8 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2017
    1. We do not do what we do so that students can be like us

      I wouldn't say be like you, rather to be a better version of themselves.

    2. Institutions that refuse to move—not into the future, but into the present—are enacting a masochistic nostalgia. Things are not the way they were, and to isolate our philosophies in an historic moment is to condemn their practicality. Just as perilous is to assume the academy exists in a safe vacuum, where political tensions that light the nation on fire will not penetrate the halls of ivy-grown intellectualism and rationality

      I could not agree more. I have suffered due to some of my professors refusal to accept certain present means of doing things. I don't particularly like every aspect of change, but when someone refuses to keep up with the times in much required areas it can be stagnating for many others

    3. The Student is the weak link in the academy, the wild horse that needs breaking, or the lazy scissorbill who must be taught discipline and integrity...and more recently, the privileged Millennial whose character can only be built through an unforgiving exposure to adversity.

      This is both true and false at the same time. Of course an individual's character is built over time through a certain type of conditioning, but not all millennials are privileged. Everyone needs to be crafted, but never assume that we are so lazy that we don't want to improve ourselves without being told to do so.

    4. But what does all of this have to do with a dyslexic student who found herself unable to use the device on which she relied in—ahem—a computer science class?

      I was thinking this the entire time until it was finally addressed here. Felt like the topic totally derailed.

    5. How dare we presume that students live idle lives when we’re not watching? How dare we believe it is our responsibility to forge their character through intellectual adversity?

      Never presume/assume anything. It's an awful personality trait.

    6. Chanting that Murray was “racist, sexist, anti-gay,” the students wouldn’t let him talk. And when he and the professor moved their planned interchange to a private room where it could be recorded on camera, protesters disrupted that, too, by pulling fire alarms and banging on windows. And this was followed shortly on by rock throwing, and a concussion suffered by the liberal professor who was meant to interview Murray.

      I love how protestors act more out of fear than than out of reason. Some of the most irrational people that I have ever beheld are protestors and it seems like they don't even think before they act

    7. Somewhere along the way, those young men and women—our future leaders, perhaps—got the idea that they should be able to purge their world of perspectives offensive to them. They came to believe that it’s morally dignified and politically constructive to scream rather than to reason, to hurl slurs in place of arguments.”

      This seems like something you would lead into with some prior facts regarding an individual who too such action. It's just a bunch of rhetoric without any ground to stand on, any proof.

    8. “There are no devices allowed in this class.”

      Perhaps this was an issue that should have been addressed with the teacher ahead of time, informing here that the student has dyslexia and that the use of the tablet enables them t takes notes more efficiently? I know plenty of people who sometimes work better with electronics, myself included.