Having no intention of ever working in academia full-time again, I thought I’d offer a few reflections on the implications of a court finding against Bristol University announced last week, concerning a student suicide that happened there. I’ll admit upfront that getting going with this one has been a slog. For one thing, it partly concerns an unspeakably awful event in the life of a grief-stricken family. More trivially, writing about some of the aftermath of this event has pulled me back mentally into a world I have gladly left behind me – a place where the managerial speak is deafening, the decisions inevitably reactive and short-sighted, and the naked desperation to keep income flowing palpable. In other words, it has dragged me back to the modern British university - such a stark contrast with the place most people still romantically picture. Talk about triggering. But anyway, here goes.
Some academia-specific thoughts: Here, the equivalent of the Equality Act is the ADA, which has had many wonderful outcomes, enabling folks whose lives were very limited before its enaction to participate more fully in the social, economic, and cultural life around them. The problem is that, like you, we receive a slew of letters at the beginning of every semester (easily regarding 25%-30% of the class if not more), without specifying what exactly the problem is, and providing vague guidelines for us. We are not therapists, and certainly not psychiatrists, and with increased cohorts of incoming students, bloated classrooms, and already-disjointed Zoom education, it is very difficult to flag serious problems early on. We do have trauma professionals aplenty on campus, but I worry that the incessant focus on trauma primes our students to focus on shortcomings and limitations rather than possibilities. It's worrisome and sometimes exasperating; I wish we could completely destigmatize the possibility of taking a break for a year, or a few years, to heal, and coming back later, because sometimes it's exactly what a student needs.
If universities are acting like parents in removing any growing opportunity in the path of their students, they are acting like really bad parents. Or maybe just like the kind of parents those poor kids are used to...
Reminds me of “emotional support animals” vs actual trained and essential service animals. We do want to support people, but people who are inclined to figure out a way to get something without paying full price will find a way. You bent over backwards to be fair, and yes, this is a tough case, but good points worth some serious reflections.
This is probably not worth saying, but what the hey? A degree you get because you were on a programme is worth nothing to an employer, and therefore nothing to your parents. If your potential employer is forbidden to learn whether you were on such a programme, their only response must be to reject all students from universities where such degrees are awarded. Your last remark makes this particularly true of good degrees. It's hard to see the financial rationale behind this approach, but your decision to leave the profession seems very sensible to me
I lectured for a couple of years and there wasn't any of this, but to be honest there was that lecturing prep course that I managed to avoid... who knows what the content was!
Off-topic, but I would love to see someone of Dr. Stock's stature look into the parallels between the recovered memory craze of the 90's and the current craze of ROGD. Both situations appear to be driven by well-meaning therapists who are just following the zeitgeist and either can't or won't rock the boat. Both appear to be based on fundamental errors about how the human brain works ("you have an invisible thing called gender identity that is fixed at birth but can change at any time", and "A charismatic and authoritative counsellor cannot implant memories by suggestion: those memories must be real"). And neither craze turned out well.
A fascinating article. I had no idea the numbers of UK students with mental health conditions was that high. In the US about 25% of students are taking antidepressants. I was at Sussex, way back in prehistoric times (1968). I remember there was a service for students with 'problems' housed in a small portakabin - that was it. Awful things happen to students, suicides and attempted suicides, but these were related to drugs of the recreational type.
Aye up! My wheelhouse. I have ALL those tee-shirts. I feel an acronym coming on - SFTCTSFM: "Some Fucking Toerag Claiming To Speak For Me". Your "Two Weeks of Hell a Term When I Was an Undergrad" has a name in the psychological literature: Flooding; it is a bone fide tool for sorting social anxiety problems. Of course it is a hammer and you might want a screwdriver; we have that too: gradually inuring a person to what upsets them and getting them comfortable in small doses. I think you can see how this can be related to teaching undergraduates.
It isn't for the most part the standing up in front of the class or doing the exam that is the problem; the anxiety is in the anticipation of these things. The mind takes off, catastrophically in some cases, in unconstrained feedback. You can take away the input and it will feed itself. Fear is the mindkiller.
Generally I think psychiatry does more harm than good and psychological therapies are let down by services cheaping out on them and failing to deliver them as intended. Can you guess what the bloke I was seeing finally advised after we had conspired for him to see me for about two years longer than he was supposed to? Uni. I kid you not.
The university experience done properly, unconciously back-in-the-day, did implicitly what several psychological therapies are designed to do explicitly.
