“‘Safe Spaces’ and the Mote in America’s Eye.”
For some time I’ve been mean to university students who feel entitled to a “safe space” — by which they seem to mean a space where they are insulated from ideas they don’t like.
I call these young people out for valuing illusory and subjective safety over liberty. I accuse them of accepting that speech is “harmful” without logic or proof. I mock them for not grasping that universities are supposed to be places of open inquiry. I condemn them for not being critical about the difference between nasty speech and nasty actions, and for thinking they have a right not to be offended. I belittle them for abandoning fundamental American values.
But recently a question occurred to me: where, exactly, do I think these young people should have learned the values that I expect them to uphold?
More at the link.
(Via Tam.)
Fortunately, there are viable alternatives to a university “education” and lots of both conventional and innovative options for those who want to learn the subject and be challenged to think. Not to mention that most of them will save the student serious money into the bargain.
My university days are 40 years in the past, but we had more than enough stupidity and dumbing down even then. Thank goodness my mother taught me how to think critically long before that.
He forgot to mention government schooling. They don’t teach love of liberty in a government school.
Thank goodness my mother taught me how to think critically long before that.
Ditto. Like, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
Who’s “We?”
Do you buy into that collective guilt?
The feedback loop has come to the point where the untaught are teaching the untaught. (We’re chin deep in untaught.)
Excellent post! Popehat does some fine stuff.