I really enjoyed this essay. As a teacher I’ve come to loathe student-centered approaches to learning. There’s something fraudulent about them, especially towards the students themselves. Essentially it tells them that I, as a teacher, have nothing to teach them, and that they must decide what they need to learn. Teachers graduating today have learnt very little in the way of subject-matter. Much of their teaching is extremely self-referential which is why many of them end up inserting unrelated and irrelevant gender or racial theories into their curricula.
“As a teacher I’ve come to loathe student-centered approaches to learning. There’s something fraudulent about them, especially towards the students themselves.”
Yeah. I tried the student-centred blag on my mother when I was five. Her response left me traumatised.
As a teacher, I never thought ‘student centered’ meant student led. It is more about placing the student, their understanding and their progress at the center of the lesson plan rather than providing a block of information and ticking a box when it has been delivered.
Yes many people including teachers really don’t understanding constructivism. It’s not a theory of teaching, it’s a theory of learning. It’s certainly not about putting the students in charge. Grossly oversimplifying it says that in order to learn something you need to make sense of it ie construct meaning. Which means simply telling isn’t enough. it doesn’t mean that the student is the authority. They’re not. The teacher is, or should be, the knowledgable person whose job is to enable the student to become a knowledgeable person. The master/apprenticeship model is a good one.
The problem is not so much the teachers, but the administrators who don’t know the difference and believe students receiving low grades are due to a teacher-centered approach.
Yes many people including teachers really don’t understanding constructivism. It’s not a theory of teaching, it’s a theory of learning. It’s certainly not about putting the students in charge. Grossly oversimplifying it says that in order to learn something you need to make sense of it ie construct meaning. Which means simply telling isn’t enough. it doesn’t mean that the student is the authority. They’re not. The teacher is, or should be, the knowledgable person whose job is to enable the student to become a knowledgeable person. The master/apprenticeship model is a good one.
The problem is not so much the teachers, but the administrators who don’t know the difference and believe students receiving low grades are due to a teacher-centered approach.
“Teachers graduating today have learnt very little in the way of subject-matter.”
And in the USA, that thought is confirmed by the abysmal test scores of students overall and the climb in the illiteracy rate.
Yes, yes, yes, as a teacher of 25 years, I am weary of listening to my younger peers wax poetic about all the self-discovery in their classrooms as they avoid teaching actual writing. My poor students still write essays and learn about antiquated concepts like paragraphing. LOL
As someone who has taught quite a lot, there is no doubt that actually thinking about whether your students are understanding and learning is kind of important. Not sure whether this is student-centred but it is good teaching.
“As a teacher I’ve come to loathe student-centered approaches to learning. There’s something fraudulent about them, especially towards the students themselves.”
Yeah. I tried the student-centred blag on my mother when I was five. Her response left me traumatised.
As a teacher, I never thought ‘student centered’ meant student led. It is more about placing the student, their understanding and their progress at the center of the lesson plan rather than providing a block of information and ticking a box when it has been delivered.
“Teachers graduating today have learnt very little in the way of subject-matter.”
And in the USA, that thought is confirmed by the abysmal test scores of students overall and the climb in the illiteracy rate.
Yes, yes, yes, as a teacher of 25 years, I am weary of listening to my younger peers wax poetic about all the self-discovery in their classrooms as they avoid teaching actual writing. My poor students still write essays and learn about antiquated concepts like paragraphing. LOL
As someone who has taught quite a lot, there is no doubt that actually thinking about whether your students are understanding and learning is kind of important. Not sure whether this is student-centred but it is good teaching.
Julian Farrows
8 months ago
I really enjoyed this essay. As a teacher I’ve come to loathe student-centered approaches to learning. There’s something fraudulent about them, especially towards the students themselves. Essentially it tells them that I, as a teacher, have nothing to teach them, and that they must decide what they need to learn. Teachers graduating today have learnt very little in the way of subject-matter. Much of their teaching is extremely self-referential which is why many of them end up inserting unrelated and irrelevant gender or racial theories into their curricula.
Hugh Bryant
8 months ago
Oh FFS! How many millions of words of absolute nonsense have been written on this subject in absolute defiance of common sense.
‘Sexual repression’ is a defence against disease. Wait till the antibiotics stop working and then see how quickly it comes back
Indeed. It puts me in mind of something I heard Jonathan Haidt say, the gist of which was, ‘As a young student interested in people, morality etc, I was initially drawn to philosophy in search of answers, but thankfully switched to psychology’.
Indeed. It puts me in mind of something I heard Jonathan Haidt say, the gist of which was, ‘As a young student interested in people, morality etc, I was initially drawn to philosophy in search of answers, but thankfully switched to psychology’.
Hugh Bryant
8 months ago
Oh FFS! How many millions of words of absolute nonsense have been written on this subject in absolute defiance of common sense.
‘Sexual repression’ is a defence against disease. Wait till the antibiotics stop working and then see how quickly it comes back
Jonathan Smith
8 months ago
I’ve read more about Foucault’s work than any direct reading of the actual works although The History of Sexuality has been sitting on my bookshelves gathering dust for thirty years barely consulted. This is the first essay that makes me want to read it.
Jonathan Smith
8 months ago
I’ve read more about Foucault’s work than any direct reading of the actual works although The History of Sexuality has been sitting on my bookshelves gathering dust for thirty years barely consulted. This is the first essay that makes me want to read it.
Susan Grabston
8 months ago
I believe we have moved our locus of control overwhelmingly externally. Increasingly I experience people as “disassociated”, their attention external, seeking solutions from ” out there”. Until people are prepared to to be more embodied, to take responsibility for their embodiment, and the implicatiions (including pain and death), we will be psychological flotsam in a disregarded carcass. We need to come home to ourselves. When we have internal locus, the issues raised in this article are greatly addressed.
Susan Grabston
8 months ago
I believe we have moved our locus of control overwhelmingly externally. Increasingly I experience people as “disassociated”, their attention external, seeking solutions from ” out there”. Until people are prepared to to be more embodied, to take responsibility for their embodiment, and the implicatiions (including pain and death), we will be psychological flotsam in a disregarded carcass. We need to come home to ourselves. When we have internal locus, the issues raised in this article are greatly addressed.
Samantha Stevens
8 months ago
Oh, the numerous ways it is impossible to be a teacher today. I love the section about how teaching has become yet another form of psychotherapy. When I asked an administrator in exasperation at a faculty meeting didn’t students actually have to learn about history and facts, she replied, “they have the internet for that; everything is at their fingertips.” I countered, “They have no context for anything, nor judgment about what sources are reliable!” The groans from my colleagues made me feel like a bitter old crone librarian.
My poor students love to diagnose themselves with any variety of ills from bipolar disorder to autism to the ever-popular trans via TikTok. As the mother of an autistic daughter, I find the growing self-diagnoses of people as autistic who clearly are not incredibly offensive. My daughter will never marry, live independently, drive. I know there are autistic people who do all those things, but they still struggle. My students just want a reason to be seen as suffering and different than the average, middle class, white people they are.
As for Foucault, any article about him should really mention his tremendous deviance. He was by very credible accounts a pedophile who pushed to abolish the age of consent in France. He traveled to Tunisia where he abused poor boys. His views on sex, while cloaked in academia, were a subterfuge for his own perversion. He is to blame for much of the current state of debauchery today. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/french-philosopher-michel-foucault-abused-boys-in-tunisia-6t5sj7jvw
We really need to go back to calling high functioning autism Asperger’s Syndrome. With the latter I have married and raised children, passing it on to one of my sons, but affecting all of them by my social and emotional issues. I was bullied in school by teachers and students alike, often for sharing arcane information or correcting the teacher. I have long not needed to hold a job, but remember how difficult it was when I did, and I have never made and kept a friend besides my husband. I believe my problems in life, while real, pale compared to someone with actual autism and it is a disgrace for people to claim to be “on the spectrum” who are perfectly normal because it is a status marker, unless of course you actually display the despised traits.
That implies that a life with Asperger’s isn’t worth living. Mine has been, and my children seem to feel the same. The most affected one has a wife and daughter. His wife comes from a culture where his strong points count for more than his social weaknesses.It was in finding out when he was 16 what was wrong with him that I found out what was wrong with me. Ironically he diagnoses autism and works with autistic children.
