I remember how it was -- JR
Friday, December 30, 2022
Fury as University of Warwick issues 'racism' trigger warning for Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe over 'offensive' depictions of black slaves and Arab Muslim captives
I think I read all of his novels whren I was a kid. Good stories
A descendant of legendary novelist Sir Walter Scott has slammed a university's decision to slap trigger warnings on his historic works and branded them 'cowardly'.
The celebrated Scottish writer, who penned his epic Ivanhoe in 1819, has seen his work branded 'disturbing' by academics at the University of Warwick.
Critics have said Scott's historical novel could be 'offensive' to modern audiences because of its treatment of racial minorities, which includes black slaves and Muslim captives, who along with other characters in the work are prejudiced against Jews.
But the author's great-great-great-great-grandson, Matthew Maxwell-Scott, defended his ancestor's work and was left saddened that Ivanhoe was branded potentially upsetting.
He told the Telegraph: 'Attacking those who cannot defend themselves has always been a coward's charter.
'Today, social media and the growth of academia provide new playgrounds for the modern bully. Long-deceased artists are a particular target. Often exhibiting the hated traits of maleness, paleness and, to some eyes at least, staleness, it is open season.'
The events of Ivanhoe, published in 1819, follow England after the Third Crusade with the protagonist Sir Wilfred Ivanhoe and the raging conflict between Anglo-Saxon and Norman nobles.
The university's English department warns students who are to study the novel: 'Amongst the aspects readers might find disturbing, this text includes offensive depictions of people of colour and of persecuted ethnic minorities, as well as misogyny.'
In common with dozens of universities, Warwick uses such warnings to alert students to sensitive material, such as racism, homophobia and violence, so they can prepare themselves for a potentially unpleasant experience.
Mr Maxwell-Scott, a trustee of his ancestor's residence at Abbotsford and a Conservative councillor, said the university's trigger warning was 'disappointing'.
He added: 'All manner of titles can face this as we seem to have lost the ability to appreciate any artistic output as a product of its time.
'Scott, the father of the historical novel, used his meticulous research to transport readers of Ivanhoe to a different moral landscape, one alien to the Enlightenment world he was forged in, let alone that of today.
'Seeking out theoretical faults rather than identifying the many positives is a shame. Consider Scott's contribution to our language. He is the third most-quoted source in the Oxford English Dictionary.'
Warwick, one of 24 members of the elite Russell Group of British universities, began using trigger warnings in 2019, but had received several complaints in recent years about the content of its literature and drama courses.
A spokesman from the University of Warwick said: 'We believe students should be exposed to challenging ideas, stories and themes through their studies and view it as an essential part of learning and understanding different perspectives. That's why the university does not ask departments to issue content guidance notices for course materials.
'However, a small number of departments and academics choose to do so, making their own judgment and rationale for deciding on what guidance they feel may be needed for the coursework they set.
'We fully respect our colleagues right to exercise their academic freedom in this way, but the practice remains rare within the university with less than one per cent of our overall curriculum including any content guidance.'
Born on August 15 1771, Sir Walter Scott was became fascinated by the oral traditions of the Scottish Borders.
He overcame a bout of polio in his childhood and launched his literary career at 25, beginning to write professionally and translating many works from German.
Dubbed 'The Wizard of the North', Scott was praised by his descendants as an 'early advocate for mindfulness, an environmentalist and a devoted family man'.
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A battle over charter co-location reveals how deeply progressives are wrong
The war against excellence reared its ugly head again at a city Panel for Educational Policy meeting Wednesday night — this time as a verbal brawl between charter-school supporters, who sought approval for a co-location in a Sheepshead Bay school, and those who opposed it. Success Academy won its permission, but the battle revealed how deep the anti-academic fervor is inside New York City public schools.
Students both for and against the co-location spoke, and the supplied talking points were quite obvious as many repeated the same ideas using the same words, but some ventured to share their own opinions. What emerged from most of the opponents was a clear distaste for having Success — or any school that’s unapologetically academic and focused on student achievement — in the midst of their school buildings, as if something unsavory would rub off. Why? Why does a school that relentlessly promotes and celebrates student academic success provoke such anger in those who should be doing the exact same thing?
The city’s traditional public schools — the base camp of the teachers unions — have over the last many years focused their efforts on something called SEL: social-emotional learning. There are no tests for SEL, nothing that can let you know if a student has mastered the subject or if a teacher is doing a great job, a mediocre job or nothing at all.
SEL is all about feelings and behaviors. Words like “microaggressions,” “oppression” and “gender identity” come up a lot during SEL workshops and teacher trainings. Grades, tests and achievements, not so much.
De-emphasizing academics and student achievement is, unfortunately, not just a New York City trend — it is a national phenomenon. Asra Nomani, a reporter and education activist who has fought the anti-merit attacks on her child’s once famously rigorous Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia, described this week how the school sought to downplay and ignore its National Merit Scholars by not properly notifying students or families in a timely and public manner.
