Emory-Boarded: the quiet, smooth destruction of our young

So here we go again: another flap about free speech on college campuses, this time at Emory. Good, flaps are healthy. The best of them are corrective. Let's lambaste students for wanting their sidewalks sanitized of just whatever makes them uncomfortable. And let's mercilessly lampoon administrators like Wagner and teachers like Melissa Click (another story) who have made a fetish of tolerance. 

But let's also talk about causes too. Specifically let's ask, how are we raising our young to make them need what they seem so desperately to need? "Safe spaces." Tender, institutionalized protection from "micro-aggressions." Courses in which nothing is asked of them, except to agree? 

Here's a thought: These students lack a sense of autonomy.  A sense of agency. The conviction that they have some control of their lives, and are responsible for exercising it.

And why might this be?

Because we their elders have failed them. Because we made their playgrounds riskless and their toys germ-free. Because as they grew, we choreographed their every routine, and never let them arrange their lives for themselves. Because we never equipped them with real life skills: how to cook, balance their bank accounts, fold their clothes with competence, or clean the damn toilet.

So, to speak very generally, and for purposes of diagnosis: Our young can do gymnastics routines. They can fill in all the bubbles on the standardized tests. They can talk about what they feel. They are decent, kind, compassionate, people, who unfortunately do not really believe in themselves. 

Which in turn is why, when a word they don't like is written on the sidewalk, they call on Daddy administrator President Wagner to clean it up. Please Daddy, take Trump away. Don't make us do it. It's also why, by the way, Daddy responds the way he does:

During our conversation, they voiced their genuine concern and pain in the face of this perceived intimidation etc...

What a good daddy we have here: sensitive, kind, eager to listen, willing to bend! Good job, Daddy President Wagner.

My wife, who happens to be a university professor, comes home every day with the anecdotes: the students who, before signing up for every course, call their parents first for approval. The student who might like to go to China for a semester, but can't, because her parents are just too uncomfortable with even the passing thought of separation. The mother who comes to campus and does her daughter's laundry. The father who calls his son to wake him up for class in the morning. 

Yes I know it's emery, not Emory (punning is a sic-ness of mine). But emery board is a pretty decent symbol for what we've got here. Wanting everything to be beautiful and good about our children's lives, we've smoothed the snags from their existence, over and over again. Unfortunately, at some point horror of horrors it turns out life's not just an appointment with the manicurist. No, sometimes it really fucking hurts. Or it's rude. Or it says nasty, intolerant things. Sometimes it even sounds like a booted foot on the march. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump.

Egad.

How about education being about building a house of autonomy? How about giving our youth something like hammers and saws to build it? How about butting the hell out?

HB

A Dump of Trump

This past Tuesday something remarkable happened on my street, that reminded me of our national politics. A huge truckload of garbage was dumped in the driveway of one of my neighbors. We're talking the driveway to a double car garage. Plugged. Stuffed. Piled a good six feet high in places. Plus the whole pile, which was full of thin white bags, absolutely reeked. It had the sour smell of dumpsters behind restaurants, or at groceries, or at campgrounds, where food and grease is involved, and where everything is trying to go rancid at once. 

Now I've asked around the neighborhood. This was not a prank. It was an act of revenge. And as such, it's colorful, passionate, almost operatic. It reminds me of an insult in an Icelandic saga, as when someone throws a sheep's head at Steingrimr Ornolfsson in the Reykdoela saga. There's a certain level of anger necessary to activate the logistical imagination in matters like these, which is why for most of us, it never comes to sheeps' heads or dump trucks. Still, imagine the total amount of low grade anger in any given town, or state, or country these days. What happens when the level gets high enough, or when a nice handy sheep's head suddenly appears, right there on the debate stage, with the initials D.T.?

I know that political hand-wringing is all the rage, but I'm not afraid to assert it myself: the unholy trinity of our politics these days is anger, frustration, and despair. People, as everyone keeps repeating, are fed up. With something. It's hard to say what. But for many of us it really doesn't matter. For many of us abstract analysis is beside the point, and if anything the inarticulate nature of the trinity makes it all the more powerfully explosive. The need to get back at the system is rampant. Contagious. It's like a spooky yeast getting into all corners of the dough, making the whole thing rise really ugly and deformed. 

Now, let's be clear. The reasons should not be any big mystery. Huge segments of the population are without meaningful work. Other segments know the robots are coming for theirs. Real wages have been falling for decades. We have students fresh out of school carrying around planets of debt ("don't shrug, little Atlas, or you go to jail"). Ecological limits assert themselves daily in every new report. Health care just gets more expensive and confusing. And everywhere in finance and education we get the same dishonest analytical read: just wait a little longer. Prosperity will come. 

To which the billionaire in the baseball cap, whispering over our collective left shoulder, says: “Stop listening to all them. Listen to your gut. OF COURSE you've been screwed. And no, no one in the establishment cares about you. Only I, among all the rich and powerful, actually care about you. So, this is what you do. Just drive this truck full of all this garbage to the polling station. Pull this lever that says "dump 'em." Then let them smell the result. You'll see. We'll win.”

HB