Author of Be Ready for Anything and Bloom Where You’re Planted online course
DOES THIS SCARE YOU? According to “leading research” in the UK, using all-caps in university instructions could “frighten students into failure.”
The staff at Leeds’ Trinity School was given a handful of instructions to help the future journalists of the United Kingdom succeed. Do keep in mind that these suggestions are no more outrageous than the ones here in the United States of Safe Spaces.
A few lowlights highlights of the internal document obtained by Express UK follow. (Don’t worry. The document does not contain any frightening all-caps)
Staff at Leeds Trinity’s school of journalism have also been told to “write in a helpful, warm tone, avoiding officious language and negative instructions”. Some blasted the move as “more academic mollycoddling” of the snowflake generation. An “enhancing student understanding, engagement, and achievement” memo lists dos and don’ts – with “do” and “don’t” among words frowned upon.
Course leaders say capitalising a word could emphasise “the difficulty or high-stakes nature of the task”.
The memo says: “Despite our best attempts to explain assessment tasks, any lack of clarity can generate anxiety and even discourage students from attempting the assessment at all…
The memo also says that staff must be “explicit about any inexplicitness” in their assignment briefs…
And it warns that when students are unsure of an assessment, “they often talk to each other and any misconceptions or misunderstandings quickly spread throughout the group (usually aided and abetted by Facebook).
This can lead to further confusion and students may even then decide that the assessment is too difficult and not attempt it”…
The university said the guidance was sharing “best practice from the latest teaching research”, adding: “We take pride in supporting our students to be the very best they can be. (source)
It would be difficult to be surprised by this.
After all, we live in a world in which clapping has been banned and replaced with “jazz hands” to avoid the potential of anxiety for students. We live in a world with coloring books, puppies, and safe spaces for college students who require respite from a world with President Trump. We live in a world where a prof at Harvard Law – HARVARD FREAKING LAW (oh sorry – all caps, are you okay?) is dealing with law students who believe that rape law should not be taught. We live in a world in which practically everything must be prefaced with a trigger warning.
We live in a world in which anything that goes against the official rhetoric of the Big Tech gods is immediately censored out.
All of this coddling comes at a high price for mental health.
The mental health of young people is truly suffering and it isn’t because of words written in all-caps.
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt of The Atlantic wrote about harm being caused by the politcal correctness epidemic:
…it presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological harm. The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally. You might call this impulse vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse…
…What are the effects of this new protectiveness on the students themselves? Does it benefit the people it is supposed to help? What exactly are students learning when they spend four years or more in a community that polices unintentional slights, places warning labels on works of classic literature, and in many other ways conveys the sense that words can be forms of violence that require strict control by campus authorities, who are expected to act as both protectors and prosecutors?
…vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong. The harm may be more immediate, too. A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes of depression and anxiety. The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically. (source)
And it’s so true. If you can’t withstand words you don’t like, how will you withstand the cold, hard world of the workforce? How will you deal with financial problems, divorce, or even sassy offspring?
Now imagine an SHTF event with these kids in the starring roles.
If you will, take a moment to imagine the kind of thing for which we are all preparing. Some sort of societal breakdown. Now add to the chaos these young people who have been coddled, nurtured, and inoculated with viral political correctness.
How will they possibly deal with the chaos that Selco describes in his shocking book about the reality of an SHTF environment? Will they demand their human right to food while shrouded in a weighted, anxiety-reducing blanket? Will they color while the building they are in is being shelled? How would they muster up the wherewithal to fight back and protect themselves if they’ve never dealt with even a modicum of violence in their sheltered lives?
It would be utter chaos. Bloody mayhem. They’ll be fodder for the psychopaths who are not so politically correct. It’s a terrible disservice that has been done to these young people.
If you think I’m exaggerating, please remember, I’m talking about kids who are scared of words typed in all-caps. Heaven forbid we ever face an invading force of young adults who have not been babied into incapability.
I think their ultimate goal, unintended, is to make the workplace, and even life over into a reflection of their college “safe spaces.”
Try to imagine your work place that reflects some of these colleges.
UNIVERSITY PROFESSORSARE IDIOT LITTLE PUSIES!
BATHROOM OUT OF ORDER
Doesn’t “Jazz Hands” discriminate against blind people? Right now my wife’s hand is in a cast, so she is precluded from performing Jazz Hands, and therefore is offended towards clapping AND Jazz Hands. Oh, sorry about the caps there.