I found out at 47 that I also had a hereditary neuromuscular disease that I passed on to him and his brother. Had I known both of these things I would still have had children. No one is guaranteed a perfect life, isn’t that one of the most obvious problems with our current society, the sense of entitlement to the reality of your choice?
What a perfectly horrible thing to say. My daughter is perfect as she is – a sacred person full of inherent value imbued by her creator. I wish I could change the world for her, but I wouldn’t change her for the world.
That implies that a life with Asperger’s isn’t worth living. Mine has been, and my children seem to feel the same. The most affected one has a wife and daughter. His wife comes from a culture where his strong points count for more than his social weaknesses.It was in finding out when he was 16 what was wrong with him that I found out what was wrong with me. Ironically he diagnoses autism and works with autistic children.
I found out at 47 that I also had a hereditary neuromuscular disease that I passed on to him and his brother. Had I known both of these things I would still have had children. No one is guaranteed a perfect life, isn’t that one of the most obvious problems with our current society, the sense of entitlement to the reality of your choice?
What a perfectly horrible thing to say. My daughter is perfect as she is – a sacred person full of inherent value imbued by her creator. I wish I could change the world for her, but I wouldn’t change her for the world.
Thank you for this excellent post. The author of this piece tied himself in knots in order to frame Foucault’s theories on sex and repression without at any point mentioning his paedophilia. Instead he’s drawn as a laugh a minute, eg the ‘funny’ quoted passages. Oh my sides.
I think this is an attempt to paint Foucault as a witty liberationist on the side of humankind. He had some interesting things to say about power. He also had some supremely dodgy theories about power and authority based on his own deviance.
Last but not least, I feel as strongly as you do about the way what we used to call personality is now being self-diagnosed as a collection of pathologies. You don’t need a diagnosis unless you’re ill. Being a social misfit is not being ill. (I should know, I’ve been one all my life.)
Being a person seriously disabled by e.g. autism, is being seriously ill. We’ve always been lousy at providing the help those people need (see the ongoing scandal about the places that essentially imprison them in isolation.) The last thing we need is a bunch of self-regarding twerps – see the ‘comedian’ Stewart Lee in the Grauniad last week – self-diagnosing autism on the basis of an online questionnaire and telling us all how great it is.
We really need to go back to calling high functioning autism Asperger’s Syndrome. With the latter I have married and raised children, passing it on to one of my sons, but affecting all of them by my social and emotional issues. I was bullied in school by teachers and students alike, often for sharing arcane information or correcting the teacher. I have long not needed to hold a job, but remember how difficult it was when I did, and I have never made and kept a friend besides my husband. I believe my problems in life, while real, pale compared to someone with actual autism and it is a disgrace for people to claim to be “on the spectrum” who are perfectly normal because it is a status marker, unless of course you actually display the despised traits.
Thank you for this excellent post. The author of this piece tied himself in knots in order to frame Foucault’s theories on sex and repression without at any point mentioning his paedophilia. Instead he’s drawn as a laugh a minute, eg the ‘funny’ quoted passages. Oh my sides.
I think this is an attempt to paint Foucault as a witty liberationist on the side of humankind. He had some interesting things to say about power. He also had some supremely dodgy theories about power and authority based on his own deviance.
Last but not least, I feel as strongly as you do about the way what we used to call personality is now being self-diagnosed as a collection of pathologies. You don’t need a diagnosis unless you’re ill. Being a social misfit is not being ill. (I should know, I’ve been one all my life.)
Being a person seriously disabled by e.g. autism, is being seriously ill. We’ve always been lousy at providing the help those people need (see the ongoing scandal about the places that essentially imprison them in isolation.) The last thing we need is a bunch of self-regarding twerps – see the ‘comedian’ Stewart Lee in the Grauniad last week – self-diagnosing autism on the basis of an online questionnaire and telling us all how great it is.
Oh, the numerous ways it is impossible to be a teacher today. I love the section about how teaching has become yet another form of psychotherapy. When I asked an administrator in exasperation at a faculty meeting didn’t students actually have to learn about history and facts, she replied, “they have the internet for that; everything is at their fingertips.” I countered, “They have no context for anything, nor judgment about what sources are reliable!” The groans from my colleagues made me feel like a bitter old crone librarian.
My poor students love to diagnose themselves with any variety of ills from bipolar disorder to autism to the ever-popular trans via TikTok. As the mother of an autistic daughter, I find the growing self-diagnoses of people as autistic who clearly are not incredibly offensive. My daughter will never marry, live independently, drive. I know there are autistic people who do all those things, but they still struggle. My students just want a reason to be seen as suffering and different than the average, middle class, white people they are.
As for Foucault, any article about him should really mention his tremendous deviance. He was by very credible accounts a pedophile who pushed to abolish the age of consent in France. He traveled to Tunisia where he abused poor boys. His views on sex, while cloaked in academia, were a subterfuge for his own perversion. He is to blame for much of the current state of debauchery today. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/french-philosopher-michel-foucault-abused-boys-in-tunisia-6t5sj7jvw
Tyler Durden
8 months ago
I prefer the first volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality to all his books. Aside from his novel look at Victorian prisons and institutes for the mentally ill, his other tomes seem to be histories of the organisation of knowledge in ‘long centures’ often involving endless taxonomies of simple data. Dry, over-theorising and by the 2nd and 3rd volume of the ‘sex books’ he is largely treating his own preference for young men and sadomasochistic kink by looking at sexual practices in Ancient Greece and Rome.
At least in that first book MF presents the amusing thesis that rather than hushing-up sex, we have been speaking about it endless in the last 150 years, documented every kind of sexuality and institutionalisng a whole school of knowledge about sexual practices. It suggest that the likes of McKinsey, Money and finally the deconstructed gender phenomenology of Judith Butler comes from the mainstream organisation of our cultures rather than any postmodern philosophical fixation on knowledge-power complexes.
Much of these issues are for treatment by psychoanalysis which is greatly required to unpack what modern pathologies are doing with human identities. For a new epich of hysteria is upon is which is converting itself into the psychotics who populate the internet – responsible for the Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria riddling the teenage population – and the QT ideologues behind them who are mobilising perversion to change society forever.
Do you mean the Foucault who signed this letter – written by none other than self-confessed paedophile Gabriel Matzneff – defending three men accused of the sexual abuse of a brother and sister aged 12 and 13 and arguing for children’s “right” to consent to sex with adults? https://www.dolto.fr/fd-code-penal-crp.html
Do you mean the Foucault who signed this letter – written by none other than self-confessed paedophile Gabriel Matzneff – defending three men accused of the sexual abuse of a brother and sister aged 12 and 13 and arguing for children’s “right” to consent to sex with adults? https://www.dolto.fr/fd-code-penal-crp.html
Not just a “preference for young men”, but for boys too – for whom he would exploitatively throw a few coins.
Tyler Durden
8 months ago
I prefer the first volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality to all his books. Aside from his novel look at Victorian prisons and institutes for the mentally ill, his other tomes seem to be histories of the organisation of knowledge in ‘long centures’ often involving endless taxonomies of simple data. Dry, over-theorising and by the 2nd and 3rd volume of the ‘sex books’ he is largely treating his own preference for young men and sadomasochistic kink by looking at sexual practices in Ancient Greece and Rome.
At least in that first book MF presents the amusing thesis that rather than hushing-up sex, we have been speaking about it endless in the last 150 years, documented every kind of sexuality and institutionalisng a whole school of knowledge about sexual practices. It suggest that the likes of McKinsey, Money and finally the deconstructed gender phenomenology of Judith Butler comes from the mainstream organisation of our cultures rather than any postmodern philosophical fixation on knowledge-power complexes.
Much of these issues are for treatment by psychoanalysis which is greatly required to unpack what modern pathologies are doing with human identities. For a new epich of hysteria is upon is which is converting itself into the psychotics who populate the internet – responsible for the Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria riddling the teenage population – and the QT ideologues behind them who are mobilising perversion to change society forever.
Richard Craven
8 months ago
“It would be simpler and cheaper, and almost certainly more effective, for employers to minimise racial offence among their white employees by simply telling them what their non-white co-workers are likely to find offensive or racist, and perhaps why.”
*It would be simpler and cheaper, and almost certainly more effective, for employers to minimise racial offence among their non-White employees by simply telling them what their White co-workers are likely to find offensive or racist, and perhaps why.
Perhaps training in resilience rather than eggshell walking.
