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Writer's pictureJoanne Jacobs

College students are young adults - not fragile children

It's time to start treating college student like young adults, not preschoolers who need a "safe space" and a snack, write Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder in the Chronicle of Higher Education. "Institutions of higher learning need to turn their attention to empowering our students to contend with the reality of living in a diverse, pluralistic democracy."


From Georgetown to the University of Puget Sound, colleges responded to Donald Trump's victory by offering Legos, coloring books, puzzles, craft supplies and therapy dogs, they write.


All this signals to students that they are fragile and in need of "self care," Khalid and Snyder write. It does nothing to help them engage with Americans who have different views or values than those expressed in the campus echo chamber.


Colleges should create "exchange programs for students from urban, predominantly liberal schools to interact and learn from students in conservative, rural America, and vice versa," they suggest.


After Trump's first victory in 2016, Jonathan Zimmerman, a Penn history professor, organized a discussion with his students and students from Cairn University, a former Bible college with conservative students, they note. "For two hours, students had productive, civil, and eye-opening conversation. Several Penn students later noted that they had never spoken with a Trump supporter before and were taken aback by the amount of common ground they shared."


Khalid and Snyder also suggest teaching students that minority communities are made up of individuals who do not all think alike and that economic and social "class matters."


They recommend Musa Al-Gharbi's We Have Never Been Woke, which argues "that conceptions of social justice (or 'wokeness') are a form of cultural capital among contemporary elites" -- not a way to benefit disadvantaged people.


"We would do well to help our students unlearn the idea that everyone will end up thinking like us if only they get their heads straight," they write.


Higher education faces many challenges, Khalid and Snyder conclude. "We should expect to see more chilling laws in the Stop WOKE Act vein. . . . We need to cultivate in ourselves and our students the strength, stamina, and fortitude that this difficult work requires."

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