Mastodawn

Paul Cantrell Nov 15, 2023

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/

Paul Cantrell Nov 15, 2023

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/

Paul Cantrell Nov 15, 2023

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/

Paul Cantrell Nov 15, 2023

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/

Paul Cantrell Nov 15, 2023

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/

Next time you read a screed against “cancel culture” from somebody who teaches college, ask yourself whether it could in fact be this:

“I’m good at my discipline, but kind of bad at teaching. I cling to broken pedagogical approaches, and am used to making my job easier by not thinking too much about my students as human beings, even if that makes me an asshole. That used to be acceptable, but now people are in my face about it! That wounds my ego. Kids these days!”

6/

Paul Cantrell Nov 15, 2023

BUT! There is a real and important version of that same underlying thought:

Teaching •well• and offering real human care to students both make teaching a whole lot harder. That is •work• right there. And this (reasonable! positive!) shift in expectations means that faculty jobs are harder than they used to be — while at the same time they pay less and less, especially because of adjunctification.

This is not sustainable.

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Paul Cantrell Nov 15, 2023

As a faculty member, I’d like to see a whole hell of lot less attention paid the the Cancel Culture Grumpus Patrol, and a whole lot •more• attention paid to this question of how we make human care on campuses something that’s •sustainable•.

The need is real. The challenges are real. And the implications are far more daunting — and far more important.

8/

Paul Cantrell Nov 15, 2023

This isn’t limited to college, and it isn’t even limited to education. Optimization, cost-cutting, downward wage pressure, all these things make human caring •harder•.

The airline rep who leaves you out to dry, the doctor who can’t take time to listen, the developer who makes software that’s not accessible — they’re responding to structural pressures.

We need to give a shit about each other. And if we want that, we have to make giving a shit sustainable.

How? •There’s• the question.

/end

Paul Cantrell Nov 15, 2023

(Addendum: I realize my thread ended up being about this accusation of “coddling” at least as much as about “cancel culture.” Those two lines of curmudgeonism have become so entangled that I don’t separate them cleanly in my mind.)

Fugue State Machine Moto Nov 15, 2023

@inthehands Normalize workers violating “corporate policy” in the name of human kindness

It’s the best most of us can hope to do.

(Managers: this ESPECIALLY means you)

Paul Cantrell Nov 15, 2023

@cmdrmoto
Yes. Absolutely. 200%.

Though to my point: it starts there, but it can’t end there. Caring is work. Work stops if it’s not sustainable. We need to make this work sustainable.

Violate institutional policy — and also •change• it! And beyond broken policy, think about what kind of support it takes to sustain the work of caring over time.

Alexandre B A Villares 🐍Nov 15, 2023

@inthehands @cmdrmoto yeah, I'm all for violating corporate policy, and changing it is hard but necessary, just don't forget we can get fired for violating corporate policy and it makes our work suck in so many dimensions.

Violet Madder Nov 16, 2023

In a predatory culture that has totally devalued care work, emotional labor, kindness, and basically anything that isn't vicious competition, abuse is normalized.

Until this stops, we're screwed.

Paul Cantrell Nov 16, 2023

@violetmadder
Being the foolish optimist that I am, I’m firmly opposed to “everything has to be different for anything to get better” thinking. There are always:

(1) things we can do where we are, right now, in the moment,

(2) things we can do in the near-to-medium term, working both with and against existing systems, reshaping them, and

(3) distant destinations we can imagine in a far better, radically different hypothetical world.

All matter. Living with (3) alone is a kind of nihilism.

Violet Madder Nov 16, 2023

Oh certainly there's things we can do. There's work to do, steps to take, to make the abuse stop. The steps and dynamics are very similar, too, on an internal personal level as on the interpersonal AND systemic levels.

Lauralee Dukeshire HAS MOVED Nov 16, 2023

@inthehands Universal Basic Income and a Job Guarantee would be a good place to start building financial stability for everyone and reducing exploitation. As it is, workers have to put up with cruel labour conditions, inadequate compensation and financial precarity. #UBI We need to realize that if our governments can create endless money to fund war they can also create money to feed and house the people within their borders.

Jenni Halpin Nov 16, 2023

@inthehands I need at least 8 more stars on this. Thank you for articulating it.

Paul Cantrell Nov 16, 2023

@Halpin
Always pleased to cross paths with an English prof. My mom, now retired, taught English at CSU for many years. The field has a special place in my heart!

The conditions you describe here [https://zirk.us/@Halpin/111153849748263758] sound utterly intolerable to me, and also sound like they’re the •opposite• of caring more for students. Instead, your institution is asking you to care about process & paperwork. Hot garbage.

Jenni Halpin Nov 16, 2023

"Hot garbage" indeed.

Among admin's worst pieces of anti-care decision-making: having English faculty teach 5-3 instead of 4-4. I'm hard put to think of a worse example of radically reducing our capacity to extend care to brand new students. (Not counted as overload + no reductions in service expectations during this 15-credit fall; I could make a case for asking faculty to do a 3-5 to present increased availability to new fall students, but only for making such a REQUEST.)

John Wilson Nov 16, 2023

@inthehands this is also a good point