I chose to listen to "Kids These Days" and i'm very glad I did. The main part of the podcast that really struck me was the talk about how kids these days are being coddled and protected from anything that we might find offensive. While I do not believe you should be introduced to anything that could be very harmful in class, I do believe that you must get into sometimes uncomfortable discussions to learn. I think that it can be a good idea to make students aware of what the topic will be that is going to be discussed in class. This can help students to fully gather their thoughts so that they do not misspeak when they are talking about a topic that is already hard to discuss. But, I do not believe that students should be offended by anything discussed in class because this is a place of academia. An environment that preaches questioning of everything so that there can be as much learning as possible. We should cater to our students to let them know what will be coming but we should not coddle them and make them feel as if everything that is ever discussed has to be completely comfortable. The most growth comes when we are uncomfortable.
I don't believe that polls should be relied on as heavily as they currently are in our society. Especially in politics, they are way too easy to manipulate to show the data that you want. There are certain techniques that these poll makers can do to have the poll show the outcome which they desire or is desired by the source requesting the poll. I think that a big problem with these polls is that the public is not very knowledgeable about the sources which these polls come from, which means they are being taken for what is shown rather than taking into account the other things such as biases that go into these polls.
I agree with your comment when you say that most growth comes when we are uncomfortable because that has happened to me in situations in class before where I can feel the awkward silence of the class if there is a comment said either by a student or a professor. Yes, there will be students that will not be comfortable to speak in a certain class discussion but that is not considered a bad thing because it would be unfair for the majority of the students of the class who are participating in the discussion. So I believe a way this could be handled is like you said is giving the class a heads up on what material will be covered in class that day. This can serve as a warning to all the students so no one will be caught off guard or offended by anyone.
ReplyDeleteI like what you are saying here but while I do think that topics that make people uncomfortable while they are necessary for the growth of people need to be approached sensitively. I think this is where the generations before our think we are being coddled because we aren't as direct about things because they think the way to get to people is to offend them.I think if we took that approach to things with sensitivity instead of censorship we can make all age groups happy and comfortable.
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