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The Therapeutic Culture and the Infantilization of Everyone
When the news came in that Donald Trump had actually won the election, there were moans and groans and a gnashing of teeth. An economics professor at Yale cancelled a class, thinking that the poor darlings were in deep distress. Students at Cornell University — where I was once a student and later an assistant professor — staged, of all things, a “cry-in.” In Portland, OR, there have been riots; and in many places there have been demonstrations. “Not my President” read the signs.
All of this is to say, that those on the left in this country are either experiencing a meltdown or having a temper tantrum. Nowhere, however, have the caretakers of these brats conducted themselves in a more embarrassing fashion than at the University of Michigan Law School, where this was put up on the website:
The Romper Room at the University of Michigan Law School
Let me see now: “coloring sheets, play dough [misspelled, of course], positive card-making, Legos, and bubbles” for women and men — all of them 22 years old or over. Our institutions of higher learning unthinkingly take openly partisan stands, and they have become kindergartens. They are teaching the millennial generation that immaturity is perfectly respectable.
Someone at the University of Michigan Law School, which is one of the best in the country, had the good sense to take this down. Myself, I would have scheduled an examination on the Friday after the election. What we are witnessing is a display of self-pity on the part of the coddled. The proper response to the moans and groans should have been: “Grow up!”
Published in Culture
Also, what’s up with the date on this event? Was it for Nov. 11 or Nov. 14?
I’m a professor of physics and astronomy. I had several absences the next day, but considering that I’d stayed up ’til 2:00, myself, I expect most of them were students sleeping in. My 9:00 AM astronomy class had two girls who looked pretty downcast, one of whom seemed to have been crying. In my 10:00 AM physics class, which is almost all engineering students, there was no evidence of crying. A few comments that seemed to cover the political spectrum but without being really partisan. I then asked how late people stayed up, and several were later than I had. Aside from the lack of sleep, everyone seemed functional.
It’s going to be a darned shame if the Engineering department goes through with their plan to eliminate their physics requirement, because engineers are a real pleasure to teach.
I had a couple of my best students miss my 9 AM, and I suspect they also slept in. I opened with some words about the election in a non-partisan way over the course of two days, as I have different kids on Wednesdays and Thursdays. I teach history, so it would have been strange to not talk about it at all. I definitely had kids that were upset, but I also know I had kids who voted for Donald Trump. It was a mixed bag.
Speaking of engineering, one of my sons roommates is in his last year in an engineering program. He called this election from the beginning. My son and I, both into history, talked with him multiple times about the records of populists, changing demographics, polling data, etc. He’d say we knew a lot more about politics than he did, but he could feel people were tired and ready to move on.
So here’s a lesson for me.
I think history is the queen of the humanities and an essential subject. But, apparently, engineers are brilliant.
I turned off the TV and went to bed around 2, but didn’t fall asleep until about 3:30. I still was at work at 8.
I miss college…
Re: 31
Shouldn’t we all make time to look at the moon on November 14 ?
You have got to be kidding. What kind of engineering ? The only one I can think of that doesn’t need physics is “Social Engineering “. Even being a train engineer requires at least a practical knowledge of classical physics….
No. Just no. Now I want to know which school, so I know whose work needs to be double-checked.
When the evil Ronald RayGun won in 1980, none of our professors cancelled classes or even showed signs of emotional distress. The Feminist/Communist (her description) T.A. for my Anthropology section was a bit red-eyed, but I figured it was the drugs.
Concur. Dropping a physics requirement, or even just watering it down to “business school physics”, will make your engineering program a laughingstock among technology businesses.
This is so disgusting. My law school had a somewhat similar event, a meeting for people to “talk it through.” No coloring books though-thank god. Do they not understand that this is why many of us were moved to vote for Trump despite disagreeing with much of his policies?
NRO’s Katherine Timpf has this: Classes being canceled because Trump won is why Trump won.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442083/donald-trump-school-closing-2016
Re comment # 40
I think we all know that most of the students excused from exams and classes, supposedly because of their emotional state, simply are not as distraught as they’re claiming to be—not, anyway, over Trump winning the election.
The students are just reacting to the carrot and stick of social pressure. To get in on the break from exams and classes, to ingratiate themselves with certain professors and peers, to—I really sympathize with this one—to avoid getting on the wrong side of people who are in a position to make their college experience more difficult or easier, the students are anxiously displaying whatever feelings certain professors and other powerful people are prompting and signaling them to have. And the powerful people are prompting and signaling incapacitating fear, anger and sorrow over Trump’s victory. (I think, three hundred and twenty or thirty years ago, the same type of people would have gotten the students to claim, and more than half believe, Trump was afflicting them in spectral form.)
This is a more socially and psychosexually confused, emotionally needy, ignorant, and financially indebted generation of college students. (We made them what they are.) And they’re evidently sitting ducks for certain professors who are happy to manipulate them for their own purposes.
Talk about infantilization =
Yep. The Huffington Post “Diaper Pin” is showing up as the avatar of a FaceBook “friend.”
Her name has been cropped to protect the clueless.
Re: # 42
I think President-elect and Mrs. Trump should start wearing diaper pins.
Re: the post
Speaking of wanting to do self-care activities in a safe space, my husband actually has 5 beautiful Easter eggs his father painted after he got home from the Philippines where he was stationed during World War 2.
Yes. Seriously.