Richard Craven
8 months ago
“It would be simpler and cheaper, and almost certainly more effective, for employers to minimise racial offence among their white employees by simply telling them what their non-white co-workers are likely to find offensive or racist, and perhaps why.”
*It would be simpler and cheaper, and almost certainly more effective, for employers to minimise racial offence among their non-White employees by simply telling them what their White co-workers are likely to find offensive or racist, and perhaps why.
Simon Neale
8 months ago
A common experience these days is being told that people don’t talk about things that people are constantly talking about.
“The love that dare not speak its name”.
(Lord Alfred Douglas)
THE LOVE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME, YOU MEAN ?!!??
Simon Neale
8 months ago
A common experience these days is being told that people don’t talk about things that people are constantly talking about.
“The love that dare not speak its name”.
(Lord Alfred Douglas)
Niels Georg Bach Christensen
8 months ago
I like this essay. In Denmark we discuss ‘childrens’ identity problems og self identifying their ‘psychic problems. Mainly girls. The child centric learning approach makes the the child its own enemy , th enemy should be the subject and the school, they should fight this to learn something.
Niels Georg Bach Christensen
8 months ago
I like this essay. In Denmark we discuss ‘childrens’ identity problems og self identifying their ‘psychic problems. Mainly girls. The child centric learning approach makes the the child its own enemy , th enemy should be the subject and the school, they should fight this to learn something.
Lisa Hurley
8 months ago
I had ‘Discipline and Punish’ as a student, perhaps now I should read beyond the first chapter about quartering. My contemporaries all acknowledge their mental health labels (usually adhd), it helps us navigate life and it now seems dangerous not to, that would show a lack of self awareness.
Lisa Hurley
8 months ago
I had ‘Discipline and Punish’ as a student, perhaps now I should read beyond the first chapter about quartering. My contemporaries all acknowledge their mental health labels (usually adhd), it helps us navigate life and it now seems dangerous not to, that would show a lack of self awareness.
Frank Carney
8 months ago
It’s articles like this that keep me reading UnHerd.
“She’d be amazed and maybe depressed at how avidly people diagnose (and how eagerly they invent) their own mental troubles”
On a recent return visit to UK I was forcefully struck by this very phenomenon, and just how ubiquitous it has become. And not just among the teen TikTokers either: the middle aged frequently make much of their mental health “issues”, and if they don’t have them they make sure that you know that a close relative does!
Frank Carney
8 months ago
It’s articles like this that keep me reading UnHerd.
“She’d be amazed and maybe depressed at how avidly people diagnose (and how eagerly they invent) their own mental troubles”
On a recent return visit to UK I was forcefully struck by this very phenomenon, and just how ubiquitous it has become. And not just among the teen TikTokers either: the middle aged frequently make much of their mental health “issues”, and if they don’t have them they make sure that you know that a close relative does!
Dumetrius
8 months ago
Have seen Sylvia Plath’s grave.
It was covered with rusty tins of mouldy lesbian pens.
If she was revived, she might quickly ask to be un-revived.
During last year’s Pride b0110cks some lesbians were attacked by transvestite fetishists and removed from a parade by the police for the heinous sin of waving a banner stating the banal truth that lesbians don’t like penises.
During last year’s Pride b0110cks some lesbians were attacked by transvestite fetishists and removed from a parade by the police for the heinous sin of waving a banner stating the banal truth that lesbians don’t like penises.
I think some of Ted Hughes ‘Birthday Letters’ poems are beautiful and for him quite accessible.
Obviously, as he’s pale, male and stale he’s not entitled to voice any opinion.
Dear Sylvia was borderline bonkers but that won’t matter to the dykes in the Calder Valley, a veritable queer hotspot. The last time I went for a walk there, there was an amazon in purple dungarees mournfully playing the bongos on the riverbank (I’m not making this up) so nothing would surprise me.
My last reply was deleted by the censors so let’s try again.
Nothing would surprise me in the Calder Valley, a veritable hotspot for those of an alternative bent.
On my last walk there I was serenaded on the river bank by a purple-haired amazon in dungarees who was playing the bongos (a true story).
Now what could possibly be amiss with that dear censor ?
PS: as one of the alphabet brigade myself, it beggars belief that a comment would be wiped in the misguided belief that you are ‘protecting my community ‘. Or is it just the Betjeman curse of niceness at work I
wonder?
PPS Don’t ask me what I was doing on the river bank
On my last walk there I was serenaded on the river bank by a purple-haired amazon in dungarees who was playing the bongos (a true story).
Sorry, but what’s notable about that? Why wouldn’t amazons wear dungarees or play bongos by the river bank? What’s the take-away?
On my last walk there I was serenaded on the river bank by a purple-haired amazon in dungarees who was playing the bongos (a true story).
Sorry, but what’s notable about that? Why wouldn’t amazons wear dungarees or play bongos by the river bank? What’s the take-away?
I think some of Ted Hughes ‘Birthday Letters’ poems are beautiful and for him quite accessible.
Obviously, as he’s pale, male and stale he’s not entitled to voice any opinion.
Dear Sylvia was borderline bonkers but that won’t matter to the dykes in the Calder Valley, a veritable queer hotspot. The last time I went for a walk there, there was an amazon in purple dungarees mournfully playing the bongos on the riverbank (I’m not making this up) so nothing would surprise me.
My last reply was deleted by the censors so let’s try again.
Nothing would surprise me in the Calder Valley, a veritable hotspot for those of an alternative bent.
On my last walk there I was serenaded on the river bank by a purple-haired amazon in dungarees who was playing the bongos (a true story).
Now what could possibly be amiss with that dear censor ?
PS: as one of the alphabet brigade myself, it beggars belief that a comment would be wiped in the misguided belief that you are ‘protecting my community ‘. Or is it just the Betjeman curse of niceness at work I
wonder?
PPS Don’t ask me what I was doing on the river bank
I met her daughter Frieda about 40 years ago at a party in Clerkenwell. I thought she was nice.
Dumetrius
8 months ago
Have seen Sylvia Plath’s grave.
It was covered with rusty tins of mouldy lesbian pens.
If she was revived, she might quickly ask to be un-revived.
Last edited 8 months ago by Dumetrius
Dumetrius
8 months ago
This could be less down to repression than just lacking unambiguous words to describe some acts.
In some cases that could be fear of scandalising sensitive souls , ie repression
But in other cases, common names for sex acts don’t tell you what is going on physically. eg, Foucault’s favourite, ‘fisting’ – that doesn’t emerge as a term till the mid-fifties. Or ‘handball’ which emerges about the same time ?
Effectively making it impossible to research origins – what word are you going to hunt for, if you look back before that time?
First person on record who we know sought to unambiguously describe it – a confidant of a McKinsey researcher – called it ‘putting the arm up.’
Last edited 8 months ago by Dumetrius
Dumetrius
8 months ago
This could be less down to repression than just lacking unambiguous words to describe some acts.
In some cases that could be fear of scandalising sensitive souls , ie repression
But in other cases, common names for sex acts don’t tell you what is going on physically. eg, Foucault’s favourite, ‘fisting’ – that doesn’t emerge as a term till the mid-fifties. Or ‘handball’ which emerges about the same time ?
Effectively making it impossible to research origins – what word are you going to hunt for, if you look back before that time?
First person on record who we know sought to unambiguously describe it – a confidant of a McKinsey researcher – called it ‘putting the arm up.’
Last edited 8 months ago by Dumetrius
Frank McCusker
8 months ago
4 decades ago, as a kid at school, I remember being intrigued by a dictionary definition of insanity. Roughly paraphrased, it spoke of a disorder “characterised by acting against the legal or social demands of society”. Something like that. It struck me as deeply partisan. I recall then thinking, what if you were a decent person in a corrupt society? Thus framed, so-called “insanity” seemed to be infinitely mutable, and ripe for exploitation by anyone with a totalitarian mindset. Some years later, as an undergrad in the 1980s, I remember being impressed by Thomas Szasz’ book, “The Myth of Mental Illness”. Short of actual physical brain damage, I’ve always agreed with him. Unhappiness is merely a rational response to a negative life event – ill-health, poverty, relationship break-up etc; just as happiness is a rational response to a positive life event. The idea that we should be medicalised for “failing” to live in a permanent state of near-euphoria is deranged (and profoundly materialistic-atheistic to boot, though that’s a whole new line of thought).
