Comments | fussylogic: At loose ends

fussylogic

At loose ends

Aug 30, 2015 13:00

For those who were following the story of the witch, I *did* ultimately leave a note. In the end, her note made it so clear she thought the witch was stolen, I felt that at least being able to say: "look, somebody might have thrown her away on purpose, but nobody is keeping her from you" -- had some kind of value. The process was interesting to me ( Read more... )

Comments 2

whatifoundthere September 1 2015, 00:47:30 UTC

Oh sweetheart, when I saw all those pictures of your dad I feared the worst, but it seemed crass to ask. I am so sorry.

how institutions do or don't support teachers' rights to speakI could have written (and probably did write) sentences very like this when I was in the university system, but I'm becoming more suspicious of orienting everything in a "teacher's rights" direction these days. I don't know if the "noisy, fussy" discussion you're thinking of is that repulsive Atlantic article about trigger warnings that everybody has been posting on social media, often completely uncritically; but this new trend of framing traumatized students as hypersensitive pests asking for special treatment, and contrasting that with brave professorial authorities assigning rape scenes or whatever "for their own good" is a HUGE problem. Of course I believe in academic freedom, but people who put teachers first in their framing narratives are often doing so for skeevy reasons, just like people who trumpet about "free speech" usually do so ( ... )

fussylogic September 1 2015, 13:32:38 UTC

Well, I wouldn't say this is how I frame the issue, of course. :) Speaking from a personal place as somebody who basically lost their career at a certain point over things that were said/not said/misinterpreted, I have this twin resonance when I'm navigating the academic environment. I think you're of course 100% correct about the overall academic climate and the use of these "Rights of Teachers" can have a creepy closeness to the "Rights of Men," or "Rights of White People," in that no matter how much consumer culture fills Academia, the truth is teachers have power over students structurally ( ... )