• User34x
    6
    It seems like men are not welcome anymore in educational institutions such as universities and so on. This is especially true if you are a fit, healthy male, whereas men who can demonstrate some kind of disability are welcome to some degree, but are often marginalised and made to feel inferior throughout their educational experience. I wonder why this is the case? There is a constant eroding of trust in these institutions, such that they are no longer impartial. This is because they have become highly politicised, and staff seem to teach through a political lens or filter. This biased approach is wrong and seems to contradict what learning is all about. I think the old philosophers in Ancient Greece would become very angry at how bad our educational establishments have become, if they were alive today. But then again, they were all men. So they would be called lots of bad names.
  • Raul
    215
    I haven't experienced this biases but with all the positive-discrimination that I'm seeing recently for women I would not be surprised.
    I like to think it is a fashion that will pass sooner or later but nowadays I agree it pays-off a lot in politics and socially.
  • User34x
    6
    I witness it a lot in British Universities.
    A lot of older staff have retired and the younger staff are not so impartial.
    They tend to be more politically driven and influenced, which shows a lot in their teaching.
    I think this change from university as an image of historical white male privledge based on values of social exclusion to an inclusive place for everyone has resulted in white men feeling unwelcome. The scales have tipped against their favour and I don't think they will go back the other way again.

    I think university is undergoing huge change socially and politically.
  • Gus Lamarch
    924
    The "University", or as the ancients called it, "the Academy", had never been a place of impartiality. The goal has always been to teach those fortunate, what went according to the intellectual absolute of the time - classical age: moral and tradition, medieval age: metaphysics, and dogma, modern age: reason and logic, contemporary age: knowledge gnosticism, and revisionism -.

    And contrary to what many claim, Universities work much more easily and practically when they are homogeneous in thought and purpose.

    Something that wants to defend and express to everyone, ends up defending and expressing nothing.
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    Gonna need some stats here or this thread gets closed.
  • deletedmemberTB
    36
    It honestly sounds like a rigged system going from bad to worse.

    My notion goes something like this.
    [for the USA] Public schools and state universities are designed to produce durable cogs for the wheels of industry. Perhaps, most private schools and Ivy League universities are designed to produce precious-metal cogs for the wheels of industry. Only the most elite schools are designed to educate.

    These notions are based in part on my view that training is about learning the answers [fetch, boy] and education is about exploring the possibilities.

    So, if the university system is suffering a unique misandry moment, it does not strike me as alarming given the insidious nature of the beast as I see it.
  • javra
    2.4k
    It seems like men are not welcome anymore in educational institutions such as universities and so on. [...] But then again, they were all men. So they would be called lots of bad names.User34x

    My guess is that a certain portion of men get disliked due to holding baseless opinions such as this one that gets expressed in the OP.

    Would some of these bad names be those of "cunt" and "pussy" ... expressing attributes only women are endowed with ... that are innately derogatory ... on account of being what women are biologically endowed with? The label of "dick" doesn't have the same resonance; it retains a type of respect even in the worse cases. Then again, I've never heard someone say "she was a dick".

    When gender egalitarianism becomes equated to harm against men, though, those who so equate might get disliked by those who are egalitarian. Some of the latter being quite healthy men.

    Just sayin'.

    Gonna need some stats here or this thread gets closed.StreetlightX

    Good call.
  • jgill
    3.6k
    Let's see some citations. I don't remember academia as being like that, but it has been a while ago that I was on a faculty.
  • Banno
    23.6k
    Yep.

    Elsewise, looks a bit like folk noticing their previous privilege and not liking a bit of equity.
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    Elsewise, looks a bit like folk noticing their previous privilege and not liking a bit of equity.Banno
    What does "equity" mean - an equal number of each race and sex which isn't representative of the local population or an unequal number of each race and sex that is representative of the local population?

    The former will allocate unequal power to each individual, and the latter allocates power evenly to each individual. It seems like we are headed for the former-where certain groups are over-represented, while others are under-represented. I thought that was what we were trying get away from. It seems that people like you really aren't interested in equity at all, just more of the same of one group oppressing others. You are essentially fighting racism with racism.

    The problem is in thinking that groups have more rights than individuals.
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    The former will allocate unequal power to each individual, and the latter allocates power evenly to each individual. It seems like we are headed for the former-where certain groups are over-represented, while others are under-represented. I thought that was what we were trying get away from. It seems that people like you really aren't interested in equity at all, just more of the same of one group oppressing others. You are essentially fighting racism with racism.Harry Hindu

    No one here has satisfactorily demonstrated the claim that women are over-represented or men under-represented in academia at all. The OP is about a ‘fit, healthy man’ not feeling ‘welcome’ in an academic environment.

