Irene's Weblog

While perusing reddit, I came across this post. For all you folks out there planning on attending college or are already there, this is what a university should be. This is also precisely what people like Rick Santorum are so terrified of.

In case the wall of text is a bit much for you, here it is broken it up a bit.

Hello, Cross-Cultural students,

I am writing to express my views on how some of you have conducted yourself in this university course you are taking with me.

It is not uncommon for some-to-many American students, who typically, are first-generation college students, to not fully understand, and maybe not even appreciate the purpose of a university. Some students erroneously believe a university is just an extension of high school, where students are spoon- fed “soft” topics and dilemmas to confront, regurgitate the “right” answers on exams (right answers as deemed by the instructor or a textbook), and then move on to the next course.

Not only is this not the purpose of a university (although it may feel like it is in some of your other courses), it clearly is not the purpose of my upper-division course on Cross-Cultural Psychology.

The purpose of a university, and my course in particular, is to struggle intellectually with some of life’s most difficult topics that may not have one right answer, and try to come to some conclusion about what may be “the better answer” (It typically is not the case that all views are equally valid; some views are more defensible than others). Another purpose of a university, and my course in particular, is to engage in open discussion in order to critically mine beliefs, behaviors, and customs. Finally, another purpose of a university education is to help students who typically are not accustomed to thinking independently or applying a critical analysis to views or beliefs, to start learning how to do so. We are not in class to learn “facts” and simply regurgitate the facts in a mindless way to items on a test. Critical thinking is a skill that develops over time. Independent thinking does not occur overnight. Critical thinkers are open to having their cherished beliefs challenged, and must learn how to “defend” their views based on evidence or logic, rather than simply “pounding their chest” and merely proclaiming that their views are valid.” One characteristic of the critical, independent thinker is being able to recognize fantasy versus reality; to recognize the difference between personal beliefs which are nothing more than personal beliefs, versus views that are grounded in evidence, or which have no evidence.

Last class meeting and for 15 minutes today, we addressed “religious bigotry.” Several points are worth contemplating: (1) Religion and culture go “hand in hand.” For some cultures, they are so intertwined that it is difficult to know with certainty if a specific belief or custom is “cultural” or “religious” in origin. The student in class tonight who proclaimed that my class was supposed to be about different cultures (and not religion) lacks an understanding about what constitutes “culture.” (of course, I think her real agenda was to stop my comments about religion). (2) Students in my class who openly proclaimed that Christianity is the most valid religion, as some of you did last class, portrayed precisely what religious bigotry is. Bigots-racial bigot or religious bigots – never question their prejudices and bigotry. They are convinced their beliefs are correct. For the Christians in my class who argued the validity of Christianity last week, I suppose I should thank you for demonstrating to the rest of the class what religious arrogance and bigotry looks like. It seems to have not even occurred to you (I’m directing this comment to those students who manifested such bigotry), as I tried to point out in class tonight, how such bigotry is perceived and experienced by the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists, the non-believers, and so on, in class, to have to sit and endure the tyranny of the masses (the dominant group, that is, which in this case, are Christians). (3) The male student who stood up in class and directed the rest of the class to “not participate” by not responding to my challenge, represented the worst of education. For starters, the idea that a person-student or instructor- would instruct other students on how to behave, is pretty arrogant and grossly disrespects the rights of other students who can and want to think for themselves and decide for themselves whether they want to engage in the exchange of ideas or not. Moreover, this “let’s just put our fingers in our ears so we will not hear what we disagree with” is…. appallingly childish and exemplifies “anti-intellectualism.” The purpose of a university is to engage in dialogue, debate, and exchange ideas in order to try and come to some meaningful conclusion about an issue at hand. Not to shut ourselves off from ideas we find threatening.

via Moosebody.

I just have to say, fuck everything about people who feel the need to harass anyone just because they’re different from you.

From MSNBC:

TODAY’s Ann Curry sits down with the parents of 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer, whose recent suicide has gained attention from around the world — and from Lady Gaga.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

From reddit:

Cengage texts generally require you to login to a specific website for individual books. This website is run and operated by them, and requires a ‘new’ book code for each individual account. You can share accounts rather easily, but the first time you piss someone and they change the password you’re all fucked.

My Precalculus class textbook is also online-only from Cengage. You are paying not only for the e-book, but all homework, quizzes and tests are also done directly on the website. You cannot get out of buying this thing, unless your teacher prefers you to do the test with good ol’ pencil and paper!
The real kicker is that the e-book expires after a year. And it is all web-based, meaning you have to click through each page and print one-by one; you cannot save the entire thing as a pdf.

QCengage is mostly used for online homework that packet he holds contains nothing but a CD key for a 180 day subscription to an e-book and it’s testing features. This normally comes with the book, but still you have to buy it new.

This is precisely why people hire pirates to strip the DRM from these books and offer them for free.

Richard M. Stallman saw this coming back in 1997. It’s a gigantic ripoff. There’s no need for an electronic copy of a textbook to cost $100-200 each, particularly when it has an expiration date. It just proves, yet again, that universities are no longer institutions of higher learning, but money making machines.

During most of my life, bullying has been addressed in different ways in various attempts to eradicate it. Gay teen bullying, however, has always been overlooked. Many people are either uncomfortable dealing with it, don’t care about it at all, or believe that the gay teen probably deserves it because they’re “claiming” to be gay. This is precisely why the “It Gets Better” campaign was launched.

It Gets Better is a series of videos aimed at teens that tries to inform them that it will get better once you leave school. It’s a great idea, but one that I think isn’t totally received by gay teens. It’s difficult for a 14-year old to believe this message when they know they have another four years of schooling to suffer through before things might start getting better. Unfortunately for Jamey Rodemeyer, even though he made his own It Gets Better video four months ago, he committed suicide last week.

And when he was online, he wrote about it.

“I always say how bullied I am, but no one listens,” he wrote Sept. 9. “What do I have to do so people will listen to me?”

On Sept. 8, he wrote: “No one in my school cares about preventing suicide, while you’re the ones calling me [gay slur] and tearing me down.”

The warning signs were there. According to the Buffalo News article, he spoke of bullying and suicide starting about 12 months ago. He spoke of it often. People ridiculed him on his tumblr account and said they didn’t care if he was dead. The bullying continued and, even though he was getting help, nothing seemed to work.

In his video, he says that it does get better, but I’m not convinced he believed it would. He seems to be trying to convince himself more than convince others that things will get better.

It’s a shame that Jamey couldn’t hang on and that he didn’t feel there was more local support for him. It’s hard enough being a teenager, but I can’t even imagine what it’s like being gay in an unsupportive atmosphere.

The bullying may stop once you leave school, but the psychological scars of never being able to trust people and speaking up and defending yourself do not come easy, especially if a teenager doesn’t have the support they need to help them through their teen years.

Bullying is harassment and often assault as well. We have laws on the books against these types of behavior and they need to start being enforced against those who commit them. It shouldn’t matter that someone is bullied because they are gay, fat, look funny, or any other reason. It needs to start being taken seriously or many more teenagers will be taking their own lives.

While it’s a start, we need to do more than tell kids that it gets better. As adults, we actually need to do something about it and stop ignoring the problem.