Someone Needs to Lay Off the Meds

Rate Your Students used to be one of my favorite sites, but the farther I get from school, the less interesting I find it.

Normally, I can identify in some way with just about every post and point of view I come across.

There's this one post, however...and it's strange. Really, there are times when I could have written it. However, there's just one bit that pisses me off something awful:

All of this "earnestness" about your profession is making me gag. As an undergrad, I want to know that I'm not the only one fed up with my peers. They can be stupid, slothful, selfish bastards. What is tenure for, if not to call these kids out on their b.s.? These "future leaders" couldn't put together a cogent thought if you held a gun to their head, and everyone is supposed to pat them on the back as long as Mom and Dad's tuition check clears the bank? You have a Ph.D., for chrissakes, so throw it around like it means something.

1. Tenure has little, if anything, to do with treatment of students. It's about research. Readers of RYS will know this.

2. That Ph.D certainly means something, but usually it means one is an expert in their field, not that they've got great classroom skills.

3. This poster is very, very angry. S/he conflates lots of things that I think have no reason to be conflated. For example:

Tell them that you're docking their grade every time they ask if something is going to be on the test, that sitting upright and breathing doesn't earn extra credit points, and that they shouldn't have signed up for college if they didn't intend on reading anything other than highway signage, tv listings, or drive-thru menus.

Tell them that it's not your problem they've made life choices (children, mortgage payments, etc.) that hamper their ability to complete assignments. Remind them of other students who've made different choices (like jumping into the deep end of student loans and Ramen noodles) to be here and aren't asking for favors, so maybe we should all be adults and suck it up.

The lack of care here is pretty shocking. Yeah, I spent a lot of time in college despising folks I had no business looking down on, but I have long felt a sense of compassion for others.

Just to be clear, there's a giant difference between the two paragraphs. Mocking someone because they have "made life choices that hamper their ability to complete assignments" is a shitty thing to do, especially when those life "choices" include having children or having a mortgage. Seriously: who mocks other people for having a mortgage?

I know what's going on here: This person has an immense amount of privilege, and is totally blind to that fact. S/he can't comprehend that there are real and genuine obstacles to succeeding in college. That's kind of sad. I hope the RYS readership nukes them.

Bringing Down the Dictatorship

Today is going to be a link-fest - I've not been inspired to write a lot of original material over the weekend, and I don't know if this week will be any different.

I have, however, found a lot of really good stuff. Of it all, this is perhaps the best piece, one that I find myself agreeing with often.

Over at Feministing, someone named Nezua has a lot to say about the revolutionary nature of love.

And she's dead serious.

This excerpt reminds me of an ongoing discussion I'm in participating in at another blog:

There is a false dichotomy available in what I imagine is every person’s mind, one easy to buy into. Sort of a built-in downhill slope, path of least resistance that leads into imaginary constructs…that become traps. We become guided into these divisions, these paradigms, told these are the two options. We become “Pro-this” and “Anti-this,” “Democrat, “Republican,” “Left,” “Right,” etc—and that is the end of it. We fall fast upon one side or another…and there we grab tight. And we do this in so many areas. We hear a word or two or phrase from someone, imagine we have sussed out their angle on an issue, and/or know of their sex/ethnicity/background or party, and summarily slot them into the “opposite” camp.

I've finally learned how to avoid that trap, but recognizing that it existed was difficult. It's something I see a lot of people who are marginally involved in politics doing, or people who have just begun to talk about politics and are looking to get more deeply involved.

Where does this come from? Off the top of my head, the two-party system. Both major parties have an incentive to pretend there's only two positions on an issue, because each party think it will get the support of at least 50% of the people that way.

The reality is that there are never just two positions on an issue. Reality is far more complicated.

A second reason:

As far as much of our modern-day arguments, I have no idea when we decided we were all so simple, so easily bisected. It seems everything from our political party system to each and every political issue is cloven into two warring sides, arguments, paradigms. And if there is only one of two sides to fall on, what more choice does one have? Acting and thinking as if there are only two viable positions to take in any area curtails reasonable conversation, thought, and alliance. It necessitates division.

I would call it divide and conquer - the placing of everyone into two camps limits people to defending their camp or attacking the other camp. And neither camp ever, ever seeks to attempt true social change. As a result, the two-camp system also serves the white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy, since that's the underlying status quo (h/t bell hooks).

Anyway, go read the whole thing. It's involved, but it's good.