Yesterday, a student sent me a 500-word email where the words ‘I feel’ were used multiple times and where she described in detail how painful it is for her to see my corrections of her language mistakes. Can somebody tell me which system of upbringing creates grown people who:
– believe that the only way to relate to others is to insist that they adopt you emotionally, professionally, intellectually and socially and become very upset when others demonstrate that they have no need of an overgrown adoptee;
– believe that it is acceptable to tell a professor “I’m upset because you didn’t validate my feelings”;
– believe that hard work that produces no results is more valuable than a small amount of effort that produces great results;
– believe that every adult they meet owes them constant praise and encouragement;
– start every other sentence with “I feel”;
– insist that other adults dedicate their lives to their petty emotional crises,
so that I can avoid it? I really don’t want to bring up somebody like this by mistake.
Seriously, though, are these people a product of attachment parenting? They seem to want to attach themselves to people like leeches. Their capacity to regulate their own emotional states – which is something that all normally developing kids have by the age of 5 – is non-existent. Their dependence on approval from an adult is overwhelming. Their understanding of what is appropriate among adults is nil. Their capacity to see themselves as adults is not there. Their emotional instability is scary and their self-esteem is in the toilet.
I see such people more and more often among the twenty-year-olds. They look like toddlers who never managed to grow up, and that is scary.
Clarissa's Blog 
Don’t worry, you will not be religious control-freak parents.
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You think this is religious in origin? I didn’t grow up around religious folks, so I wouldn’t know.
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Yes, but the most important is “control freak”.
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Yes, I think this is what it is. Controlling attachment parents.
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I think it’s attachment parenting, helicoptering parents, and the “student as consumer” model. If school is thought of as a restaurant or a hotel and faculty as servers or bellhops, then the faculty member’s role is not to educate but to provide a pleasant experience. And correction and bad grades aren’t pleasant so the consumer student gets angry. It’s very sad and distressing.
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“the faculty member’s role is not to educate but to provide a pleasant experience”
– Exactly. Also, I feel like I’m expected to act as some sort of a psychotherapist which is simply bizarre.
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There is a religious aspect to it. The Protestant “work ethic” means your personality and very being is tied to your success in everything you do, which is why people freak out when they are critiqued in school, or reprimanded at work, or even when someone calls into question their devotion to a tv show! The American ideal of “improving yourself” means everything you do is aimed at making you a Better Person. Unfortunately this only works if there are clear delineations on just what makes you a Better Person, and we don’t have that any more. (Probably a good thing, as those guidelines were based on racism, sexism, and classism.) What we’re left with is just the idea that everything you do is an aspect of your morality, so even the way you hang your toilet paper in the bathroom is something to get into an argument over.
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“The American ideal of “improving yourself” means everything you do is aimed at making you a Better Person.”
– Yes, definitely. Such people do seem to perceive the grammatical corrections as some sort of a condemnation of their entire being. I’m getting to the point where I want to write “You are not your grammar mistakes” on the door of my office.
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Some professors attach with sellotape lots of funny pictures and sayings (aka science jokes for nerds) on their doors. You could do that too, and this sentence would fit right in the section “Before you knock on the door, or Clarissa’s Ispirational Messages to Worried Students”. I am serious.
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Maybe we can create the list of such messages right here.
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I can’t speak for other people, but in the past I had to try to adapt to a society that made no sense to me, but was very demanding. The society was highly parental. People felt the need to reprimand me or to morally scold me in a number of ways, whilst demanding that I change. So, I got into a mode of, “Well if you’re going to play the scolding parents, you’re going to play the nurturing ones too. So, here is what I need…..”
I really think, and I have said so before, that Western culture, especially industrialized Anglo-Saxon culture has a huge *moral* hangup about “colonialism”. It’s not even a particularly historical hangup, which would be useful. Instead, it’s history denied and dissolved into morality. So, berating me was a way for a lot of people to feel better about their ‘identities’.
It’s been an ongoing problem, but it’s not to do with me. I can move from Occidental to Oriental contexts, and the issue disappears without a trace. Go back to the Occident and there it is again.
Anyway, I decided to charge people for the liberties they took in morally scolding me. I would return to them and say, “So what are you going to give me now that I’m your ‘child’ and you have decided to take on the role of moral scold?”
