Part of adults’ obligations to the children they bring into the world is to prepare them for their own adulthood. This means that schooling and education should be about more than learning skills and facts and training the brain to think in certain ways. Children learn to socialize with others, learn how to behave among and interact with strangers and, importantly, learn how to manage life events, big and small, without the safety net of a constant parental presence. As they get older and enter their teen years, they go through puberty and learn to interact with members of the opposite sex (or of the same sex should they be so inclined), they experience various spontaneously-forming social orders, they start to figure out their identities, they develop and abandon friendships. Many then go off to college, often at society’s urging, where they continue to learn to be adults. By this time, society actually considers them adults. Once eighteen, a young person can vote, can serve in the military and fight in wars, can buy tobacco, can borrow money, and can enter into contracts. Still, college is a transitional period, and young people can benefit enormously from the reduced yet not non-existent supervision that the higher education environment provides as they continue their transition to full-blown, fully self-responsible and self-reliant adulthood. Yet, increasingly, it seems that society is intent on doing away with the life-preparation aspects of formal education in favor of eternal protecting and coddling.
A long-time friend with two young boys informed me that their school system doesn’t keep score in any sports events until the fourth grade. The first time I heard this, I was dumbfounded. Fathers have bonded with their children over sporting events since time immemorial. What happens in those sporting events? Teams compete, each trying to win, and father and child root for “their” team to beat the other team. Why, then, is score not kept when the kids play sports themselves? They already understand the concept of winning and losing – are they to be protected from feeling what it’s like to lose? Doesn’t that shield them from developing motivation to win, empathy for the losing side, sportsmanship? How about an understanding of the real world? The fact that there will be winners and losers in many life situations?
In grade school, it goes beyond sports. “Zero Tolerance” has run amok, with children (and I mean children, as young as kindergarten) being suspended for the most ridiculous “violations” of idiotic school policies. Little children aren’t allowed to hug each other. A distracted pre-teen doodles on a desk and gets handcuffs, suspension and community service. A kid bit his Pop-Tart pastry into the shape of a gun (or the state of Idaho, depending on your perspective) and had the world crash down upon him. A 6 year old gets suspended for sharing candy. A kid with a water pistol faces expulsion. In the UK, an 11 year old British boy greeted an Australian boy he just met by saying “G’day.” The child was disciplined for his “racist remark.” Setting aside the absurdity of dubbing these deeds as misdeeds, the response from the school systems in these cases wasn’t to instill life lessons, or discuss why some actions might not be acceptable, or present how one should respond to certain actions, but rather to slam the weight of unyielding and uncaring authority on the heads of children. How does this prepare a child for adulthood, other than instilling the sense that a cold, hard, and brutal state will visit punishment and retribution upon them for the slightest transgression? Is the intent really to make children utterly servile to authority? While some conspiracists are nodding their heads right now, this all reeks of good intentions run amok mixed with an abdication of personal responsibility on the part of educators.
Fast forward to the latest bit of nannying – the “trigger warning” mandate that some universities are imposing on their classrooms. For those unfamiliar with the term or the idea, it begins with the psychological condition known as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. While often associated with those who have experienced military combat, it is also a condition that some who have experienced extreme life trauma, like getting shot or raped, may suffer from. Those afflicted with PTSD might, if exposed to certain sights or sounds, suffer flashbacks or other symptoms that recall the past event(s). A handful of universities, in an effort to recognize the possibility that some students may have some degree of PTSD, are asking professors to offer “trigger warnings” at the beginning of lessons, and in at least one instance (now rescinded) requested that lessons be structured to avoid triggers.
Apart from putting professors in the difficult position of figuring out what might constitute “triggers,” this policy represents a “shielding” of students from potential unpleasantness in an environment whose purpose is to prepare them for a time when they very likely WILL be exposed, repeatedly, to potential unpleasantness without the support and protection of some paternal figures. College would represent a “safe haven” from the realities of life, rather than a place that prepares people for life. It should be a place that prepares ADULTS for life as adults. Lest we forget, the vast majority of students in college are, in fact, adults (excepting their right to purchase alcoholic beverages, but that’s a story for another day).
Even if the idea to install safeguards for those with PTSD has merit, a blanket policy alters experiences for all students. If every lesson is prefaced with trigger warnings, students won’t develop the ability to deal with stressors or bits of unpleasantness (themselves very much subject to the eye of the beholder) spontaneously. They’ll need and want warnings before everything. While society in general has long been heading in that direction (just consider how absurd warning labels have become (a clothes dryer label warns against putting people inside, a bag of peanuts has a peanut allergy warning label, a sign in front of a urinal warns people not to drink the water), it’s both absurd and counterproductive to seek to replace teaching the ability to manage one’s own way through life’s twists and turns with all-encompassing warnings and protections.
The saddest part of this is that such policies have arisen from demands from students themselves, rather than as some decree from autocrats on high. It’s sad, but in retrospect predictable, that young people would rather have others censor and filter that which they are exposed to instead of choosing to experience and absorb all that’s out there. When raised through a primary and secondary educational system that controls and manages their life experiences, it’s natural that they demand such nannying continue. It doesn’t stop at graduation, either. It’s mirrored in modern societal memes such as “micro-aggression.” For all this, the blame rests squarely on the adults who have, for decades, sought to coddle and shield rather than allowing the bumps and bruises of life to be experienced and the lessons they offer to be learned. I recently heard an anecdote where a parent opted to let a kid touch a hot stove rather than warn him endlessly to stay away from it. One bad experience, he reckoned, would have more value and staying power than a thousand verbal admonitions. While it’s natural to want to protect the young from unpleasantness, overdoing that protection and protectiveness leaves them ill-prepared for the realities of the world. Society institutionalizing that overprotectiveness does real and lasting harm to those society seeks to protect, and an education system that shields students from the things they will experience in adult life fails to fulfill one of its most fundamental missions.
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