his teaching… you can safely disregard anything he has to say about pedagogy.

(It’s almost always a he.)

Dr. Wilson has also published an article on this topic at Vox.

Source: bluepeets

‘College Isn’t for Everyone’: Mentally Ill Students Say Universities Like Stanford Are Leaving Them Behind – Rewire.News

autisticadvocacy:

“This case, which may have wider applicability for college students [in the US]…asserts that students have a right to university resources even during mental health crises, and that universities must accommodate mentally ill students under the law.”

‘College Isn’t for Everyone’: Mentally Ill Students Say Universities Like Stanford Are Leaving Them Behind – Rewire.News

OK, what I was trying to comment on that chat post like a dunce.

Have to add that I was in college relying hard on Pell grants and work study, when the Clinton administration expanded eligibility for all need-based federal aid to include higher income brackets.

Doesn’t sound like a bad thing, right? Yeah, if you also increase the funding to cover at least double the number of students suddenly eligible for what little non-loan aid exists. Including the number of work study jobs/hours available.

Fast forward 20+ years of further slashed educational funding and skyrocketing costs, and I can only imagine what it must be like by now.

The situation was rough enough then, and that was one of the reasons I ended up crashing out. Trying to make up the sudden gap by working my ass off even more. At a state university within commuting distance. (Where I ended up largely because it was almost doable with the aid I could get starting out.)

A long ugly slide from Reagan to here in so many ways, yeah.

federal government: alright we’re going to grant you this much money for student aid
federal government: but part of this student aid requires you getting a job
federal government: and we’re going to act like there absolutely is a job available for you
federal government: because there are enough student jobs for everyone right?

Pardon Our Interruption

lysikan:

bittersnurr:

aspergersissues:

I see this very differently than the professor who wrote this. She wants to pay her back about how she acted with a disabled student, but I’ve been in the student’s position more times than I would have liked to. Here’s what most likely happened.

The student takes this letter to the professor and asks to meet with her privately. She does it privately because other students have made a big deal about her accommodations before and it’s embarrassing.

The professor seems friendly, so she disclosed exactly what she needs. Then the professor sits the letter aside and questions her about how often this actually happens, and tells her how big a problem it would be if it happened in this course. This is a threat. The professor is now making her uncomfortable asking for help when she needs it. In my experience, when you have a professor act like this, they’ll often shoot you down when you do ask for help later. The student has probably experienced just this.

After the professor blows off her needs, the student sits in the back of the class and never speaks to the professor again. She obviously no longer trusts the professor anymore. She never used her accommodation that semester. That could be because she never had a panic attack, but more likely, she had several and felt threatened that she’d be kept from graduating if she showed any weakness and asked for help. She may have done well in the course, but it was likely at a huge cost to her health in some way.

Because this student felt so alienated, the professor thinks they did a good job. I’ve lived through this dozens of times. The professor failed this student. She had to work much harder than other students without disabilities to go the same distance. It’s not fucking fair.

It sickens me to see a professor acting like this and thinking they’re the hero of all disabled students. I really wish I could say it’s unique, but it’s fucking not. Not even close.

Yeah the tone of this is very much she seems to think most people don’t need as many accomedation as they are given, even though I generally hear a lot more of people getting nowhere near enough help.

Honestly it also kind of stands out she is a psychology professor I bet that’s part of why she is so entitled and egocentric. Despite having no context for the student’s problems she feels qualified to give unsolicited medical advice, which I am willing to bet was probably like, breathing exercises and shit that you could get out of a random woman’s health magazine, and then she goes home feeling like she saved someone with her shitty generic tips and refusal to help.

Also the second student it seems like she and some other teacher randomly decided a student was a mental health risk, with no evidence of any diagnosis or anything even, and people put them on watch over this despite from what I can tell the student NEVER ACTUALLY DOING ANYTHING?

And then she pats herself on the back for butting into someone’s buisness on an unproven hunch which never actually was shown to be nessassary like????

