College 'professors' made their bed...they get NO respect

It’s an attitude I encountered throughout the Teens as I spoke at some 50 campuses. At Berkeley, a provost told me, survey data showed a worrisome drop in homework hours on campus and he encouraged me to tell the truth. That led to another lecture with a grumbling Q & A. In a follow-up forum, I learned, a distinguished professor did the same thing as the profs did at Minnesota, emphasizing my negatives and the kids’ positives. I was the grouch, the reactionary; the profs were mentors, guides, softly paternalistic inspirers of the young. They didn’t want an elder to knock the kids. You wouldn’t hear them criticize hip-hop and Marvel movies, as I do at the bare mention of them. The kids are all right!

Let’s jump forward to 2022 and check the attitude. I presume you’ve seen the attitude in action many times, from the student advocate who believes that “great teachers engineer learning experiences that maneuver the students into the driver’s seat and then the teachers get out of the way,” to the education professor who demands that general education requirements be scrapped. Ten years later, let’s ask: what is the result of professors stepping off the podium? How have the indulgence and forbearance and admiration worked out?

Not so well. The professors still sympathize with the young, and they don’t like grumps to trash Instagram. They won’t insist on more book reading and more pages assigned for homework. But the relationship between teacher and student has changed, and not in a happier direction.

The teachers believed that telling 19-year-olds about rampant systemic racism would boost their status as truth-tellers, but the kids took the message and included the messengers in the guilt.

There is fear in the air. Classrooms and forums have lost their free-wheeling forensic. Professors are scared of the very youths they pledged to protect and enable. They no longer look at students as budding adults eager to learn. Instead, they see danger, and many episodes prove it.

They watched the girl at Yale shrieking at Professor Christakis. They heard about Penn law professor Amy Wax vilified by students and punished by the dean.........