Lucille
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- Oct 30, 2007
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But they are mature enough to handle debt slavery.
http://reason.com/blog/2015/02/13/college-students-are-infants-and-deserve
http://reason.com/blog/2015/02/13/college-students-are-infants-and-deserve
Eric Posner—a University of Chicago Law School professor and son of famed federal judge Richard Posner—makes the case in Slate that college students don't really deserve free speech or due process rights. He also chides libertarians outraged by campus censorship for thinking that 18-year-olds—infants, in his view—are intellectually capable of thriving in a non-coercive environment.
A relevant snippet:
Conservatives and libertarians are up in arms. They see these rules as an assault on free speech and individual liberty. They think universities are treating students like children. And they are right. But they have also not considered that the justification for these policies may lie hidden in plain sight: that students are children. Not in terms of age, but in terms of maturity. Even in college, they must be protected like children while being prepared to be adults.
There is a popular, romantic notion that students receive their university education through free and open debate about the issues of the day. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Students who enter college know hardly anything at all—that’s why they need an education. Classroom teachers know students won’t learn anything if they blab on about their opinions. Teachers are dictators who carefully control what students say to one another. It’s not just that sincere expressions of opinion about same-sex marriage or campaign finance reform are out of place in chemistry and math class. They are out of place even in philosophy and politics classes, where the goal is to educate students (usually about academic texts and theories), not to listen to them spout off.
But it's not just inside the classroom where students should be prisoners of tutelage, argues Posner:
Most of the debate about speech codes, which frequently prohibit students from making offensive comments to one another, concerns speech outside of class. Two points should be made. First, students who are unhappy with the codes and values on campus can take their views to forums outside of campus—to the town square, for example. The campus is an extension of the classroom, and so while the restrictions in the classroom are enforced less vigorously, the underlying pedagogical objective of avoiding intimidation remains intact
Second, and more important—at least for libertarians partisans of the free market—the universities are simply catering to demand in the marketplace for education. While critics sometimes give the impression that lefty professors and clueless administrators originated the speech and sex codes, the truth is that universities adopted them because that’s what most students want. If students want to learn biology and art history in an environment where they needn’t worry about being offended or raped, why shouldn’t they?
Wow...