Friday, October 28, 2016

Halloween and the Academy

The Academy has become the extreme distortion of our society. The NY Times writes:

And when it comes to offensive behavior, one rarely hears students critique or police pop music that is riddled with abusive-sounding insults, mostly about women. Profanity, in general, doesn’t seem to be something students worry about. Walk through a crowded cafeteria and curse words pop up gratuitously among students as if vocabulary has failed them. When I say, “Hey, ease up on the language, O.K.?” they look at me with incomprehension, not realizing they’ve said anything offensive. College officials won’t tell students to avoid this kind of horrible stuff, though. Establishing behavioral codes that curtail hookup culture and profanity — those old-fashioned proprieties — are sexist and puritanical, we are told.

Boy am I old! As an Engineer we never had time to cavort at Halloween. I never saw a costume. In 1962 for example we were more concerned about a nuclear strike on New York that about offending some "protected" group. 

If one has so much free time as Liberal Arts students seem to have, then this is not an education, it is expensive baby sitting. For $70,000 per year you get to ship your kid off to some place that teaches them some useless stuff so that when they "graduate" the cannot get a job and move in back home. 

Worse they have debt which the parent co-signed for and the parent's  retirement goes out the window.