As Szasz remarks:
“Freedom gives you the opportunity to be unhappy – and not to be molested for it … I look upon the mental health profession as a gigantic apparatus of molestation …”
See short interview with Dr Szasz here: https://youtu.be/KH8drK8AgPE
The article is right about today’s lamentable enthusiasm for pathologising normality. In a related vein, Brooke Allen is a 60-something American academic. Writing in The Hudson Review, she noted the deleterious effects of the rise of woke group-think on young people in education:
“Then I took a job teaching literature … When I arrived there in early 2011 the place was wonderfully refreshing after Columbia. Instead of earnest pedants imbibing and regurgitating rigid doctrines, I found a campus full of open, intellectually curious, enthusiastic, charming young people. Everyone participated in class discussions; they all studied what they loved. By 2015, it had completely changed. Students were restless, easily offended, whiny. They were also passive and helpless. Everyone, for reasons I couldn’t understand, was always accusing everyone else of being racist. (Some faculty members indulged in this activity too.) People became unreasonably prickly if you called them by the wrong gender pronoun. It seemed that every single one of the female students was a survivor of rape or sexual assault (very loosely defined). Many students claimed to suffer from PTSD, though so far as I knew, no one had been on a battlefield. Plenty of others complained of anxiety and seemed to think this was a sufficient reason to skip classes and written assignments.“
Her article is here: https://hudsonreview.com/2021/05/social-justice-groupthink/ – it’s worth reading. She joins the cultural dots between the likes of the Foucker, Derrida and Lacan and today’s woke warriors – how the fashion for absolute ethical relativism facilitated, ironically, the new intolerance, and how it ushered in:
“... a left-wing moral community, rather than a purely academic one: an intellectual organ more interested in advocating a particular ought than attempting a detached assessment of is—an attitude we usually associate with churches, rather than universities.”
Ray Andrews
8 months ago
It’s a dilemma — one wants to eat one’s cake but still have it. For the wokie, the righteous tears of their martyrdom at the hands of whitey — the eternal Oppressor — are sweet. But! … there is also the sweet pleasure of Smashing the Patriarchy — the pleasure of victory! So, one wants to Smash and to be victorious over the burned bodies of whitey, and yet keep the ongoing saintly Victimhood.
In the same way, the modern progressive is in fact free to Identify as anything and to engage in just about any possible sexual behavior — tho heterosex is deeply suspect, it’s almost always rape. And yet, one must feel Oppressed to be happy. Thus the chains of sexual repression will always be being thrown off, but will always be there too. DEI will rule the world, and yet never be complete. As Orwell showed, the war with Eurasia — it has always been Eurasia — will deliver one Victory after another and yet it will never end.
Ray Andrews
8 months ago
It’s a dilemma — one wants to eat one’s cake but still have it. For the wokie, the righteous tears of their martyrdom at the hands of whitey — the eternal Oppressor — are sweet. But! … there is also the sweet pleasure of Smashing the Patriarchy — the pleasure of victory! So, one wants to Smash and to be victorious over the burned bodies of whitey, and yet keep the ongoing saintly Victimhood.
In the same way, the modern progressive is in fact free to Identify as anything and to engage in just about any possible sexual behavior — tho heterosex is deeply suspect, it’s almost always rape. And yet, one must feel Oppressed to be happy. Thus the chains of sexual repression will always be being thrown off, but will always be there too. DEI will rule the world, and yet never be complete. As Orwell showed, the war with Eurasia — it has always been Eurasia — will deliver one Victory after another and yet it will never end.
Ray Andrews
8 months ago
Is it possible to be notified of a response to a comment? I scan the comments and see that sometimes there’s a response to something I said, but I get no notification. There seems to be nothing is ‘My Account’ to change that.
If you got notifications of responses to your comments it would greatly facilitate ‘conversations’ on Unherd. I noted this to the Unherd powers that be and was told ‘too bad’, more or less.
Last edited 8 months ago by Kirk Susong
Max Rottersman
8 months ago
I sometimes think of cancelling my Unherd subscription (because the essays are unimaginative) then I read something like this and I’m all-in again. Thanks!
Christopher Chantrill
8 months ago
Let’s do a bit of editing:
“By placing the advent of the age of repression in the seventeenth century…, one adjusts it to coincide with” the emergence of the educated class.
Back in the day, people didn’t get married unless they had money from both families. Why? Because otherwise they would die.
The whole point about the modern playing with sex is that we can afford to, and our educated class makes a cult out of “creativity.” I say that the least creative way to be creative is to be creative with sex.
Age of repression? In Pride and Prejudice we have Lydia running off with an officer. In Adam Bede we have a silly teenager getting pregnant by the local landowner. I tell you; those 19th century damsels were up to no good!
What would Queen Victoria have thought of that? Actually, the royal family was delighted to go visit George Eliot at her weekly open house with George Lewes — to whom she was not married.
Christopher Chantrill
8 months ago
Let’s do a bit of editing:
“By placing the advent of the age of repression in the seventeenth century…, one adjusts it to coincide with” the emergence of the educated class.
Back in the day, people didn’t get married unless they had money from both families. Why? Because otherwise they would die.
The whole point about the modern playing with sex is that we can afford to, and our educated class makes a cult out of “creativity.” I say that the least creative way to be creative is to be creative with sex.
Age of repression? In Pride and Prejudice we have Lydia running off with an officer. In Adam Bede we have a silly teenager getting pregnant by the local landowner. I tell you; those 19th century damsels were up to no good!
What would Queen Victoria have thought of that? Actually, the royal family was delighted to go visit George Eliot at her weekly open house with George Lewes — to whom she was not married.
Chris Hayes
8 months ago
Isn’t he largely to blame? Asking for a sociologist friend who can’t afford the subscription….
Michael Bond
8 months ago
The student-centered approach is a direct application of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which begins with the assumption the binary of oppressed and oppressor is evident in the student teacher relationship.
But this essay reveals another more troubling dynamic. Does Foucault’s fascination with sex have anything to do with his p***s and his desire to engage in sexual behavior with minor boys? Why else would he want to deconstruct such relations?
Michael Bond
8 months ago
The student-centered approach is a direct application of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which begins with the assumption the binary of oppressed and oppressor is evident in the student teacher relationship.
But this essay reveals another more troubling dynamic. Does Foucault’s fascination with sex have anything to do with his p***s and his desire to engage in sexual behavior with minor boys? Why else would he want to deconstruct such relations?
Jerry Carroll
8 months ago
What a smart article. Wish we saw more like it.
Paul MacDonnell
8 months ago
This essay badly needed to be written. Foucault belongs to those modern French philosophers who have been misunderstood and misused by the Anglosphere academic establishment. Carrying a message of the dangers of the administrative state he has been shot by conservatives.
po go
8 months ago
The Triumph of the TherapeuticThe Rise and Triumph of the Modern SelfBoth books correspond very well to this article.
I really enjoyed this essay. As a teacher I’ve come to loathe student-centered approaches to learning. There’s something fraudulent about them, especially towards the students themselves. Essentially it tells them that I, as a teacher, have nothing to teach them, and that they must decide what they need to learn. Teachers graduating today have learnt very little in the way of subject-matter. Much of their teaching is extremely self-referential which is why many of them end up inserting unrelated and irrelevant gender or racial theories into their curricula.
“As a teacher I’ve come to loathe student-centered approaches to learning. There’s something fraudulent about them, especially towards the students themselves.”
Yeah. I tried the student-centred blag on my mother when I was five. Her response left me traumatised.
What was her response?
She gave me fourpence for my bus fare.
Hilarious riposte!
That is so hilarious – it nearly burst my insides.
Comment of the week.
That made me inhale my coffee. Worth it tho : )
Hilarious riposte!
That is so hilarious – it nearly burst my insides.
Comment of the week.
That made me inhale my coffee. Worth it tho : )
She gave me fourpence for my bus fare.
hilarious!
What was her response?
hilarious!
As a teacher, I never thought ‘student centered’ meant student led. It is more about placing the student, their understanding and their progress at the center of the lesson plan rather than providing a block of information and ticking a box when it has been delivered.
Yes many people including teachers really don’t understanding constructivism. It’s not a theory of teaching, it’s a theory of learning. It’s certainly not about putting the students in charge. Grossly oversimplifying it says that in order to learn something you need to make sense of it ie construct meaning. Which means simply telling isn’t enough. it doesn’t mean that the student is the authority. They’re not. The teacher is, or should be, the knowledgable person whose job is to enable the student to become a knowledgeable person. The master/apprenticeship model is a good one.
