From @tzimmer_history:
“Here is what actually happened in class: We had a calm, nuanced, and deeply serious discussion. That’ it. That’s the everyday normal on college campuses. But if you read the nation’s major newspapers and political magazines, you would not know that.”
I teach college too, and I am here to say: College students are so, so much better at having a thoughtful discussion about difficult issues than most of the people covering them in the press.
https://mastodon.social/@tzimmer_history/111414733576050400
1/
I’m not going to say that college students have it all figured out, or are all perfect. They’re struggling with the present moment just like the rest of us.
But folks, I simply cannot express to you strongly enough how wildly popular press descriptions of college campuses fail to match my own experiences. These bullshit “cancel culture” screeds read to me like Orientalist Europeans describing foreign cultures. They’re just embarrassing.
2/
Don’t get me wrong: college students have all sorts of misconceptions about issues of the day, lose their perspective, and put pressure on people who disagree with them — ••just like the rest of us••.
Are my students worse on these fronts than what I hear in a typical Minneapolis municipal election? No.
Are they worse than what adults post on Nextdoor or FB? Oh hell no.
Are they worse than the very same news orgs publishing pundits who opine about the decline of tolerance? AYFKM.
3/
I have a useful point of comparison: I was once a student on the campus where I now teach. Not quite apples to apples (I’m older, now a prof), but with that grain of salt:
Students are if anything somewhat •more• tolerant of differing views and •more• tolerant of diverse groups who are unlike them than when I was a student. There is if anything •more• assumption that we should reach out across differences and listen.
4/
There •has• been a shift on college campuses, one I suspect is relevant here: expectations of human care from faculty and institutions have increased.
There used to be a much larger tolerance for profs just pushing content at students and letting them struggle. There’s more baseline expectation now that we’ll actually think about whether our pedagogy •works•, and take into account the well-being of our students.
The pandemic massively accelerated that, but it’s a ~20-year trend.
5/
@inthehands it always annoys me when I see a related sentiment in other places - "it was really hard when we were going through it, and we didn't have this support, so you shouldn't either"