Normies should be adjuncts and enablers; WE, the neurologically atypical, should be doing the lifting. Normies, bless 'em, don't have a fucking clue; excuse my French. We should be doing; they should not be stepping in and nor should they be speaking for us. A normie no more knows what it is to be an Aspie than a man knows what it is to be a woman. This is much the same clap-trap intersectionalist loonies invoke about "gender" dysphoria and transexuality. I have agency. I speak for me. Anyone pulls that shite, I channel the Aspie Meltdown, and they'd be much better off having a go at the Hulk!
The one really substantial improvement in universities, I think, would be to do explicitly what was done implicitly in the past. Most psychological conditions arise from letting things get out of hand and feeding them rather than starving them and steering them aright. For those of us for whom it is a wiring and developmental "problem", knowledge is the solution. A normie knows what buttons not to push with another normie; the same applies to us: find out what the button does; don't go about randomly pressing them and then blaming us when the normies teeth wind up at the back of their throat.
All this is just another example of Capture; of the Long March through the Institutions. They don't want to "help" us; they want to tear society's arms off and beat it about with the soggy end. Pathologising the common human condition is just another end to doing that. The "problems" are created by feeding them when they should be acknowledging that human isn't defined as white, adult, middle class, male, and neurotypical - or that that in itself is a mortal sin punishable by eternal hell fire for that matter. (You can distill that down to everyone is wrong but you and you are the only person who isn't a Nazi, even that you yourself are an obligate Nazi and must blow your own brains out!)
"I think the problem here is a general one: namely, , but it is still a push to argue persuasively that they are essential to meeting particular disciplinary standards in a given subject area, as traditionally understood."
The the skills you have been talking about are essential for life generally, and for producing resilient, flexible people. FTFY. :-)
Bottom line: We speak for us; whoever isn't us can GTF about caiming to "speak" for us. If you aren't us, in the stupid argot of the loons, you are just *'splaining. This is applicable if you are not a woman; transexual; dysphoric; ASD; anxious; or depressed. If you aren't the community you are banging on about; 9 times out of 10 it is you who is the source of the problem. Be that by comission; omission; or allowing toxic loons to usurp your agency and "speak" for you.
It is a drag to be an active participant in civil society; it drags you away from prattling about "Trolley Problems" to bored teens if you serve on that uni commitee. ;-) I might explain my contributing to these ills by a long exposition about my "disabilities"; but that won't excuse my allowing these ills to blossom in my avoiding the tedium of responsibility.
The leaven of grifters and other toxics captured everything in large part because they were willing to undertake the tedious boring bits. Bouncing up and down with your hand in the air, shouting "Me, me, me!" when asked who will sit on the Paperclip Commitee, is diagnostic of the pathology.
I own the fault but I won't be beaten up about it when I've acknowledged that; I am going to ask what is to be done about it by us all and contribute to getting on with doing that.
What a coincidence - I just wrote this, reflecting some thoughts about a very similar experience across the pond. https://www.hadaraviram.com/2022/05/25/on-the-administration-of-tough-love/
Some academia-specific thoughts: Here, the equivalent of the Equality Act is the ADA, which has had many wonderful outcomes, enabling folks whose lives were very limited before its enaction to participate more fully in the social, economic, and cultural life around them. The problem is that, like you, we receive a slew of letters at the beginning of every semester (easily regarding 25%-30% of the class if not more), without specifying what exactly the problem is, and providing vague guidelines for us. We are not therapists, and certainly not psychiatrists, and with increased cohorts of incoming students, bloated classrooms, and already-disjointed Zoom education, it is very difficult to flag serious problems early on. We do have trauma professionals aplenty on campus, but I worry that the incessant focus on trauma primes our students to focus on shortcomings and limitations rather than possibilities. It's worrisome and sometimes exasperating; I wish we could completely destigmatize the possibility of taking a break for a year, or a few years, to heal, and coming back later, because sometimes it's exactly what a student needs.
If universities are acting like parents in removing any growing opportunity in the path of their students, they are acting like really bad parents. Or maybe just like the kind of parents those poor kids are used to...
Reminds me of “emotional support animals” vs actual trained and essential service animals. We do want to support people, but people who are inclined to figure out a way to get something without paying full price will find a way. You bent over backwards to be fair, and yes, this is a tough case, but good points worth some serious reflections.
This is probably not worth saying, but what the hey? A degree you get because you were on a programme is worth nothing to an employer, and therefore nothing to your parents. If your potential employer is forbidden to learn whether you were on such a programme, their only response must be to reject all students from universities where such degrees are awarded. Your last remark makes this particularly true of good degrees. It's hard to see the financial rationale behind this approach, but your decision to leave the profession seems very sensible to me
I lectured for a couple of years and there wasn't any of this, but to be honest there was that lecturing prep course that I managed to avoid... who knows what the content was!