If only they’d tried constructivism at St Trinians.
If only they’d tried constructivism at St Trinians.
The problem is not so much the teachers, but the administrators who don’t know the difference and believe students receiving low grades are due to a teacher-centered approach.
Exactly.
Yes many people including teachers really don’t understanding constructivism. It’s not a theory of teaching, it’s a theory of learning. It’s certainly not about putting the students in charge. Grossly oversimplifying it says that in order to learn something you need to make sense of it ie construct meaning. Which means simply telling isn’t enough. it doesn’t mean that the student is the authority. They’re not. The teacher is, or should be, the knowledgable person whose job is to enable the student to become a knowledgeable person. The master/apprenticeship model is a good one.
The problem is not so much the teachers, but the administrators who don’t know the difference and believe students receiving low grades are due to a teacher-centered approach.
Exactly.
“Teachers graduating today have learnt very little in the way of subject-matter.”
And in the USA, that thought is confirmed by the abysmal test scores of students overall and the climb in the illiteracy rate.
Yes, yes, yes, as a teacher of 25 years, I am weary of listening to my younger peers wax poetic about all the self-discovery in their classrooms as they avoid teaching actual writing. My poor students still write essays and learn about antiquated concepts like paragraphing. LOL
Paragraphing… gulp…good lord!
Paragraphing… gulp…good lord!
If I object to the notion that students should be setting the curriculum at university, I will be sanctioned. I know this.
Teacher here too- I learned that same theory and promptly left it in the bin.
As someone who has taught quite a lot, there is no doubt that actually thinking about whether your students are understanding and learning is kind of important. Not sure whether this is student-centred but it is good teaching.
“As a teacher I’ve come to loathe student-centered approaches to learning. There’s something fraudulent about them, especially towards the students themselves.”
Yeah. I tried the student-centred blag on my mother when I was five. Her response left me traumatised.
As a teacher, I never thought ‘student centered’ meant student led. It is more about placing the student, their understanding and their progress at the center of the lesson plan rather than providing a block of information and ticking a box when it has been delivered.
“Teachers graduating today have learnt very little in the way of subject-matter.”
And in the USA, that thought is confirmed by the abysmal test scores of students overall and the climb in the illiteracy rate.
Yes, yes, yes, as a teacher of 25 years, I am weary of listening to my younger peers wax poetic about all the self-discovery in their classrooms as they avoid teaching actual writing. My poor students still write essays and learn about antiquated concepts like paragraphing. LOL
If I object to the notion that students should be setting the curriculum at university, I will be sanctioned. I know this.
Teacher here too- I learned that same theory and promptly left it in the bin.
As someone who has taught quite a lot, there is no doubt that actually thinking about whether your students are understanding and learning is kind of important. Not sure whether this is student-centred but it is good teaching.
I really enjoyed this essay. As a teacher I’ve come to loathe student-centered approaches to learning. There’s something fraudulent about them, especially towards the students themselves. Essentially it tells them that I, as a teacher, have nothing to teach them, and that they must decide what they need to learn. Teachers graduating today have learnt very little in the way of subject-matter. Much of their teaching is extremely self-referential which is why many of them end up inserting unrelated and irrelevant gender or racial theories into their curricula.
Oh FFS! How many millions of words of absolute nonsense have been written on this subject in absolute defiance of common sense.
‘Sexual repression’ is a defence against disease. Wait till the antibiotics stop working and then see how quickly it comes back
Indeed. It puts me in mind of something I heard Jonathan Haidt say, the gist of which was, ‘As a young student interested in people, morality etc, I was initially drawn to philosophy in search of answers, but thankfully switched to psychology’.
Indeed. It puts me in mind of something I heard Jonathan Haidt say, the gist of which was, ‘As a young student interested in people, morality etc, I was initially drawn to philosophy in search of answers, but thankfully switched to psychology’.
Oh FFS! How many millions of words of absolute nonsense have been written on this subject in absolute defiance of common sense.
‘Sexual repression’ is a defence against disease. Wait till the antibiotics stop working and then see how quickly it comes back
I’ve read more about Foucault’s work than any direct reading of the actual works although The History of Sexuality has been sitting on my bookshelves gathering dust for thirty years barely consulted. This is the first essay that makes me want to read it.
I’ve read more about Foucault’s work than any direct reading of the actual works although The History of Sexuality has been sitting on my bookshelves gathering dust for thirty years barely consulted. This is the first essay that makes me want to read it.
I believe we have moved our locus of control overwhelmingly externally. Increasingly I experience people as “disassociated”, their attention external, seeking solutions from ” out there”. Until people are prepared to to be more embodied, to take responsibility for their embodiment, and the implicatiions (including pain and death), we will be psychological flotsam in a disregarded carcass. We need to come home to ourselves. When we have internal locus, the issues raised in this article are greatly addressed.
I believe we have moved our locus of control overwhelmingly externally. Increasingly I experience people as “disassociated”, their attention external, seeking solutions from ” out there”. Until people are prepared to to be more embodied, to take responsibility for their embodiment, and the implicatiions (including pain and death), we will be psychological flotsam in a disregarded carcass. We need to come home to ourselves. When we have internal locus, the issues raised in this article are greatly addressed.
Oh, the numerous ways it is impossible to be a teacher today. I love the section about how teaching has become yet another form of psychotherapy. When I asked an administrator in exasperation at a faculty meeting didn’t students actually have to learn about history and facts, she replied, “they have the internet for that; everything is at their fingertips.” I countered, “They have no context for anything, nor judgment about what sources are reliable!” The groans from my colleagues made me feel like a bitter old crone librarian.
My poor students love to diagnose themselves with any variety of ills from bipolar disorder to autism to the ever-popular trans via TikTok. As the mother of an autistic daughter, I find the growing self-diagnoses of people as autistic who clearly are not incredibly offensive. My daughter will never marry, live independently, drive. I know there are autistic people who do all those things, but they still struggle. My students just want a reason to be seen as suffering and different than the average, middle class, white people they are.
As for Foucault, any article about him should really mention his tremendous deviance. He was by very credible accounts a pedophile who pushed to abolish the age of consent in France. He traveled to Tunisia where he abused poor boys. His views on sex, while cloaked in academia, were a subterfuge for his own perversion. He is to blame for much of the current state of debauchery today.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/french-philosopher-michel-foucault-abused-boys-in-tunisia-6t5sj7jvw
We really need to go back to calling high functioning autism Asperger’s Syndrome. With the latter I have married and raised children, passing it on to one of my sons, but affecting all of them by my social and emotional issues. I was bullied in school by teachers and students alike, often for sharing arcane information or correcting the teacher. I have long not needed to hold a job, but remember how difficult it was when I did, and I have never made and kept a friend besides my husband. I believe my problems in life, while real, pale compared to someone with actual autism and it is a disgrace for people to claim to be “on the spectrum” who are perfectly normal because it is a status marker, unless of course you actually display the despised traits.
I’m surprised you would have had children.
That implies that a life with Asperger’s isn’t worth living. Mine has been, and my children seem to feel the same. The most affected one has a wife and daughter. His wife comes from a culture where his strong points count for more than his social weaknesses.It was in finding out when he was 16 what was wrong with him that I found out what was wrong with me. Ironically he diagnoses autism and works with autistic children.
I found out at 47 that I also had a hereditary neuromuscular disease that I passed on to him and his brother. Had I known both of these things I would still have had children. No one is guaranteed a perfect life, isn’t that one of the most obvious problems with our current society, the sense of entitlement to the reality of your choice?
Exactly. I’m sure you and your family are perfectly lovely.
Exactly. I’m sure you and your family are perfectly lovely.
What a perfectly horrible thing to say. My daughter is perfect as she is – a sacred person full of inherent value imbued by her creator. I wish I could change the world for her, but I wouldn’t change her for the world.
I’d hate to be a citizen of any country you might be in charge of.
Good grief.
That implies that a life with Asperger’s isn’t worth living. Mine has been, and my children seem to feel the same. The most affected one has a wife and daughter. His wife comes from a culture where his strong points count for more than his social weaknesses.It was in finding out when he was 16 what was wrong with him that I found out what was wrong with me. Ironically he diagnoses autism and works with autistic children.
I found out at 47 that I also had a hereditary neuromuscular disease that I passed on to him and his brother. Had I known both of these things I would still have had children. No one is guaranteed a perfect life, isn’t that one of the most obvious problems with our current society, the sense of entitlement to the reality of your choice?
