An Associate Master at Yale writes an email complaining that basically college kids...KIDS...are too politically correct and too wimpy to deal with it. The specific topic was on whether or not the university should police what students wear on Halloween to make sure they don't don anything too offensive (i.e. some New England WASP has no business  dressing up as...say...Geronimo wearing black face, or anything at all for that matter).
That is an oversimplification of what was actually said (the link above has the full text of the email), but it's also the gist.
The email became widely known and the kids at Yale did what kids best, throw a temper tantrum about it (<-- comes="" in="" p="" tantrum="" that="" the="" third="" video="">The whole thing follows the five pillars of liberalism to the tee...the students circled the professor to exact an apology for suggesting these intellectual invertebrates develop a backbone instead of maintaining the feeling that Yale is a "safe space." The students are apparently under the impression that demanding an apology entitles them to deserving one. It ended with one little girl jeopardizing her voice box and running off to put on a clinic in weeping, over Halloween costumes, that my own kids could learn from. ("Baby girl, do you hear the pitch in her scream, if you can go that high then maybe next time I'll say yes to cookies before dinner.")
On one hand this is yet another example of why liberalism needs to break its ideological monopoly on academia. These so-called scholars have become a bunch of Dr. Frankensteins with their intellectual bigotry and they've fostered future generations of monsters they can't control, and those intellectual chickens are coming home to roost.
On the other hand it should have us all wondering what the point of college is anymore. They're like reverse-fat camps, except people go in dumb and come out dumber. Why should we subject our kids, to the tune of six-figure debt? This Yale incident reveals more than the danger liberal indoctrination is bringing to America, it reveals education is more like a knock off a Rolex for sale at Rolex pricing.
That is honestly a weird thing for me to say, because I have a college degree. I married ***TRIGGER WARNING: if you're a liberal college student from Yale, or if you've ever thought of going to Yale, or if you've become so wrapped up in your personal triggers in school that you're too dumb to even spell "Yale" then you should bail out of this post......NOW*** a woman who has her masters degree and teaches college students herself. We also met in college, so I can't say I regret going. I can also say I know a lot of people in my life who didn't go to college, many in my own family, and they found great success in life without a degree.
My wife doesn't teach a subject matter that dooms kids to careers as baristas, they actually learn useful skills in her class that should actually be covered more in high school, but aren't. She loves her job and she treats it responsibly, meaning she doesn't impose her ideology on her students.She does her job, and helps them arrive at their own evidence-based conclusions. Every so often she encounters students like the ones at Yale, and she says it gets worse with each passing semester.
There are many sectors of higher education that are very much worthwhile and always have been. There are also so many more that are not. The purpose of higher education was supposed to be the advanced learning of certain professional knowledge and skills that couldn't really be attained with a regular education, which in turn tended to command higher wages in the marketplace.
For generations now young people have been indoctrinated with the idea that their worth as an adult will only come with obtaining (note I didn't sayearning) of a college degree. This is bolstered by a pop and political culture that glamorizes and panders to the college lifestyle as a necessary part of modern life. Somewhere along the away we came to believe it doesn't matter what you study, all you need is to get that piece of paper saying you graduated, a ticket to a "real" career. As a result the number of Americans who are college graduates has never been higher, and it has gotten us nowhere intellectually and in terms of people actually getting jobs.
If standardized tests aren't a valid marker of the effectiveness of education or what a student knows then standardized achievement is even worse. A degree in some "grievance" study doesn't condition any American to take on the real world any better than a plumber with a just high school diploma and a actual skill that's needed in the market place.
You see, Yalies, just because you spent a lot of money for the right to be at that campus doesn't mean attacking dissent with totalitarian ferocity is worth what you're paying for it.
College has become a big business by for and of the left the same way global warming has. There's something distinctly and increasingly un-American about the initiates into this once important institution. There is obviously a place for it in society, but the rising aggression of these group-think mobs raises the question of its continued relevance relative to what is being taught.
When college ceases to be a gateway to adulthood and a higher place in our economy then maybe the culture should consider forgoing it in favor of other avenues of education where people can learn what they need to know to move forward with their lives, without spending themselves into oblivion only to be forged into intellectual and emotional wimps.
Preview image from Grad Planet.
