The Comfortable Afflicted

I've never really encountered the problem written about by this professor:

Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. I wish there were a less blunt way to put this, but my students sometimes scare me — particularly the liberal ones.

Not, like, in a person-by-person sense, but students in general. The student-teacher dynamic has been re-envisioned along a line that's simultaneously consumerist and hyper-protective, giving each and every student the ability to claim Grievous Harm in nearly any circumstance, after any affront, and a teacher's formal ability to respond to these claims is limited at best.

Maybe its a community college thing, but I find most of my students couldn't care less about what I think, or their feelings about what I teach.

That said, I have always been aware of the potential for trouble, but I have never censored myself. Just the other day I challenged a student who said alleged victims of rape are sometimes asked what they were wearing. In 1950, certainly, in 2015 I doubt that very much.  I went on to castigate the very notion that in America in 2015 women are treated as second class citizens.

The discussion was interesting, actually.

Again, I think what the above professor is describing is something happening at the fancy schools where students who have been pampered and prepped their whole lives are now demanding that they are never challenged or made to feel uncomfortable.  Most students at Raritan Valley are two busy for that sort of thing, they are coming from or going to jobs, they have kids to watch.

I don't think Raritan Valley students are comfortable and I don't think they're pampered. I like them very much.