What a perfectly horrible thing to say. My daughter is perfect as she is – a sacred person full of inherent value imbued by her creator. I wish I could change the world for her, but I wouldn’t change her for the world.
I’d hate to be a citizen of any country you might be in charge of.
Good grief.
I could not agree more.
I’m surprised you would have had children.
I could not agree more.
Thank you for this excellent post. The author of this piece tied himself in knots in order to frame Foucault’s theories on sex and repression without at any point mentioning his paedophilia. Instead he’s drawn as a laugh a minute, eg the ‘funny’ quoted passages. Oh my sides.
I think this is an attempt to paint Foucault as a witty liberationist on the side of humankind. He had some interesting things to say about power. He also had some supremely dodgy theories about power and authority based on his own deviance.
Last but not least, I feel as strongly as you do about the way what we used to call personality is now being self-diagnosed as a collection of pathologies. You don’t need a diagnosis unless you’re ill. Being a social misfit is not being ill. (I should know, I’ve been one all my life.)
Being a person seriously disabled by e.g. autism, is being seriously ill. We’ve always been lousy at providing the help those people need (see the ongoing scandal about the places that essentially imprison them in isolation.) The last thing we need is a bunch of self-regarding twerps – see the ‘comedian’ Stewart Lee in the Grauniad last week – self-diagnosing autism on the basis of an online questionnaire and telling us all how great it is.
Oh, the numerous ways it is impossible to be a teacher today
I think you’ll appreciate this –
https://condenaststore.com/featured/hey-kids-ward-sutton.html
We really need to go back to calling high functioning autism Asperger’s Syndrome. With the latter I have married and raised children, passing it on to one of my sons, but affecting all of them by my social and emotional issues. I was bullied in school by teachers and students alike, often for sharing arcane information or correcting the teacher. I have long not needed to hold a job, but remember how difficult it was when I did, and I have never made and kept a friend besides my husband. I believe my problems in life, while real, pale compared to someone with actual autism and it is a disgrace for people to claim to be “on the spectrum” who are perfectly normal because it is a status marker, unless of course you actually display the despised traits.
Thank you for this excellent post. The author of this piece tied himself in knots in order to frame Foucault’s theories on sex and repression without at any point mentioning his paedophilia. Instead he’s drawn as a laugh a minute, eg the ‘funny’ quoted passages. Oh my sides.
I think this is an attempt to paint Foucault as a witty liberationist on the side of humankind. He had some interesting things to say about power. He also had some supremely dodgy theories about power and authority based on his own deviance.
Last but not least, I feel as strongly as you do about the way what we used to call personality is now being self-diagnosed as a collection of pathologies. You don’t need a diagnosis unless you’re ill. Being a social misfit is not being ill. (I should know, I’ve been one all my life.)
Being a person seriously disabled by e.g. autism, is being seriously ill. We’ve always been lousy at providing the help those people need (see the ongoing scandal about the places that essentially imprison them in isolation.) The last thing we need is a bunch of self-regarding twerps – see the ‘comedian’ Stewart Lee in the Grauniad last week – self-diagnosing autism on the basis of an online questionnaire and telling us all how great it is.
Oh, the numerous ways it is impossible to be a teacher today
I think you’ll appreciate this –
https://condenaststore.com/featured/hey-kids-ward-sutton.html
Oh, the numerous ways it is impossible to be a teacher today. I love the section about how teaching has become yet another form of psychotherapy. When I asked an administrator in exasperation at a faculty meeting didn’t students actually have to learn about history and facts, she replied, “they have the internet for that; everything is at their fingertips.” I countered, “They have no context for anything, nor judgment about what sources are reliable!” The groans from my colleagues made me feel like a bitter old crone librarian.
My poor students love to diagnose themselves with any variety of ills from bipolar disorder to autism to the ever-popular trans via TikTok. As the mother of an autistic daughter, I find the growing self-diagnoses of people as autistic who clearly are not incredibly offensive. My daughter will never marry, live independently, drive. I know there are autistic people who do all those things, but they still struggle. My students just want a reason to be seen as suffering and different than the average, middle class, white people they are.
As for Foucault, any article about him should really mention his tremendous deviance. He was by very credible accounts a pedophile who pushed to abolish the age of consent in France. He traveled to Tunisia where he abused poor boys. His views on sex, while cloaked in academia, were a subterfuge for his own perversion. He is to blame for much of the current state of debauchery today.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/french-philosopher-michel-foucault-abused-boys-in-tunisia-6t5sj7jvw
I prefer the first volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality to all his books. Aside from his novel look at Victorian prisons and institutes for the mentally ill, his other tomes seem to be histories of the organisation of knowledge in ‘long centures’ often involving endless taxonomies of simple data. Dry, over-theorising and by the 2nd and 3rd volume of the ‘sex books’ he is largely treating his own preference for young men and sadomasochistic kink by looking at sexual practices in Ancient Greece and Rome.
At least in that first book MF presents the amusing thesis that rather than hushing-up sex, we have been speaking about it endless in the last 150 years, documented every kind of sexuality and institutionalisng a whole school of knowledge about sexual practices. It suggest that the likes of McKinsey, Money and finally the deconstructed gender phenomenology of Judith Butler comes from the mainstream organisation of our cultures rather than any postmodern philosophical fixation on knowledge-power complexes.
Much of these issues are for treatment by psychoanalysis which is greatly required to unpack what modern pathologies are doing with human identities. For a new epich of hysteria is upon is which is converting itself into the psychotics who populate the internet – responsible for the Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria riddling the teenage population – and the QT ideologues behind them who are mobilising perversion to change society forever.
Not just a “preference for young men”, but for boys too – for whom he would exploitatively throw a few coins.
Did you mean the “Tunisian boys” hoax? Here is how it was made. I did not write the investigation. I translated it from French. MICHEL FOUCAULT AND PEDOPHILIA: THE HOAX OF “TUNISIAN BOYS” https://lenabloch.medium.com/michel-foucault-and-the-hoax-of-tunisian-boys-35e3035ea693
Do you mean the Foucault who argued for the removal of all age of consent laws down to infants? I hope he’s burning in hell.
Do you mean the Foucault who signed this letter – written by none other than self-confessed paedophile Gabriel Matzneff – defending three men accused of the sexual abuse of a brother and sister aged 12 and 13 and arguing for children’s “right” to consent to sex with adults?
https://www.dolto.fr/fd-code-penal-crp.html
Spot on. It’s an entirely consistent expression of just where his views on sexual repression wanted to go.
Spot on. It’s an entirely consistent expression of just where his views on sexual repression wanted to go.
Do you mean the Foucault who argued for the removal of all age of consent laws down to infants? I hope he’s burning in hell.
Do you mean the Foucault who signed this letter – written by none other than self-confessed paedophile Gabriel Matzneff – defending three men accused of the sexual abuse of a brother and sister aged 12 and 13 and arguing for children’s “right” to consent to sex with adults?
https://www.dolto.fr/fd-code-penal-crp.html
Four pence?
Did you mean the “Tunisian boys” hoax? Here is how it was made. I did not write the investigation. I translated it from French. MICHEL FOUCAULT AND PEDOPHILIA: THE HOAX OF “TUNISIAN BOYS” https://lenabloch.medium.com/michel-foucault-and-the-hoax-of-tunisian-boys-35e3035ea693
Four pence?
Not just a “preference for young men”, but for boys too – for whom he would exploitatively throw a few coins.
I prefer the first volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality to all his books. Aside from his novel look at Victorian prisons and institutes for the mentally ill, his other tomes seem to be histories of the organisation of knowledge in ‘long centures’ often involving endless taxonomies of simple data. Dry, over-theorising and by the 2nd and 3rd volume of the ‘sex books’ he is largely treating his own preference for young men and sadomasochistic kink by looking at sexual practices in Ancient Greece and Rome.
At least in that first book MF presents the amusing thesis that rather than hushing-up sex, we have been speaking about it endless in the last 150 years, documented every kind of sexuality and institutionalisng a whole school of knowledge about sexual practices. It suggest that the likes of McKinsey, Money and finally the deconstructed gender phenomenology of Judith Butler comes from the mainstream organisation of our cultures rather than any postmodern philosophical fixation on knowledge-power complexes.