Like she apparently has decided that she knows what is better for random strangers then they or their own doctors do and is enforcing it and acting like it makes her a hero somehow but, what it really makes her is that obnoxious sitcom psychologist that shows up in one episode giving unsolicited life advice while psychoanalysing their behavior that at the end ofbthe episode gets told to never come back and everyone hates them

To quote the opening of the article:
“The student, let’s call her “Lee,” arrived at my office at the appointed time, took the chair I indicated, pulled a form from her backpack, and shot me a look. Not confrontational, but not exactly friendly, either — a demeanor underscored by the old black motorcycle jacket and punk haircut she sported. She was in a large lecture course I was teaching, and had asked to see me in this first week of term. As soon as I glimpsed the form, I knew she was here to tell me which accommodations the accessibility office had deemed her eligible to receive.”
The author is telling us right from the start that they make judgements based on appearance and prejudice about disabled people. Nothing they say after that matters.
If you start out with those attitudes you CANNOT make unbiased decisions.
The author admits to being an ableist bigot without knowing they did it because in their world “looking punk” is so bad that it’s acceptable to be rude to people who do. The author can’t understand why a person who has been referred to them for accomodations might not be a model of conformity in presentation or attitude.
Like, Dude, this kid has been through hell because the system has failed them because they are not “normal” and you want them to act like a model employee at a job interview?
You failed your number one job requirement – doing your best to help THE STUDENT (not your own idea of what a student should be).

Pardon Our Interruption

Pardon Our Interruption

bittersnurr:

aspergersissues:

I see this very differently than the professor who wrote this. She wants to pay her back about how she acted with a disabled student, but I’ve been in the student’s position more times than I would have liked to. Here’s what most likely happened.

The student takes this letter to the professor and asks to meet with her privately. She does it privately because other students have made a big deal about her accommodations before and it’s embarrassing.

The professor seems friendly, so she disclosed exactly what she needs. Then the professor sits the letter aside and questions her about how often this actually happens, and tells her how big a problem it would be if it happened in this course. This is a threat. The professor is now making her uncomfortable asking for help when she needs it. In my experience, when you have a professor act like this, they’ll often shoot you down when you do ask for help later. The student has probably experienced just this.

After the professor blows off her needs, the student sits in the back of the class and never speaks to the professor again. She obviously no longer trusts the professor anymore. She never used her accommodation that semester. That could be because she never had a panic attack, but more likely, she had several and felt threatened that she’d be kept from graduating if she showed any weakness and asked for help. She may have done well in the course, but it was likely at a huge cost to her health in some way.

Because this student felt so alienated, the professor thinks they did a good job. I’ve lived through this dozens of times. The professor failed this student. She had to work much harder than other students without disabilities to go the same distance. It’s not fucking fair.

It sickens me to see a professor acting like this and thinking they’re the hero of all disabled students. I really wish I could say it’s unique, but it’s fucking not. Not even close.

Yeah the tone of this is very much she seems to think most people don’t need as many accomedation as they are given, even though I generally hear a lot more of people getting nowhere near enough help.

Honestly it also kind of stands out she is a psychology professor I bet that’s part of why she is so entitled and egocentric. Despite having no context for the student’s problems she feels qualified to give unsolicited medical advice, which I am willing to bet was probably like, breathing exercises and shit that you could get out of a random woman’s health magazine, and then she goes home feeling like she saved someone with her shitty generic tips and refusal to help.

Also the second student it seems like she and some other teacher randomly decided a student was a mental health risk, with no evidence of any diagnosis or anything even, and people put them on watch over this despite from what I can tell the student NEVER ACTUALLY DOING ANYTHING?

And then she pats herself on the back for butting into someone’s buisness on an unproven hunch which never actually was shown to be nessassary like????

Like she apparently has decided that she knows what is better for random strangers then they or their own doctors do and is enforcing it and acting like it makes her a hero somehow but, what it really makes her is that obnoxious sitcom psychologist that shows up in one episode giving unsolicited life advice while psychoanalysing their behavior that at the end ofbthe episode gets told to never come back and everyone hates them

Pardon Our Interruption

Republicans are skeptical of higher education because it leads to more liberal-focused policies

berniesrevolution:

macleod:

Just published: Republicans are skeptical of higher education because it leads to more liberal-focused policies

Evidence and research suggests that when more people are educated that there is a direct correlation to more liberal policies.

For
example, a study¹ published by the Pew Research Center lead by Samantha
Smith shows that those who have attended graduate school are even farther to the left than those who only have an undergraduate degree.

More
than half of those with postgraduate experience (54%) have either
consistently liberal political values (31%) or mostly liberal values
(23%), based on an analysis of their opinions
about the role and performance of government, social issues, the
environment and other topics. Fewer than half as many postgraduates—
roughly 12% of the public in 2015– have either consistently conservative
(10%) or mostly conservative (14%) values. About one-in-five (22%)
express a mix of liberal and conservative opinions.

Read more about why republicans are scared of higher education


Split it out by party, and the shift is even starker. Among the
post-grad set, more than half of Democrats and Democratic-leaners today
are “consistently liberal,” up from fewer than one-in-five in 1994.
Likewise, among college grads, it jumped from 12 to 47.


Republicans are skeptical of higher education because it leads to more liberal-focused policies