{"id":46746,"date":"2019-02-01T03:00:36","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T08:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=46746"},"modified":"2022-03-28T23:40:41","modified_gmt":"2022-03-29T03:40:41","slug":"severian-explains-why-he-quit-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/02\/01\/severian-explains-why-he-quit-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Severian explains why he quit teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spoiler: it wasn’t fun anymore. As to why it wasn’t fun<\/em>, it was (say it together with me) the youth of today<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that kids today are mal-educated, woefully ignorant, and wouldn\u2019t know serious academic work if it bit them on the ass. Those are all true, of course, but that\u2019s the way it has always been \u2014 I have no doubt Plato said the same thing about Aristotle (and Socrates no doubt said it about Plato). In my experience, the rueful phrase \u201cback when I<\/em> was in college\u201d first escapes your lips approximately 36 hours into graduate school.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the quantity of ignorance, then, but the quality<\/em>. Generation Snowflake really are New Soviet Men<\/a>. If you\u2019ve read about life under Stalin, especially, you\u2019ll know what I\u2019m talking about \u2014 at once invincibly self-righteous and cringingly subservient, modern students come across like junior volunteer commissars. If they don\u2019t already know it, it\u2019s by definition not worth knowing\u2026 and you\u2019re an asshole \u2014 to be avoided, undermined, ignored, or (very, very grudgingly) tolerated, as the situation dictates \u2014 for trying to make them \u201clearn\u201d something new.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re not sociopaths, exactly, but that\u2019s close enough to what they are that we\u2019ll go with it. For instance: They have no problem asking you to move due dates, even for big things like midterm exams, if it inconveniences them. And just them \u2014 the rest of the class should still have to take the exam on Friday; it\u2019s just that she, Suzy Snowflake, has a big sorority function that weekend that she really needs to prepare for, so she should be allowed to take it Monday. Nor do they have a problem with lying on spec, just to see if you\u2019ll bite. Tell Suzy no, she still has to take the exam on Friday like everyone else, and there\u2019s a decent chance you\u2019ll be getting a \u201cdead Grandma\u201d email from her over the weekend \u2014 my Grandma died suddenly this Friday, I had to go home for the funeral, I\u2019m so broken up, I\u2019m free to take the makeup exam on Monday.<\/p>\n

No, I\u2019m not joking, and yes, you can check Suzy Snowflake\u2019s social media and find pictures of her downing shots at the big sorority do Saturday night. And yes, she knows those pictures are out there; Generation Snowflake regards the concept of \u201conline privacy\u201d like your cat thinks about calculus. It\u2019s just that hey, maybe you won\u2019t check. Worth a shot, right? If anyone should be upset it\u2019s her<\/em>, for making her feel bad by doubting her story. She\u2019ll saunter into class on Monday like nothing happened\u2026. because to her, nothing did<\/em>. She threw a Hail Mary, it got intercepted, oh well, what\u2019s new in the Netflix queue?<\/p>\n

Faced with that, any attempt at education is like King Canute ordering back the tides. It\u2019s excruciatingly pointless, and that\u2019s why I quit. Life\u2019s too short to spend raging against the inevitable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spoiler: it wasn’t fun anymore. As to why it wasn’t fun, it was (say it together with me) the youth of today: It\u2019s not that kids today are mal-educated, woefully ignorant, and wouldn\u2019t know serious academic work if it bit them on the ass. Those are all true, of course, but that\u2019s the way it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[1106,956,154,1462,593,764],"class_list":["post-46746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","tag-genz","tag-millennials","tag-privacy","tag-severian","tag-socialmedia","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-c9Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46747,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46746\/revisions\/46747"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}