When the pendulum goes too far there is usually a push back.
The pendulum of PC has been out of wack for a longtime. Too long. We've said before PC is one of mankind's greatest dangers. Like all these so-called well-intention schemes supposedly offered to protect all of us from ourselves, it's unintended consequences created more of those things it was crafted to stop.
PC was never designed to teach people something PC never wanted: It taught parents and others they don't need some distant ,indifferent committee of bureaucrats to tell them how to live their lives. What is proper behavior and proper speech. Say hello to Brexit. PC is about duress. Zero tolerance. You will line up they way we say. This is the gift of elitists and academics and a host of others who think they know better than you how you should live your life.
Here's some push back.
Did the politically-correct insanity just reach its tipping point? Just weeks after a notably politically-incorrect Donald Trump was swept to victory in the US election, HeatSt.com's Kieran Corcoran reports a university has pledged to end its culture of censorship and no-platforming, and has instead pledged to defend free speech.
The decision was made by the Cardiff University Students’ Union at their annual conference last week, where they passed a motion called “Challenge, Don’t Censor.”
The move pushes back against the tide of safe space culture which seeks to insulate students from opinions they might find challenging.'It is not our responsibility to prevent other people from speaking, it is our responsibility to come up with a better argument' #CardiffAGM— Gair Rhydd (@gairrhydd) November 24, 2016
Cardiff itself was the scene of one such incident last year, playing host to a virulent campaign to shut down a speech by feminist Germaine Greer over her views on transgender surgery.
Cardiff students passed their free speech motion – the full text of which can be found on page 25 of this document – on Thursday.
zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-30/university-stuns-world-pledges-support-free-speech-censorship-not-answer
And here is another example of what happens from the Financial times, of fall places,when in the PC world everyone gets a trophy.
Sir, Carl Henrik Leijonhielm (Letters,
November 26) holds the Reagan cuts of the 1980s responsible for the
current poor level of education of a substantial proportion of the US
populace. Certainly, the Reagan cuts were damaging, but some of these
educational deficiencies go back much further than the Reagan years.
In 1973, in my earlier career as a mathematician, I accepted a postdoctoral research fellowship at a major, well-rated US Midwestern state university. After an excellent year working with one of the leading figures in my field, I spent a year there as a visiting faculty member. I taught first-year students majoring (specialising) in mathematics and the sciences. They were just starting on differential calculus, which put them about two years behind their British counterparts, for whom this was (and still is) material for the first year of the sixth form. But many of those students were bright and hard working, and with perseverance did well.
I also taught, with the aid of several teaching assistants, a large class of humanities students in what was called “remedial mathematics”. These were 19-year-old university students who were unable to perform the most elementary calculations, such as adding together two simple fractions. Many of them could make little progress, despite their own and their teachers’ best efforts. It is hard to imagine the educational level of their many contemporaries who did not go to university or even complete high school.
The poor education of these students did not result from lack of money. There was plenty of money. Tuition fees were low and there were ample scholarships for students who needed them. The students largely came from suburbs where the high schools enjoyed resources beyond the dreams of most British schools of then and now. These students had grown up and received their early education in the affluence of 1960s suburban America.
Rather, I learnt that these students were the victims of an educational system, in their high schools and earlier, that had sheltered them from having to focus on any concepts that they found difficult. They had been taught that what mattered most was achieving self-expression, although they had not been taught the language skills that would have enabled them to express themselves clearly and cogently. Not surprisingly, when they encountered unavoidably difficult concepts they became resentful. Any difficulty derived only from the professor’s incompetence or deliberate obfuscation. Any question that they were unable to answer was a trick question. My university colleagues were aware of all this, shrugged it off, picked up their salaries, and carried on.
I was fortunate enough to move on to one of the leading scientific institutions for which the US is justly famous, with superbly educated, first-rate students. I have wondered over the years what became of those students in that Midwestern state, most of whom were white males, and who would now be in their 60s. That state was one of those that swung from Democrat to Republican in this year’s elections.
Prof Michael Singer
The Dickson Poon School of Law,
King’s College London, UK
In 1973, in my earlier career as a mathematician, I accepted a postdoctoral research fellowship at a major, well-rated US Midwestern state university. After an excellent year working with one of the leading figures in my field, I spent a year there as a visiting faculty member. I taught first-year students majoring (specialising) in mathematics and the sciences. They were just starting on differential calculus, which put them about two years behind their British counterparts, for whom this was (and still is) material for the first year of the sixth form. But many of those students were bright and hard working, and with perseverance did well.
I also taught, with the aid of several teaching assistants, a large class of humanities students in what was called “remedial mathematics”. These were 19-year-old university students who were unable to perform the most elementary calculations, such as adding together two simple fractions. Many of them could make little progress, despite their own and their teachers’ best efforts. It is hard to imagine the educational level of their many contemporaries who did not go to university or even complete high school.
The poor education of these students did not result from lack of money. There was plenty of money. Tuition fees were low and there were ample scholarships for students who needed them. The students largely came from suburbs where the high schools enjoyed resources beyond the dreams of most British schools of then and now. These students had grown up and received their early education in the affluence of 1960s suburban America.
Rather, I learnt that these students were the victims of an educational system, in their high schools and earlier, that had sheltered them from having to focus on any concepts that they found difficult. They had been taught that what mattered most was achieving self-expression, although they had not been taught the language skills that would have enabled them to express themselves clearly and cogently. Not surprisingly, when they encountered unavoidably difficult concepts they became resentful. Any difficulty derived only from the professor’s incompetence or deliberate obfuscation. Any question that they were unable to answer was a trick question. My university colleagues were aware of all this, shrugged it off, picked up their salaries, and carried on.
I was fortunate enough to move on to one of the leading scientific institutions for which the US is justly famous, with superbly educated, first-rate students. I have wondered over the years what became of those students in that Midwestern state, most of whom were white males, and who would now be in their 60s. That state was one of those that swung from Democrat to Republican in this year’s elections.
Prof Michael Singer
The Dickson Poon School of Law,
King’s College London, UK
ft.com/content/2001a866-b591-11e6-961
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