Sunday, October 07, 2018



The origins of the fragile student

‘Snowflakeism’ isn’t all down to cranky student-union leaders.

This week, Manchester University Students’ Union banned clapping at its events. The traditional round of applause has been replaced with the more ‘inclusive’ jazz hands to make students feel more comfortable.

The move has rightly been ridiculed in the media as yet another example of student ‘snowflakes’, of political correctness gone mad. The policy is certainly laughable. It benefits no one besides the students’ union officers, who get to fantasise that their petty policies are striking a blow for social justice.

Yet for all the media’s mockery of zany student policies, they themselves are complicit in this state of affairs.

Of course, student silliness makes great headlines, and unions’ authoritarian behaviour deserves criticism. But, contradictorily, when the media aren’t bashing students for being ‘snowflakes’, they are talking up a campus mental-health crisis, fretting over an alleged epidemic of student suicides, and telling us that students are overwhelmed by stress even from routine assignments, coursework and exams. What’s more, according to numerous media reports, universities are hotbeds of rape culture, racism and bullying.

It is actually these scare stories, and the often questionable statistics behind them, that form the basis of many of the mad policies and campaigns on campus that the media then condemn.

Calls for sexual-consent classes, the removal of ‘colonialist’ statues, or the demand for trigger warnings on Shakespeare all stem from the absurd view of students as a uniquely vulnerable and put-upon section of society — a view the media are happy to indulge and promote.

The media are correct to scorn the excesses of student politics, but they uncritically propagate the ideas that give rise to these excesses.

Of course, like all people, some students will be disadvantaged or will face problems during the course of their studies. But the vast majority will have a perfectly enjoyable university experience without the intervention of mental-health professionals or students’ union ‘liberation’ officers.

It is time for both students’ unions and the media to start treating students as adults and to tackle the idea that students are inherently vulnerable. Only then will the demands to ban such allegedly terrible things as clapping or controversial ideas start to disappear.

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Is the Electorate Really Informed?

Just one in three Americans could pass a 10-question test derived from the U.S. Citizenship Test.   

While last week we were singing the praises of Millennials for staying together in matrimony, one area where they’re falling short is the understanding of our basic system of government. Then again, they’re not alone: According to a survey conducted for the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, just one in three Americans could pass a 10-question test derived from the U.S. Citizenship Test, which is required of all immigrants who wish to become American citizens. Tellingly, those under age 45 had just a 19% passage rate, meaning that fewer than one in five could answer six or more of the 10 questions correctly. (On the other hand, respondents over 65 had a 74% passage rate.)

“Unfortunately this study found the average American to be woefully uninformed regarding America’s history and incapable of passing the U.S. Citizenship Test,” said Foundation president Arthur Levine. “It would be an error to view these findings as merely an embarrassment,” Levine warned. “Knowledge of the history of our country is fundamental to maintaining a democratic society, which is imperiled today.”

Regular readers will recall that we’ve sounded this alarm bell before, particularly when Constitution Day comes around. All kidding about “Civics for Dummies” aside, though, ignorance of the basic tenets of our government leaves our citizenry vulnerable to abuse by those people who realize how simple it is to game the system to their advantage. “We don’t need a citizenry made up of constitutional experts,” wrote our own Brian Mark Weber, “but how can we expect voters to make informed decisions if they know next to nothing about our system of government or their rights under the Constitution?”

It’s almost too easy to blame the educational system, whether it’s the replacement of traditional American history by “New Civics” classwork at the college level or a lack of emphasis in high school — a glaring deficiency that prompted the Obama administration to simply stop measuring the lack of progress in teaching these subjects. Noteworthy was a 2012 Tufts University study, which found that while most states required a basic civics course for high-school graduation, only eight had a civics portion as part of mandated testing to graduate. Moreover, the remaining tests were becoming easier, having dropped their short-answer and essay requirements in favor of simpler multiple-choice questions. Those 2012 students are today donning the civics dunce cap.

Picking up on the admonition of the Woodrow Wilson Institute, the editors at The Wall Street Journal are correct in stating flatly: “It’s embarrassing.”

When just 13% of Americans can recall when the Constitution was ratified — most said 1776, meaning they can’t keep the Constitution and Declaration of Independence straight — and 60% don’t know which countries the United States fought in World War II, woe is us. And is it merely comical or downright shameful that “only 24% can identify something that Ben Franklin was famous for, and 37% credit him for having invented the light bulb.” In Millennial-speak: “OMG!”

With Election Day less than a month away — in fact, early voting has already begun in a few select states — this study should be yet another wake-up call to ratchet up our awareness a few notches. Unfortunately, subjects that don’t lend themselves to becoming popular iPhone apps aren’t high on the Millennial priority list — and, hey, they don’t mind socialism anyway.