Off-topic, but I would love to see someone of Dr. Stock's stature look into the parallels between the recovered memory craze of the 90's and the current craze of ROGD. Both situations appear to be driven by well-meaning therapists who are just following the zeitgeist and either can't or won't rock the boat. Both appear to be based on fundamental errors about how the human brain works ("you have an invisible thing called gender identity that is fixed at birth but can change at any time", and "A charismatic and authoritative counsellor cannot implant memories by suggestion: those memories must be real"). And neither craze turned out well.
A fascinating article. I had no idea the numbers of UK students with mental health conditions was that high. In the US about 25% of students are taking antidepressants. I was at Sussex, way back in prehistoric times (1968). I remember there was a service for students with 'problems' housed in a small portakabin - that was it. Awful things happen to students, suicides and attempted suicides, but these were related to drugs of the recreational type.
Aye up! My wheelhouse. I have ALL those tee-shirts. I feel an acronym coming on - SFTCTSFM: "Some Fucking Toerag Claiming To Speak For Me". Your "Two Weeks of Hell a Term When I Was an Undergrad" has a name in the psychological literature: Flooding; it is a bone fide tool for sorting social anxiety problems. Of course it is a hammer and you might want a screwdriver; we have that too: gradually inuring a person to what upsets them and getting them comfortable in small doses. I think you can see how this can be related to teaching undergraduates.
It isn't for the most part the standing up in front of the class or doing the exam that is the problem; the anxiety is in the anticipation of these things. The mind takes off, catastrophically in some cases, in unconstrained feedback. You can take away the input and it will feed itself. Fear is the mindkiller.
Generally I think psychiatry does more harm than good and psychological therapies are let down by services cheaping out on them and failing to deliver them as intended. Can you guess what the bloke I was seeing finally advised after we had conspired for him to see me for about two years longer than he was supposed to? Uni. I kid you not.
The university experience done properly, unconciously back-in-the-day, did implicitly what several psychological therapies are designed to do explicitly.
Normies should be adjuncts and enablers; WE, the neurologically atypical, should be doing the lifting. Normies, bless 'em, don't have a fucking clue; excuse my French. We should be doing; they should not be stepping in and nor should they be speaking for us. A normie no more knows what it is to be an Aspie than a man knows what it is to be a woman. This is much the same clap-trap intersectionalist loonies invoke about "gender" dysphoria and transexuality. I have agency. I speak for me. Anyone pulls that shite, I channel the Aspie Meltdown, and they'd be much better off having a go at the Hulk!
The one really substantial improvement in universities, I think, would be to do explicitly what was done implicitly in the past. Most psychological conditions arise from letting things get out of hand and feeding them rather than starving them and steering them aright. For those of us for whom it is a wiring and developmental "problem", knowledge is the solution. A normie knows what buttons not to push with another normie; the same applies to us: find out what the button does; don't go about randomly pressing them and then blaming us when the normies teeth wind up at the back of their throat.
All this is just another example of Capture; of the Long March through the Institutions. They don't want to "help" us; they want to tear society's arms off and beat it about with the soggy end. Pathologising the common human condition is just another end to doing that. The "problems" are created by feeding them when they should be acknowledging that human isn't defined as white, adult, middle class, male, and neurotypical - or that that in itself is a mortal sin punishable by eternal hell fire for that matter. (You can distill that down to everyone is wrong but you and you are the only person who isn't a Nazi, even that you yourself are an obligate Nazi and must blow your own brains out!)
"I think the problem here is a general one: namely, , but it is still a push to argue persuasively that they are essential to meeting particular disciplinary standards in a given subject area, as traditionally understood."
The the skills you have been talking about are essential for life generally, and for producing resilient, flexible people. FTFY. :-)
Bottom line: We speak for us; whoever isn't us can GTF about caiming to "speak" for us. If you aren't us, in the stupid argot of the loons, you are just *'splaining. This is applicable if you are not a woman; transexual; dysphoric; ASD; anxious; or depressed. If you aren't the community you are banging on about; 9 times out of 10 it is you who is the source of the problem. Be that by comission; omission; or allowing toxic loons to usurp your agency and "speak" for you.
It is a drag to be an active participant in civil society; it drags you away from prattling about "Trolley Problems" to bored teens if you serve on that uni commitee. ;-) I might explain my contributing to these ills by a long exposition about my "disabilities"; but that won't excuse my allowing these ills to blossom in my avoiding the tedium of responsibility.
The leaven of grifters and other toxics captured everything in large part because they were willing to undertake the tedious boring bits. Bouncing up and down with your hand in the air, shouting "Me, me, me!" when asked who will sit on the Paperclip Commitee, is diagnostic of the pathology.
I own the fault but I won't be beaten up about it when I've acknowledged that; I am going to ask what is to be done about it by us all and contribute to getting on with doing that.