Will Hochul let union pawns keep strangling charter schools?
A school administrator explained, “We want to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements,” adding that the school didn’t want to “hurt” the feelings of non-scholar students.
What if you’re a really smart kid who takes pride in your academic achievements? What if the answer to “Who am I as an individual?” is “the best mathematician in my class,” “aspiring scientist” or “National Merit Scholar”? How can that be hard for schoolteachers and administrators to understand?
The supporters of Success Academy’s co-location application included students, parents and even alumni who each took hours out of their Wednesday night to listen to an hours-long Zoom meeting and offer up two minutes of testimony about how Success positively shaped their lives. They were pleading for the opportunity to site a K-4 school in an inconveniently located building that already contains two high schools, one a transfer high school. They were begging for crumbs.
The South Brooklyn Success Academy locations have growing waitlists because city public-school families want what Success is known for — rigorous academics and a focus on student achievement. Success Academy students outperform their city district-school peers, with proficiency rates for black and Hispanic students up to triple those for district peers.
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Student Parents Need Online Learning Options to Succeed
As colleges and universities work to bounce back from a pandemic that drastically changed the way most people view higher education, many students are hoping some changes stick around – especially many college students who are also parents. Millions of students over the last few years experienced a complete shift to virtual learning, forcing higher education institutions to become more flexible to meet student needs. But with COVID concerns waning, many colleges have rushed to bring students back on campus, rolling back the virtual infrastructure that made it easier for so many students, particularly non-traditional students, to succeed.
Frankly, many students do not want to return exclusively to the classroom. A recent report found preferences for course modalities rapidly shifted over the course of the pandemic with mostly face-to-face classes dropping from 30% of respondents to 12% while completely online courses jumped from 5% to 20%, suggesting students are starting to prefer the flexible benefits of virtual education options over in-person.
This sentiment is certainly shared by student parents who are often overlooked when it comes to student needs, yet they represent more than one in five (22%) of the overall undergraduate population. While many share similar struggles with other students, they also have to contend with the high cost of childcare and the difficulty of staying enrolled in a system that was not built with their needs or experiences in mind.
Over the last two years, we have seen that while virtual learning is not perfect, it does allow student parents to stay home with their children while taking classes online. When coupled with the ability to complete various exams and assignments at times that are convenient for them, this learning environment can be extremely beneficial for student parents who have more demands on their time than their non-parenting peers.
The annual cost of childcare can average close to $10,000 a year for one child. These costs can be difficult for dual parents with stable incomes, let alone a single parent trying to juggle the costs of school tuition and childcare.
While universities alone can’t be expected to cover all the costs of childcare, many have cut their own childcare programs over the years, leading to a 14 percent decline in on-campus childcare from 2004 to 2019. The trend is even worse among community colleges where most student parents are enrolled and are experiencing a steeper reduction of 17 percent. The federal government has made efforts to help reverse this trend by more than tripling its childcare grant funding to schools in 2018 from $15 to $50 million to serve low-income students with children. Despite this increase, estimates show the program only reaches about 11,000 of the 4.8 million total student parents.
The gap between childcare needs and availability is unlikely to be fixed in the near future given the scale of the issue across all industries, but it makes clear the need to provide parents with more opportunities, like virtual learning, to help them balance their busy lives.
Lack of affordable, reliable childcare is one of many obstacles that student parents face and that disproportionately impacts their academic careers. It’s less often the academic rigor of college that makes it difficult to stay enrolled and more often the lack of financial resources and having to navigate policies that further exclude them. For example, students with children are often forced to take semesters off or to transfer schools because they can’t afford to stay in school or their childcare is interrupted. As a result, policies that limit transfer credits or federal Pell Grants that expire after six years can force student parents to retake classes with even less financial support. One way to help parents catch up is through online education resources that include study guides, practice questions, writing assistance, and detailed descriptions of how to solve complex math problems. For these students who often cannot make it to office hours, online resources provide a vital lifeline to help students learn at a pace and time that works with their busy schedules.
According to a recent report by Chegg, an online educational resource company, 55% of student parents have considered dropping out of school due to the demands of parenting while 73% of student parents who have children in middle school or below have missed work or class because of childcare arrangements. Colleges must identify ways to be more inclusive of parenting students in campus life and an institution-wide lens that considers the needs of student parents in the implementation of all of its services.
Studies show that student parents are 10 times less likely to achieve a college degree in five years compared to those without kids. Colleges and lawmakers must work to ensure students are not unfairly locked out of the higher education system because they are raising children. Embracing the virtual and hybrid learning opportunities we have developed over the course of the pandemic, along with supportive online resources that can help student parents study on their own schedule wherever they might be, will help ensure all students have a fair shot at earning a degree.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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