I think I have been quite an unpleasant person — but people have to learn how to let others simply be.
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I agree! People need to get a massive pushback. I want everybody who comes here thinking that they can dump their aggression to discover that I will thrust their disrespect back into their throats.
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There’s also the whole “use your words, get in touch with your feelings” dynamic that I think is at play here. It’s actually not a bad early step in helping children be functioning human beings and not little tantrum-throwing tyrants, but as you say, if you get stuck in toddlerhood it’s…well…not good.
This is the GOOD step in that she’s apparently not saying, “you suck and are a bad teacher and horrible human being”; she’s saying “I feel this and this and that” and again, buzzword alert, “owning her feelings.” Unfortunately she’s not getting the whole bit about how owning your feelings means YOU own them, get to deal with them, and shouldn’t expect the rest of the world to give a crap about them. That comes in maybe second grade or so, if you continue to grow. 🙂 Which it sounds like she hasn’t.
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“There’s also the whole “use your words, get in touch with your feelings” dynamic that I think is at play here. It’s actually not a bad early step in helping children be functioning human beings and not little tantrum-throwing tyrants, but as you say, if you get stuck in toddlerhood it’s…well…not good.”
– Yes, exactly, kid are taught to do this in early childhood, and that’s great. But they can’t expect to be praised for this or for using the potty well into adulthood.
“Unfortunately she’s not getting the whole bit about how owning your feelings means YOU own them, get to deal with them, and shouldn’t expect the rest of the world to give a crap about them. That comes in maybe second grade or so, if you continue to grow. ”
– 🙂 🙂 This is a brilliant way of putting it.
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” believe that hard work that produces no results is more valuable than a small amount of effort that produces great results;”
This is the “working hard” fetichism of the conservative statists to justify cuts in social welfare and in other social programs. They make you think that success is the same thing than “working hard” even though this is a fake, as capitalism doesn’t care very much about “working hard”.
Unlike the education system, capitalism doesn’t care about very much about results (though results are more important than working hard even for capitalists) too. Capitalism is more about networking, marketing, fake, domination and nepotism than real results.
Both in the actual education system and in the anarchist circles, success is measured by results. In the actual education system, your results are measured by your grades and you are your grades. Grades are a competitive static measure mainly on how you’re better than others and how you do against the “perfect student” and unfortunately, grades are taking out of the previous context. The anarchist educational concept of results is not about competition, it’s about how you improve since the previous state and personal emulation and thus this should be measured as dynamically as possible.
“You are not your grammar mistakes”
I agree, but this is not the belief of the education system.
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“The anarchist educational concept of results is not about competition, it’s about how you improve since the previous state and personal emulation and thus this should be measured as dynamically as possible.”
– Improving the horrible to get something a little less horrible has zero value. You are feeding this myth that “I worked sooooo hard, so applaud me for that” is an approach that has to be respected.
“Unlike the education system, capitalism doesn’t care about very much about results (though results are more important than working hard even for capitalists) too. Capitalism is more about networking, marketing, fake, domination and nepotism than real results.”
– Just last week I heard that my networking acquaintance has been kicked out of her program 🙂 🙂 She had many friends and no publications. So no, the world wants nothing but results.
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” Just last week I heard that my networking acquaintance has been kicked out of her program 🙂 🙂 She had many friends and no publications. So no, the world wants nothing but results.”
The academia is not working in the same way than the rest of the capitalist system. I didn’t say that the academia was mainly about networking (even though this could occur sometimes and ideological stances play a role in publications) and that’s one of its main advantages.
“Improving the horrible to get something a little less horrible has zero value. You are feeding this myth that “I worked sooooo hard, so applaud me for that” is an approach that has to be respected.”
1) Anarchists (and that includes me) can’t care less about working hard. Working hard is totally irrelevant as a measure of value for anarchists.
2) The University system is not “all the educational system”. I’m against enrolling horrible students in an University. And in fact, it seems that I’m more elitist in that matter than your own department and in almost all universities.
3) Not educating and not trying to improve greatly the horrible students has no value. And I want more than getting someting something a little less horrible.
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“The academia is not working in the same way than the rest of the capitalist system.”
– Try working at any company and not bringing in results and then tell me how it goes for you. 🙂
” I’m against enrolling horrible students in an University. And in fact, it seems that I’m more elitist in that matter than your own department and in almost all universities.”
