WSJ snickers at Wes curriculum

madjoy
Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:40:48 +0000

And there are entire courses on specific authors, as well - this doesn’t seem like anything more than the typical Wesleyan stereotyping as an “ultraPC school for crazy radicals”. It’s absurd to disregard classes that have to do with group membership - American Lit is a standard class everywhere, not because each author isn’t unique, but because it makes logical sense to read many of these American authors together, see the common places where they’re coming from, and the places where they differ.

“In such a classroom, students encounter each other not as individuals but as spokespersons instead.”

And that’s tokenism. And that’s why it’s helpful to have classes (academic or not - for example, Wesleyan has workshops during orientation and that RAs run) that deal with issues of identity and prejudice and social psychology so that you can be aware that it’s happening, and avoid it, and appreciate people as individuals with individual viewpoints.

Kind of a weird example, but last year a group called “Common Ground” met to openly discuss Israel/Palestine issues. A large portion of the people who came to the meetings were Jews, and a reasonably high proportion were Arabs and/or Muslims. Originally at the meetings there was a sort of tension that came from everyone being aware of each other’s ethnic/religious backgrounds, because it’s such a tough issue to talk about when you have family and friends there. But then someone brought up the issue directly, how privilege was affecting the conversations we were having and how feeling tokenized was affecting the conversations we were having, and after that, in future meetings it was much less tense and people spoke their real opinions. I mean, I guess you kind of had to be there. But I just feel like is negatively called “political correctness” is actually extremely valuable for engaging in real dialogue.