Much of these issues are for treatment by psychoanalysis which is greatly required to unpack what modern pathologies are doing with human identities. For a new epich of hysteria is upon is which is converting itself into the psychotics who populate the internet – responsible for the Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria riddling the teenage population – and the QT ideologues behind them who are mobilising perversion to change society forever.
“It would be simpler and cheaper, and almost certainly more effective, for employers to minimise racial offence among their white employees by simply telling them what their non-white co-workers are likely to find offensive or racist, and perhaps why.”
*It would be simpler and cheaper, and almost certainly more effective, for employers to minimise racial offence among their non-White employees by simply telling them what their White co-workers are likely to find offensive or racist, and perhaps why.
Perhaps training in resilience rather than eggshell walking.
Thanks for saying in one sentence what took me two paragraphs.
Thanks for saying in one sentence what took me two paragraphs.
Perhaps training in resilience rather than eggshell walking.
“It would be simpler and cheaper, and almost certainly more effective, for employers to minimise racial offence among their white employees by simply telling them what their non-white co-workers are likely to find offensive or racist, and perhaps why.”
*It would be simpler and cheaper, and almost certainly more effective, for employers to minimise racial offence among their non-White employees by simply telling them what their White co-workers are likely to find offensive or racist, and perhaps why.
“The love that dare not speak its name”.
(Lord Alfred Douglas)
THE LOVE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME, YOU MEAN ?!!??
Yes!
Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbot
OR
John Major and Edwina Currie.
Barf!
John Major was a dark horse. If you get a reputation for being dull, you can get away with a lot.
Barf!
John Major was a dark horse. If you get a reputation for being dull, you can get away with a lot.
Yes!
Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbot
OR
John Major and Edwina Currie.
THE LOVE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME, YOU MEAN ?!!??
“The love that dare not speak its name”.
(Lord Alfred Douglas)
I like this essay. In Denmark we discuss ‘childrens’ identity problems og self identifying their ‘psychic problems. Mainly girls. The child centric learning approach makes the the child its own enemy , th enemy should be the subject and the school, they should fight this to learn something.
I like this essay. In Denmark we discuss ‘childrens’ identity problems og self identifying their ‘psychic problems. Mainly girls. The child centric learning approach makes the the child its own enemy , th enemy should be the subject and the school, they should fight this to learn something.
I had ‘Discipline and Punish’ as a student, perhaps now I should read beyond the first chapter about quartering. My contemporaries all acknowledge their mental health labels (usually adhd), it helps us navigate life and it now seems dangerous not to, that would show a lack of self awareness.
I had ‘Discipline and Punish’ as a student, perhaps now I should read beyond the first chapter about quartering. My contemporaries all acknowledge their mental health labels (usually adhd), it helps us navigate life and it now seems dangerous not to, that would show a lack of self awareness.
It’s articles like this that keep me reading UnHerd.
“She’d be amazed and maybe depressed at how avidly people diagnose (and how eagerly they invent) their own mental troubles”
On a recent return visit to UK I was forcefully struck by this very phenomenon, and just how ubiquitous it has become. And not just among the teen TikTokers either: the middle aged frequently make much of their mental health “issues”, and if they don’t have them they make sure that you know that a close relative does!
It’s articles like this that keep me reading UnHerd.
“She’d be amazed and maybe depressed at how avidly people diagnose (and how eagerly they invent) their own mental troubles”
On a recent return visit to UK I was forcefully struck by this very phenomenon, and just how ubiquitous it has become. And not just among the teen TikTokers either: the middle aged frequently make much of their mental health “issues”, and if they don’t have them they make sure that you know that a close relative does!
Have seen Sylvia Plath’s grave.
It was covered with rusty tins of mouldy lesbian pens.
If she was revived, she might quickly ask to be un-revived.
How can you tell if a pen is lesbian ?
Coz it hasn’t evulved.
Is this even a joke ?
Yes, and a good one!
LOL
Yes, and a good one!
LOL
Get with the program (ask Kathleen Stock);
A lesbian can’t have a pen and doesn’t know what a pen is.
lol
No, she doesn’t….. and yes she does: but she’s just not interested.
lol
No, she doesn’t….. and yes she does: but she’s just not interested.
What’s a lesbian pen? Or am I better off not knowing?
You’re not allowed to say that lesbians don’t like pens.
I hate to admit it but I’m just not getting the joke.
During last year’s Pride b0110cks some lesbians were attacked by transvestite fetishists and removed from a parade by the police for the heinous sin of waving a banner stating the banal truth that lesbians don’t like penises.
Because it’s just not funny. Adolescent humor.
During last year’s Pride b0110cks some lesbians were attacked by transvestite fetishists and removed from a parade by the police for the heinous sin of waving a banner stating the banal truth that lesbians don’t like penises.
Because it’s just not funny. Adolescent humor.
I hate to admit it but I’m just not getting the joke.
You’re not allowed to say that lesbians don’t like pens.
Chisel wielding feminists have been chipping off the “Hughes” part of the surname for years. It’s been reinstated so many times it stands out vividly.
I think some of Ted Hughes ‘Birthday Letters’ poems are beautiful and for him quite accessible.
Obviously, as he’s pale, male and stale he’s not entitled to voice any opinion.
Dear Sylvia was borderline bonkers but that won’t matter to the dykes in the Calder Valley, a veritable queer hotspot. The last time I went for a walk there, there was an amazon in purple dungarees mournfully playing the bongos on the riverbank (I’m not making this up) so nothing would surprise me.
My last reply was deleted by the censors so let’s try again.
Nothing would surprise me in the Calder Valley, a veritable hotspot for those of an alternative bent.
On my last walk there I was serenaded on the river bank by a purple-haired amazon in dungarees who was playing the bongos (a true story).
Now what could possibly be amiss with that dear censor ?
PS: as one of the alphabet brigade myself, it beggars belief that a comment would be wiped in the misguided belief that you are ‘protecting my community ‘. Or is it just the Betjeman curse of niceness at work I
wonder?
PPS Don’t ask me what I was doing on the river bank
At midnight
In full leathers
But my love must not speak its name.
On my last walk there I was serenaded on the river bank by a purple-haired amazon in dungarees who was playing the bongos (a true story).
Sorry, but what’s notable about that? Why wouldn’t amazons wear dungarees or play bongos by the river bank? What’s the take-away?
I find it offensive either way you try it.
On my last walk there I was serenaded on the river bank by a purple-haired amazon in dungarees who was playing the bongos (a true story).
Sorry, but what’s notable about that? Why wouldn’t amazons wear dungarees or play bongos by the river bank? What’s the take-away?
I find it offensive either way you try it.
I think some of Ted Hughes ‘Birthday Letters’ poems are beautiful and for him quite accessible.
Obviously, as he’s pale, male and stale he’s not entitled to voice any opinion.
Dear Sylvia was borderline bonkers but that won’t matter to the dykes in the Calder Valley, a veritable queer hotspot. The last time I went for a walk there, there was an amazon in purple dungarees mournfully playing the bongos on the riverbank (I’m not making this up) so nothing would surprise me.
My last reply was deleted by the censors so let’s try again.
Nothing would surprise me in the Calder Valley, a veritable hotspot for those of an alternative bent.
On my last walk there I was serenaded on the river bank by a purple-haired amazon in dungarees who was playing the bongos (a true story).
Now what could possibly be amiss with that dear censor ?
PS: as one of the alphabet brigade myself, it beggars belief that a comment would be wiped in the misguided belief that you are ‘protecting my community ‘. Or is it just the Betjeman curse of niceness at work I
wonder?
PPS Don’t ask me what I was doing on the river bank
At midnight
In full leathers
But my love must not speak its name.
I met her daughter Frieda about 40 years ago at a party in Clerkenwell. I thought she was nice.
How can you tell if a pen is lesbian ?
Coz it hasn’t evulved.
Is this even a joke ?
Get with the program (ask Kathleen Stock);
A lesbian can’t have a pen and doesn’t know what a pen is.
What’s a lesbian pen? Or am I better off not knowing?
Chisel wielding feminists have been chipping off the “Hughes” part of the surname for years. It’s been reinstated so many times it stands out vividly.
I met her daughter Frieda about 40 years ago at a party in Clerkenwell. I thought she was nice.
Have seen Sylvia Plath’s grave.
It was covered with rusty tins of mouldy lesbian pens.
If she was revived, she might quickly ask to be un-revived.
