Diversity training
The cost of college education keeps going up. Could the rising costs have anything to do with programs such as this?
At the University of Wisconsin, “diversity training” is mandated for teaching assistants. What follows is a September 22 letter from Jason Morgan, a doctoral candidate, and teaching assistant at the University to the school’s administration.
At the end of yesterday’s diversity “re-education,” we were told that our next session would include a presentation on “Trans Students.” At that coming session, according to the handout we were given, we will learn how to let students ‘choose their own pronouns’, how to correct other students who mistakenly use the wrong pronouns, and how to ask people which pronouns they prefer (“I use the pronouns he/him/his. I want to make sure I address you correctly. What pronouns do you use?”). Also on the agenda for next week are “important trans struggles, as well as those of the intersexed and other gender-variant communities,” “stand[ing] up to the rules of gender,” and a very helpful glossary of related terms and acronyms, to wit: “Trans”: for those who “identify along the gender-variant spectrum,” and “Genderqueer”: “for those who consider their gender outside the binary gender system”. I hasten to reiterate that I am quoting from diversity handouts; I am not making any of this up.
Please allow me to be quite frank. My job, which I love, is to teach students Japanese history. This week, for example, I have been busy explaining the intricacies of the Genpei War (1180-1185), during which time Japan underwent a transition from an earlier, imperial-rule system under regents and cloistered emperors to a medieval, feudal system run by warriors and estate managers. It is an honor and a great joy to teach students the history of Japan. I take my job very seriously, and I look forward to coming to work each day.
It is most certainly not my job, though, to cheer along anyone, student or otherwise, in their psychological confusion.
What does it cost the University for said program, and, more to the point, can anyone possibly justify this?
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Read the whole letter; it is priceless.? It is an accurate and refreshingly well written description of the depths to which liberalism has dragged academia.? The former utopias of free speech and discourse have been relegated to gulags of “free speech zones”, and political correctness, producing departments of “diversity studies” that generate some of the most useless majors known to mankind.? Or is it “womynkind”?? LOL!
Walt Kelly’s Pogo was so right – “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Well, in reality, it is them.? The domestic leftist terrorists that spew the very hatred and vitriol they project on Republicans and the Tea Party.
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But I get your point!? 😉
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In academia, the purpose of diversity training is to have everyone conform to correct speech and actions.
In the business world, such training is undertaken to forestall litigation by overzealous lawyers who are looking for an easy payday.
Either way, it is about someone or an institution practicing the old maxim of CYA.
The sad reality is that often after enlightened diversity training instances of targeted hatred, bias, bigotry and naked aggression only increase. When the training is a requirement or is mandatory or even implied as necessary for any advancement, people rebel against it. Forcing kumbaya on anyone can be highly counterproductive.
We all have our prejudices. How we act on them is the important point.
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I always wonder about the people who voted for President Obama. Anybody want to take a bet, those who can’t figure out what sex they are, voted for President Obama.