Snowflakery...
- Thread starter BlackSG91
- Start date
LOL
Mr Grumpy
Ambassador of Comings and Goings
How can you say that, are you some kind of snowflake? Or are you snowflaking the snowflakes or even dehumaizing/desnoflaking the snowflakes? &, which of these is socially acceptable, by whom and why? It's all very confusing...
Working in a university, I find folks that close down the discourse space of others by claiming they are offended, especially if they are 'professors', or when professors promote closing down the student's discource space, I find these folks worrying to say the least. Further, having had student performance results and student feedback results, as well as being involved with observations and continuing professional development for around 100 'professors', you notice that said 'professors' are the least liked by their students, achieve the worst results with their students and have the least pedagogical knowledge (this is solely with the foreign staff, mostly American although also a wide mix from around the world). That's in my university in Korea, other places may be different?
Last edited:
DonP
Guest
I think snowflakery in students is symptomatic of something nasty. As far as I am concerned, university is a place you go to have all your preconceptions confronted and be faced with other realities. Anyone who cowers from that and demands a "safe space" has no business being in university. They should be thrown out. There are far more people in our universities than we need anyway. When I went it was about 3%. Now it is more like 35%. Ridiculous.
Gahr
Ambassador of Blues & Brews
My wife works as Head of Administration at the Institute of Linguistics and Literature at the local university. She basically says the same as you. More students than needed, and a pretty demanding lot. However, the biggest problem in the day to day running of the business is usually demanding professors; they quarrel among themselves about petty things like office size, which lecture rooms they get etc. A big kindergarten, really.
Mr Grumpy
Ambassador of Comings and Goings
I agree with you both, but what I've found is the young professors, particularly from a certain nation that I won't mention, are not far out of uni themselves and are now pushing their ignorance upon the students as lecturers/professors.
Coming out of the business sector then spending 15 years in universities, I'd say that the average level (ability, work rate, critical thinking skills, communicative skills, depth of knowledge in their field, etc) of our lecturers/professors is well below the average level of an upper management business professional. I'd also suggest that the average PhD nowadays is at a similar level or lower the the Beng degree I did 20+ years ago. I'm very bored from dealing with such people and just wanna get back into the business sector now... &, yes, there are far too many students at universities learning stuff that they don't want to learn and won't help them in the workplace, but universities are a huge business and make huge profits...
Last edited:
DonP
Guest
I still have friends teaching engineering and science at university, and they are very concerned about entry standards. It is not uncommon to have to give students a year of remedial maths to bring them up to the standard they should have had on leaving high school. The same goes for written English. I think maybe this all has something to do with the way universities are now run as businesses rather than academic institutions. It's all about cash flow and throughput.
Hmmmm...I wonder which nation that could be?
Hmmm...
It’s okay.
Many of us from that “certain nation” (or what I strongly suspect is that “certain nation”, to which you refer) pretty much feel the same way as you!
Mr Grumpy
Ambassador of Comings and Goings
To be honest, Smitty, it may be very obvious in the US, but it's also prevalent in the UK and Europe.
eSGEe
Ferengi Ambassador of Trade
Well you go to "uni" for 8 years ---maybe even 10 -- to learn some useless non career producing knowledge---like philosophy-- that you cant support yourself much less family doing -- and the only option is to go back to uni (your safe space) and teach others to be ......what what a viscous cycle----seems the only function is to feed uni.....$$$
I had an employee working from me once -- nice fella -- Canuckistanian not that it matters -- had 2 degrees-- a masters in one -- couldnt find a job in any fields related to them...had no marketable blue collar skills---.so was selling printing for me...and learning that "trade" ---making a "living" but certainly NOT one that IMHO warranted all that "education" (and $$) spent-- I never went to uni--but I was his boss--- go figure--
Vo-Tech was good for other career paths, too. You could learn clerical and even medical skills in Vo-Tech. My sister is a nurse and she got started through Vo-Tech. I think she may have had some follow-on training to get fully-licensed. Regardless, she had no desire for college, but was able to learn a valuable and marketable skill through what she achieved through Vo-Tech training. She loved it.
Gahr
Ambassador of Blues & Brews
You know what? I used to hang out with a bunch of philosophy master’s students back in my student days. What happened to them? Well, they ALL have well paid jobs these days, and none of them are working at a university. Several of them are working in education, actually teaching useful stuff to kids. The people finishing higher degrees are usually not the ones having trouble finding work. All the students NOT finishing what they start and not having any plan whatsoever are a lot more problematic. I went to uni for eight years, by the way.
jtcnj
Ambassador of the Crossroad
The educations system in the USA, for decades at the university level, and now more and more into K-12 are indoctrination tanks for a 1 sided ideology.
One of their biggest claims is to advocate for tolerance; yet they are the most intolerant of any opposing views or opinions.
Regularly, and increasingly, speakers or visitors running an event scheduled at colleges are either protested against for "hate speech" and their appearance cancelled,
or the event is disrupted and stopped while in progress by protesters.
There was video this past week of a protester / disrupter standing in front of the presenters projector blocking it from the screen and taunting and mocking the speaker.
The campus police were on site, 3 or 4 officers I think, and just stood there.
They did nothing to escort the person out and allow the event to proceed.
Dont be fooled, increasingly, free speech in this country is being squelched.
One of their biggest claims is to advocate for tolerance; yet they are the most intolerant of any opposing views or opinions.
Regularly, and increasingly, speakers or visitors running an event scheduled at colleges are either protested against for "hate speech" and their appearance cancelled,
or the event is disrupted and stopped while in progress by protesters.
There was video this past week of a protester / disrupter standing in front of the presenters projector blocking it from the screen and taunting and mocking the speaker.
The campus police were on site, 3 or 4 officers I think, and just stood there.
They did nothing to escort the person out and allow the event to proceed.
Dont be fooled, increasingly, free speech in this country is being squelched.
eSGEe
Ferengi Ambassador of Trade
Im not "pooping on uni" -- however your friends who went and are teaching --fit perfectly into my statement---You know what? I used to hang out with a bunch of philosophy master’s students back in my student days. What happened to them? Well, they ALL have well paid jobs these days, and none of them are working at a university. Several of them are working in education, actually teaching useful stuff to kids. The people finishing higher degrees are usually not the ones having trouble finding work. All the students NOT finishing what they start and not having any plan whatsoever are a lot more problematic. I went to uni for eight years, by the way.
for what its worth and in my experience at a certain level --- “He who can does; he who cannot, teaches.” --- but I run with a dangerous crowd...so....
AND TO BE CLEAR I am not pooping on teachers---
Last edited:
I dropped out of high school my junior year to help with the family business when my Dad got injured. I went back to adult school the following year and earned my GED, high school diploma equivalent. Over the next 20 years working full time as a police officer, I couldn't ever go to college. However, I amassed over 60 college units from advanced officer police training, which I took at universities all over the place. In retrospect, I would have liked to have been able to attend a 4 year university and chosen a different career path....
Mr Grumpy
Ambassador of Comings and Goings
That's a bit cruel. I used to earn bucketloads of $$$ in international business development and was head-hunted, flown over to vegas for an interview weekend then offered a big salary running a fair sized international company out of the US - I would have ran their European business. I did many multi-million $$$ deals back in those days and had meetings with CEOs of some of the biggest companies in the world, all over the world. Now, I work at a university on a mid-level salary... Worse still, I'm utterly
e at playing geetar... 