This could be less down to repression than just lacking unambiguous words to describe some acts.
In some cases that could be fear of scandalising sensitive souls , ie repression
But in other cases, common names for sex acts don’t tell you what is going on physically. eg, Foucault’s favourite, ‘fisting’ – that doesn’t emerge as a term till the mid-fifties. Or ‘handball’ which emerges about the same time ?
Effectively making it impossible to research origins – what word are you going to hunt for, if you look back before that time?
First person on record who we know sought to unambiguously describe it – a confidant of a McKinsey researcher – called it ‘putting the arm up.’
This could be less down to repression than just lacking unambiguous words to describe some acts.
In some cases that could be fear of scandalising sensitive souls , ie repression
But in other cases, common names for sex acts don’t tell you what is going on physically. eg, Foucault’s favourite, ‘fisting’ – that doesn’t emerge as a term till the mid-fifties. Or ‘handball’ which emerges about the same time ?
Effectively making it impossible to research origins – what word are you going to hunt for, if you look back before that time?
First person on record who we know sought to unambiguously describe it – a confidant of a McKinsey researcher – called it ‘putting the arm up.’
4 decades ago, as a kid at school, I remember being intrigued by a dictionary definition of insanity. Roughly paraphrased, it spoke of a disorder “characterised by acting against the legal or social demands of society”. Something like that. It struck me as deeply partisan. I recall then thinking, what if you were a decent person in a corrupt society? Thus framed, so-called “insanity” seemed to be infinitely mutable, and ripe for exploitation by anyone with a totalitarian mindset. Some years later, as an undergrad in the 1980s, I remember being impressed by Thomas Szasz’ book, “The Myth of Mental Illness”. Short of actual physical brain damage, I’ve always agreed with him. Unhappiness is merely a rational response to a negative life event – ill-health, poverty, relationship break-up etc; just as happiness is a rational response to a positive life event. The idea that we should be medicalised for “failing” to live in a permanent state of near-euphoria is deranged (and profoundly materialistic-atheistic to boot, though that’s a whole new line of thought).
As Szasz remarks:
“Freedom gives you the opportunity to be unhappy – and not to be molested for it … I look upon the mental health profession as a gigantic apparatus of molestation …”
See short interview with Dr Szasz here:
https://youtu.be/KH8drK8AgPE
The article is right about today’s lamentable enthusiasm for pathologising normality. In a related vein, Brooke Allen is a 60-something American academic. Writing in The Hudson Review, she noted the deleterious effects of the rise of woke group-think on young people in education:
“Then I took a job teaching literature … When I arrived there in early 2011 the place was wonderfully refreshing after Columbia. Instead of earnest pedants imbibing and regurgitating rigid doctrines, I found a campus full of open, intellectually curious, enthusiastic, charming young people. Everyone participated in class discussions; they all studied what they loved.
By 2015, it had completely changed. Students were restless, easily offended, whiny. They were also passive and helpless. Everyone, for reasons I couldn’t understand, was always accusing everyone else of being racist. (Some faculty members indulged in this activity too.) People became unreasonably prickly if you called them by the wrong gender pronoun. It seemed that every single one of the female students was a survivor of rape or sexual assault (very loosely defined). Many students claimed to suffer from PTSD, though so far as I knew, no one had been on a battlefield. Plenty of others complained of anxiety and seemed to think this was a sufficient reason to skip classes and written assignments.“
Her article is here:
https://hudsonreview.com/2021/05/social-justice-groupthink/ – it’s worth reading. She joins the cultural dots between the likes of the Foucker, Derrida and Lacan and today’s woke warriors – how the fashion for absolute ethical relativism facilitated, ironically, the new intolerance, and how it ushered in:
“... a left-wing moral community, rather than a purely academic one: an intellectual organ more interested in advocating a particular ought than attempting a detached assessment of is—an attitude we usually associate with churches, rather than universities.”
It’s a dilemma — one wants to eat one’s cake but still have it. For the wokie, the righteous tears of their martyrdom at the hands of whitey — the eternal Oppressor — are sweet. But! … there is also the sweet pleasure of Smashing the Patriarchy — the pleasure of victory! So, one wants to Smash and to be victorious over the burned bodies of whitey, and yet keep the ongoing saintly Victimhood.
In the same way, the modern progressive is in fact free to Identify as anything and to engage in just about any possible sexual behavior — tho heterosex is deeply suspect, it’s almost always rape. And yet, one must feel Oppressed to be happy. Thus the chains of sexual repression will always be being thrown off, but will always be there too. DEI will rule the world, and yet never be complete. As Orwell showed, the war with Eurasia — it has always been Eurasia — will deliver one Victory after another and yet it will never end.
It’s a dilemma — one wants to eat one’s cake but still have it. For the wokie, the righteous tears of their martyrdom at the hands of whitey — the eternal Oppressor — are sweet. But! … there is also the sweet pleasure of Smashing the Patriarchy — the pleasure of victory! So, one wants to Smash and to be victorious over the burned bodies of whitey, and yet keep the ongoing saintly Victimhood.
In the same way, the modern progressive is in fact free to Identify as anything and to engage in just about any possible sexual behavior — tho heterosex is deeply suspect, it’s almost always rape. And yet, one must feel Oppressed to be happy. Thus the chains of sexual repression will always be being thrown off, but will always be there too. DEI will rule the world, and yet never be complete. As Orwell showed, the war with Eurasia — it has always been Eurasia — will deliver one Victory after another and yet it will never end.
Is it possible to be notified of a response to a comment? I scan the comments and see that sometimes there’s a response to something I said, but I get no notification. There seems to be nothing is ‘My Account’ to change that.
If you got notifications of responses to your comments it would greatly facilitate ‘conversations’ on Unherd. I noted this to the Unherd powers that be and was told ‘too bad’, more or less.
I sometimes think of cancelling my Unherd subscription (because the essays are unimaginative) then I read something like this and I’m all-in again. Thanks!
Let’s do a bit of editing:
“By placing the advent of the age of repression in the seventeenth century…, one adjusts it to coincide with” the emergence of the educated class.
Back in the day, people didn’t get married unless they had money from both families. Why? Because otherwise they would die.
The whole point about the modern playing with sex is that we can afford to, and our educated class makes a cult out of “creativity.” I say that the least creative way to be creative is to be creative with sex.
Age of repression? In Pride and Prejudice we have Lydia running off with an officer. In Adam Bede we have a silly teenager getting pregnant by the local landowner. I tell you; those 19th century damsels were up to no good!
What would Queen Victoria have thought of that? Actually, the royal family was delighted to go visit George Eliot at her weekly open house with George Lewes — to whom she was not married.
Let’s do a bit of editing:
“By placing the advent of the age of repression in the seventeenth century…, one adjusts it to coincide with” the emergence of the educated class.
Back in the day, people didn’t get married unless they had money from both families. Why? Because otherwise they would die.
The whole point about the modern playing with sex is that we can afford to, and our educated class makes a cult out of “creativity.” I say that the least creative way to be creative is to be creative with sex.
Age of repression? In Pride and Prejudice we have Lydia running off with an officer. In Adam Bede we have a silly teenager getting pregnant by the local landowner. I tell you; those 19th century damsels were up to no good!
What would Queen Victoria have thought of that? Actually, the royal family was delighted to go visit George Eliot at her weekly open house with George Lewes — to whom she was not married.
Isn’t he largely to blame? Asking for a sociologist friend who can’t afford the subscription….
The student-centered approach is a direct application of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which begins with the assumption the binary of oppressed and oppressor is evident in the student teacher relationship.
But this essay reveals another more troubling dynamic. Does Foucault’s fascination with sex have anything to do with his p***s and his desire to engage in sexual behavior with minor boys? Why else would he want to deconstruct such relations?
The student-centered approach is a direct application of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which begins with the assumption the binary of oppressed and oppressor is evident in the student teacher relationship.
But this essay reveals another more troubling dynamic. Does Foucault’s fascination with sex have anything to do with his p***s and his desire to engage in sexual behavior with minor boys? Why else would he want to deconstruct such relations?
What a smart article. Wish we saw more like it.
This essay badly needed to be written. Foucault belongs to those modern French philosophers who have been misunderstood and misused by the Anglosphere academic establishment. Carrying a message of the dangers of the administrative state he has been shot by conservatives.
The Triumph of the TherapeuticThe Rise and Triumph of the Modern SelfBoth books correspond very well to this article.