« Die Krötekapelle | Main | Eἰκονοκλάστης »

Mommy wants you to be comfortable

By Michael J. Smith on Saturday February 20, 2010 09:26 AM

Right in the middle of a spate of Uni-bashing, this came across my screen, on a dead-languages mailing list I subscribe to:

"Teaching Difficult Subjects in the Classics Classroom" An APA(*) 
Workshop[.....]

We propose a workshop with 5 brief presentations (10 minutes) on 
particular situations, with materials to help faculty in the 
classroom.

This workshop would follow up on the very successful roundtable 
and workshop on teaching rape at the 2008 and 2009 APA meetings; 
we would like to broaden the discussion out at this time. Ancient 
texts raise a variety of issues--slavery, infanticide, adoption, 
abortion, rape, abuse, incest, sexuality--that may be difficult 
to discuss in a classroom where some students will have had 
personal experiences that might make them uncomfortable. 
And since the whole goal of a Uni education is to make people comfortable, in every sense of the word....

---------------

(*) American Philological Association.

Comments (13)

Learned societies are great for this. It's like they net all the worst foolishness in the field, and then release it in concentrated bursts at the annual meeting.

And as a rule of thumb, any roundtable discussion on teaching at any academic conference whatsoever is going to really bring the stupid. So this APA session was doubly doomed from the start.

That said, it's unclear what students have been reading in their free time if even "sexuality" constitutes uncomfortable and therefore (one assumes) unfamiliar terrain.

The system is chock full of this kind of stuff. It's make-work being peddled by those "scholars" who "care" about their issues, but lack the first clue about how to make a real contribution to public knowledge or their students' capacity to confront the world.

op:

"lack the first clue about how to make a real contribution to public knowledge "

as the lord of hullabaloo
van mingo noticed
that goes for me too md
and i suspect a few others here as well


" how to make a real contribution to .. their students' capacity to confront the world"

again moi
with one word change
readers for students

michael:

Perhaps playing devil's advocate but mightn't something like this be a reaction to potential legal and job security issues related to those poor, uncomfortable students.

I work at an Ivy League university and about a year ago, I was taken through hell by an employee, a grad of the university and a pathological narcissist, who, because i gave her a less-than-perfect performance review embarked on a character assassination campaign. This campaign was based on one conversation in which I had used the phrase 'anal sex' in a casual discussion of the most popular key word searches on a health site at the university. We work in web development and I was discussing the implications of building navigations based on user statistics. It took two months to get the whole thing sorted.

Sean:

Perhaps playing devil's advocate but mightn't something like this be a reaction to potential legal and job security issues related to those poor, uncomfortable students.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. A lot of this is probably just appeasement of the professional outrage junkie crowd that is always on the lookout for stuff to get upset about. Unfortunately the more you appease them the worse they get.

op:

"the professional outrage junkie "

a certain variety of that species
haunts this site from time to time
adding as much glee as dudgeon
and leaving us regulars
straining after our fleeing Sprezzatura

i recall the infamous
roman p incident

now that was quite
pwogie policemans' brawl

mucho sanctimony was spilled there alright

the recent brannigan over
madame lacewell-racewell
queen of the critical antipodes
hardly reached
that one's door sill

Sean:

i recall the infamous
roman p incident

now that was quite
pwogie policemans' brawl

There's a world of difference between getting outraged over an actual rape and a mere discussion of the concept. If that was your daughter who was raped, you'd be inclined to a harder justice than that offered by your average "pwoggie policeman."

mucho sanctimony was spilled there alright

Mucho sanctimony indeed, but of the leftier-than-thou variety.

op:

i knew that would draw u out sean

thank u for making my point

rage on oh man of god

Sean:

You opened with a cheap shot and got a cheap shot back. Predictable? Trolls everywhere stand in awe of your divine augury, great arbiter of leftist purity. That there's a certain irony in the predictability of your response, seems to have escaped your flawless vision.

Not that I had a point to make, but you made a point for me anyway.

op:

sean

why so prickle pussy ???
i'm your mate even when we disagree

I work at an Ivy League university and about a year ago, I was taken through hell by an employee, a grad of the university and a pathological narcissist, who, because i gave her a less-than-perfect performance review embarked on a character assassination campaign.

shades of Mamet's "Oleanna."

Sean:

Why the over-passionate pigeonholing of perceived pwoggie policemen from the peanut gallery of past posts there, partner? It was you who invoked the whole Roman P imbroglio, not me. Not to suggest this has anything to do with your ability to tolerate disagreement.

And the trollish triumphalism? "Ooh, I got you to react the way I predicted you would!" I'd have thought this was beneath you, you cheeky Nostradamus, you.

Post a comment

Note also that comments with three or more links may be held for "moderation" -- a strange term to apply to the ghost in this blog's machine. Seems to be a hard-coded limitation of the blog software, unfortunately.

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on Saturday February 20, 2010 09:26 AM.

The previous post in this blog was Die Krötekapelle.

The next post in this blog is Eἰκονοκλάστης.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Creative Commons License

This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Powered by
Movable Type 3.31