So the US is raising a generation of lawyers who will not participate in rape cases, interesting. I suppose they will recuse themselves from any law cases that trigger a bad memory of some event in the past that befell them? Wonder how their employer is going to feel about that.
Wait, if the employer is affronted by a new lawyer/ employee who refuses cases based on potential triggers, then that makes the employer xenophobic. I see an interesting lawsuit here.
And the ongoing raising of college kids in safe echo chamber environments. That’s not going to lead to years of mental health issues down the road when the reality of life bitch slaps those kids.
And yes Miss Organic Prepper, in America we have a right to food, a right to health care, a right to a decent job that’s fulfilling, a living minimum wage, a right to be treated and accepted as a unique individual who self expresses themselves by dressing and acting and assuming the mannerisms of our favorite TV star at the moment, and a right to be treated in a non threatening, non oppressive, respectful way by invading forces be they military, religious, or a post SHTF gang. Or space aliens, them too.
There’s a plethora of people who are going to die. And the college kids are high on that list.
To 1stMarineJarHead, I think it’s an intentional raising of sheep.
In the near future no rape cases will need to be tried.
If she says you did it, then you definitely did it.
No defence is necessary, or even possible. Case closed.
But I’m hard of seeing. I need CAPS! Let’s see what the professor says about that? Because writing small for them would be MEAN. And it’s all about equality to libs.
Jeez what happens when these students go out in the real world? Will they work or will it be too traumatizing for them?
I have twin 18 year old daughters (and a 21 year old daughter as well) and I try (often in vain) to explain that nowhere in the Constitution is there a “right” to not be offended.
A NEW CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT IS NEEDED TO OUTLAW THIS SOCIALLY IRRESPONSIBLE FONTING! lol
Ban caps.
.
NOT THAT I’M TERRIBLY SURPRISED, BUT THIS LATEST “ISSUE” IS JUST ABOUT THE MOST RIDICULOUS “SOCIAL CONCERN” I’VE HEARD YET!
DOES THIS BEHAVIOR CONSTITUTE “HATE FONT” ? LOL!
SO THEREFORE WE CAN’T JUST FLUSH THIS LUNACY DOWN THE TOILET? lol
This is a JOURNALISM school ??? Those poor snowflakes. They should increase the classes in manners.
Never go FULL CHER! That crap scares me too!
Sounds to me like this is all part of a “Master Plan” to purposely make them incapable of defending themselves or even their country, if needed.
Parents really do need to step up and set their children straight, or you’ll be looking after them for the rest of your life.
They had the same experience in the American military.
For years, messages were sent in all caps because that was how the old teletypes were set up.
The military had to change that because the “all caps” system was upsetting to the delicate little darlings that make up today’s military. All caps was “shouting” and therefore upsetting to them.
If hard times come to this nation these little snowflakes are not going handle it well.
A few grammatical points on this. In the English language as used on the internet–All caps implies yelling. Which can make your point LESS impactful than intended. YOU ARE LESS LIKELY TO TAKE THIS SENTENCE WITH GRAVITY. You are MORE likely to pay attention to the CAPITALIZED words in this one.
In written English in general, all caps makes a document harder to read when typed, resulting in the mind sort of smashing everything together until you have to read it several times at a much slower pace.
While I know these were not the things these fucking idiots had in mind, it does make academic sense. .
Also, our entire nation has been raised to be afraid of the world–and now, we’re dealing with the consequences. A huge spike in mental health issues, a delay in learning conflict management and problem solving, and at times academic burn out before kids are even done with high school. We have been raised to be dependent on parents that may no longer be around and government that is twisting the dependence to take away freedoms.
Whoever designated capital letters as “shouting”, and thus rendering all mainframe communication as aggressive, needs a special level in hell.
Caps are EMPHASIS or clarity, L instead of l or I or 1 (lowecase l, capitol I and 1) etc.
the next step is to remove the use of capital letters altogether? Oh already happening … and grammar and punctuation also already happening. andspacesbecausetheyretoowhite
Ah, frak the snowflakes,
“Oh, dear God ! … I saw a whole lot of all-caps today and am terrified. If I ever get through this caps hell I think I’ll try for a career in government.”
.
If it’s sympathy these intellectually bankrupt lemmings want, they can find it in the dictionary in between shit and syphilis. THAT IS ALL. 😉
THIS IS BLATANT NONSENSE!
If *ALL CAPS* frighten these snowflakes, maybe they should stick to digging ditches for a living.