Barbie once complained that “math class is tough.” Maybe so, but try convincing today’s education establishment that it’s important to properly teach our young people about the Constitution and the role of government. Given these latest dismal results, it’s time to take on this toughest of tasks.

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Australian University chiefs unite to defend free speech

Good if it happens

University of Western Sydney chancellor Peter Shergold has warned that attacks on free speech are a relatively recent development.

Leading university heads have warned of the urgent need to take a stand against encroaching threats to free speech across Australia’s tertiary institutions, including US-inspired boycotts of speakers and classroom “trigger warnings” about details that might upset students — with one high-profile chancellor dis­avowing the notion that campuses should be “safe spaces”.

University of Western Sydney chancellor Peter Shergold has warned that attacks on free speech are a relatively recent development in Australia and university governing bodies should be prepared to make tough decisions to defend the integrity of their institutions.

Speaking to The Australian following a robust panel discussion on the topic at the University Chancellors Council annual conference in Adelaide yesterday, Dr Shergold said his personal view was that universities should default to a position of enabling “as much freedom as possible — not to constrain, not to control”.

“Universities need safe spaces for students, be they LGBTI or Muslim … where they can go and talk to each other,” said Dr Shergold, the council’s chairman. “But university campuses cannot be safe spaces in terms of ideas.  “People should be challenged by ideas, see a diversity of ideas. That’s the heart of the institutional ethos of a university.”

Dr Shergold’s comments — which come amid mounting concerns that universities are increasingly becoming closed intellectual shops, prone to groupthink and the censoring of diverse ideas — were echoed by Australian ­National University chancellor ­Gareth Evans.

While Mr Evans has recently been forced to defend the univer­sity’s decision to withdraw from plans for a new degree in Western civilisation — which was to have been funded by the John Howard-chaired Ramsay Centre — he too slammed the emerging phenomenon of staff and students seeking to shut down debate under the premise that people should not be exposed to ideas with which they disagreed.

“We are hearing about ‘no-platforming’ — disinviting or shouting down visiting speakers espousing various heresies; about the need for ‘trigger warnings’ — alerting students to potentially upsetting racially, politically or ­gender-sensitive themes,” Mr Evans said.

“Most disconcerting of all, the need for ‘safe spaces’, where students can be completely insulated from anything that may assault their sense of what is moral and appropriate.”

Institute of Public Affairs research fellow Matthew Lesh cited recent publicised threats to free speech such as opposition to the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, which ANU staff and students accused of pushing a “racist” and “radically conservative agenda”, as well as the violent protest over psychologist Bettina Arndt’s appearance at the University of Sydney. These were just “the tip of the iceberg”, Mr Lesh said.

He told the conference that the proliferation of social justice policies around cultural inclusion, global citizenship and sustainability were to blame for restraining free speech. “I speak to academics and students at your institutions ­almost every day … (they) tell me about a worrying culture of censorship,” he said.

“Australia’s universities are lacking in viewpoint diversity — a range of perspectives challenging each other in the pursuit of reason, truth and progress. This leads to groupthink, self-censorship, and sometimes active shouting down.”

He said universities had a choice between either encouraging free inquiry or treading a social justice path and seeking to “change the world” — but choosing the latter would “not only undermine academic scholarship and student learning, it could be seriously damaging to the reputation and viability of the institutions”.

Mr Evans said it wasn’t only universities that were at risk, referring to the decision by the Brisbane Writers Festival this year to disinvite former NSW premier Bob Carr and feminist Germaine Greer as “absurd to the point of indefensibility”.

Joking that he was perhaps an “unreconstructed child of the 1960s”, the former Labor senator and foreign affairs minister said principles of “timeless significance” were at stake and university administrators and governing bodies “simply must take a stand”.

“Lines have to be drawn, and administrators’ spines stiffened, against manifestly un­conscionable demands for protection against ideas and arguments claimed to be offensive,” Mr Evans said. “Keeping alive the great tradition of our universities — untrammelled autonomy and untrammelled freedom of speech — is a cause to which university chancellors … should be prepared to go to the barricades.”

Concern about the impacts of growing campus activism has been on the political radar for some months.

Education Minister Dan Tehan recently proposed to the Group of Eight universities that measures to protect freedom of thought and expression should be considered, such as requiring student activists who sought to disrupt an event to pay for additional security costs. He expressed concerns that in the case of Sydney University, event organisers were being levied with the bill.

Steven Schwartz, a former vice-chancellor at three universities in Australia and Britain, said: “Today’s university students will grow up to be tomorrow’s lawyers, politicians, and judges. For the sake of our democracy, we cannot allow a generation of graduates to grow up believing that there are issues that are too dangerous to discuss.

“Expanding the meaning of words such as ‘violence’, ‘aggression’ and ‘traumatic’ to describe speech provides universities with a spurious excuse for censorship.”

Professor Schwartz said if universities failed to defend free speech, governments might intervene: “I am sure they will not like the result.”

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