    It seems like men are not welcome anymore in educational institutions such as universities and so on. This is especially true if you are a fit, healthy male, whereas men who can demonstrate some kind of disability are welcome to some degree, but are often marginalised and made to feel inferior throughout their educational experience. I wonder why this is the case?User34x

    I’m curious: what constitutes a ‘welcoming’ environment for a ‘fit, healthy man’? The sense that he’s among his peers? Reassurance that his virility has value?
  • Kenosha Kid
    3.2k
    It seems like men are not welcome anymore in educational institutions such as universities and so on.User34x

    Do you care to check the proportion of undergraduates, postgraduates and university staff who are male?

    This is especially true if you are a fit, healthy male, whereas men who can demonstrate some kind of disability are welcome to some degreeUser34x

    And the proportion of those males who are able-bodied?

    Elsewise, looks a bit like folk noticing their previous privilege and not liking a bit of equity.Banno

    Sounds about right. Par for the course atm.
  • Athena
    3k
    The "University", or as the ancients called it, "the Academy", had never been a place of impartiality. The goal has always been to teach those fortunate, what went according to the intellectual absolute of the time - classical age: moral and tradition, medieval age: metaphysics, and dogma, modern age: reason and logic, contemporary age: knowledge gnosticism, and revisionism -.

    And contrary to what many claim, Universities work much more easily and practically when they are homogeneous in thought and purpose.

    Something that wants to defend and express to everyone, ends up defending and expressing nothing.
    Gus Lamarch

    I most know, why do you know something of the history of education? It is my favorite subject and it is so exciting to come across someone who knows something about it.
  • Athena
    3k
    I don't know if others can find statistics for their local university but here are the statistics for my local university and I am rather alarmed by the huge shift to females. This is a whole lot different from my first college experience when I dropped out to be a wife and mother because that is what females were expected to do, and my father would not have it any other way. I got a C in one class that I stopped attending because the professor had said those of who got married would get a C and I was outraged by that and wanted to test his word.

    Years later when I returned to college, I had to do a paper on middle-aged women, and the best research on that subject was done by women. However, the professor insisted we use the abstracts and extremely few males had done research on women, and the work done by women was not accepted in the peer-reviewed abstracts. The professor was aware of the problem, but would not change his requirement. It appears the world is different from what it was 40 years ago.

    https://inclusion.uoregon.edu/facts-and-figures
  • tim wood
    8.9k
    There is something else at work also. This is about US schools. The US school system took shape in the late 1800s.

    This is correct.
    [for the USA] Public schools [we]re designed to produce durable cogs for the wheels of industry.Tres Bien

    It is no accident nor coincidence that until 1960 most high school students troubled to wear professional or near professional dress to school. More casual dress for students in the "trade" schools, or who were on non-college bound curriculum tracks. And the schools consciously and deliberately modeled on the business places many of the students would have been - are - presumed to be going to work at. 1960 because in seeming one or two years the clothes worn for high school year book pictures changed completely, from jacket and ties, and careful grooming, to a manifestly and obviously more casual and increasingly counter-cultural appearance.

    At the same time the schools stopped educating - this a whole topic in itself. Through 1950 and even 1960, a high school diploma meant something. For many reasons by about 1980 it had come to mean nothing much. Today in high schools across America young men and women are receiving diplomas whose reading, writing, and arithmetic skills are at barely an elementary school level.

    But here's the rub. Part of the task of an education system lies in sorting students. And that was done in high school. Some to higher education, some to jobs out of high school. Not a perfect system, but the products knew what they were supposed to know.

    But (to be as brief as possible) now everyone goes to college. And it's the colleges' job to do the sorting. Now it's only in college that ignorant man/boys finally discover that they're ignorant, never having been taught basic skills in their K-12 careers. And many state universities (have) instituted remedial reading and writing classes for incoming freshman, some of them testing students and requiring the courses where needed.

    In short and to be blunt, it's now the colleges job to give the bad news to students that they won't succeed, instead of the high school or even junior high school. And in some cases, that task has even migrated to graduate school! Men being discriminated against? Absolutely and necessarily, because those men never should have been there in the first place, given their preparatory education. Someone has to tell them, and it's the colleges stuck with it.
  • Ciceronianus
    3k
    Alas, how difficult it is to be a man in these times, particularly a healthy, fit man, without any disabilities! And don't get me started on the inequities visited upon such man who is white as well.
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    15 hours since my request for stats and none given, despite OP being active elsewhere. Thread locked.
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