free speech vs. political correctness

[Maria de Luna]

Re: free speech vs. political correctness

Eh Thal said the stuff I was thinking... I need a bloody trigger warning for trigger warnings.... They WILL piss me off...

[nbdy]

Re: free speech vs. political correctness

I am of the opinion that anything that needs to be said can be said with kindness, and this is something I have tried to teach my children; however, I do not think it can be achieved through overt coercion. It has been my observation in this life that all power exerted by one entity over another is ultimately coercive, and also that as that coercion becomes more overt the effectiveness of control weakens. It is something of a paradox, but people are complicated. Schools, at all levels, have moved away from education and toward conditioning. It is a huge and horrifying difference, imo.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: free speech vs. political correctness

Schools, at all levels, have moved away from education and toward conditioning. It is a huge and horrifying difference, imo.

To put this in the context of the article, do you mean that withdrawing the invitation to speakers with a minority position is conditioning, or that inviting the speakers in the first place is conditioning?

Or are they both?

[nbdy]

Re: free speech vs. political correctness

To put this in the context of the article, do you mean that withdrawing the invitation to speakers with a minority position is conditioning, or that inviting the speakers in the first place is conditioning?

Or are they both?

Disinviting speakers, though I was speaking more broadly than that. Education should be an invitation to think, and training young people how to evaluate information. By the time a child gets to college they should be able to do a basic meta-analysis, they should have the tools to ask the right questions, but this is not what is happening for most students. Instead, education as I have experienced it through my children is mostly an exercise in teaching what to think rather than how to think, and then, naturally, ideas that should not be dangerous can become dangerous when students are conditioned to absorb and regurgitate rather than evaluate. This makes information management important, and takes political correctness, which I believe began as a sincere effort to make a kinder gentler world, into the realm of outright censorship. Regardless of the speaker or situation, decisions to exclude ideas are likely fear-based. Not a good foundation for future leaders.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: free speech vs. political correctness

I agree with you.

[Sean R. R.]

Re: free speech vs. political correctness

Can I get a trigger warning for sadness? Feeling sad makes me sad.