– I agree completely. Promising higher education to people who are not prepared to receive it is fraud.
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Curious. I have heard ‘feminists’ rant about how men hide from their feelings. Some have frequently told me, “I don’t want to know what you think, tell me how you feel. Thinking, to them is apparently really superficial. I have heard of one university administrator (not here at my institution, fortunately) who says that logical thought is part of how men keep women oppressed. It sounds to me as though this student has fallen prey to this “sect.”
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” I have heard of one university administrator (not here at my institution, fortunately) who says that logical thought is part of how men keep women oppressed. ”
– Oh yes. I heard this, too.
“It sounds to me as though this student has fallen prey to this “sect.”’
– You are a clairvoyant. 🙂 This is precisely what the student’s essay is about: men oppressing women with logic and thinking. I have to be honest, I did not see the connection between that and the student’s emails to me. This is brilliant!!
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“men oppressing women with logic and thinking” LOOOOL
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Welcome to the latest trend in academic gender studies. 😦
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In fact, the idea that women are not logical is a patriarchical jendah role.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girls_Just_Want_to_Have_Sums
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My gode, those jendah integrists are Lawrence Summers’ pom-pom girls!
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I think it’s not logical THOUGHT that keeps women oppressed but rather gender-related *rhetoric* concerning “logic”, which is not the same thing at all. For instance, if I say something that others don’t want to acknowledge, for political, social or personal reasons, it can be the case that the one who is happier not to know will condemn my words as being “illogical”.
I think the problem is that people don’t really know what logic is. Again and again I’ve seen people express the idea that my normal, everyday speech is in some way a particular “logical fallacy”. But, unless I am advancing a logical argument, there is no way I am in an position to make any sort of fallacy. Furthermore, it is oppressive to suggest that everyday speech is somehow in the mode of particular “logical fallacies”.
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I first started hearing this in late 80s. It is a cheapened misunderstanding of instrumental rationality and a cheapened misunderstanding of its critique, and it was put into the media and has become a form of common sense.
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Yes, interesting. Of course Bataille’s concept of “non-knowledge” was precisely a critique of instrumental rationality. But what most people don’t see is that they can’t simply adopt a non-rational perspective out of the blue. Instrumental rationality is already in them; it’s already a part of who they are. It’s also what divides the world up into supposedly rational men and non-rational women. It’s part of the symbolic structure of late industrial cultures. It makes no sense, then, to proclaim that one intends not to be rational, in order to escape male control. That assumes that one has a choice in the matter, whereas in reality one has been relegated, if female, to the non-rational side of the equation prior to any awareness one might have. If one wants to escape male control, therefore, one has to effectively not know about it; one has to become ignorant of it in some way, so that one does not categorize oneself in any way. One way to escape the categorization that has already taken place within one’s subjectivity is to take on what has been denied to you. Women should embrace logic. After that, they should forget that they had ever been denied entrance in the realm of logic. It doesn’t help to embrace exactly what you have been made to be by forces outside of your control.
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“Maybe we can create the list of such messages right here.”
One of my favorite college professors had this on his office door: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” 🙂
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Using “I feel” seems to be some massive conversational deflection tic some people employ to sound less arrogant. Somehow it’s more submissive than “I think” and simply stating something as fact. How are you supposed to argue with some massive blurt of self labeled subjectivity?
People are already massively confused on the difference between their feelings and objectivity, and often mistake their feelings for objectivity.
Unless you’re going for comments such as, “I see non-native three year olds with better understanding of subject verb agreement than this paper exhibits” or you start mocking her in class, instead of straight corrections, I don’t understand this blathering about her feelings about being corrected on language mistakes.
As an undergraduate, I might have pouted to myself or to my friends, but I would have never written a giant email about my feelings to the professor. I think I spoke my parents once for advice how to handle a situation, and I specifically told them NOT to call my professor.
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“Unless you’re going for comments such as, “I see non-native three year olds with better understanding of subject verb agreement than this paper exhibits” or you start mocking her in class, instead of straight corrections, I don’t understand this blathering about her feelings about being corrected on language mistakes.”
– Of course not! I just wrote things like “use plural here” or “this requires subjunctive” on the margins.
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