When we think about bailouts, it’s the banks and the carmakers that first come to mind. Government Motors, Government Sachs. But there is a much more insidious failure to fail that’s been growing like a tumor for several decades now and has already metastasized in many walks of life. Some years ago, when I taught college students, I certainly didn’t expect them all to be geniuses or the grittiest lot in the world. But the magnitude of the conformity and lack of initiative that most demonstrated was truly shocking. And they lacked basic technical skills. And I was teaching at one of the top 25 universities in the US, where many freshmen have been homeschooled or gone to expensive private institutions. Among other things, they had all been meticulously programmed, even the brightest ones, to be politically correct. They were afraid to say anything controversial – lest someone somehow be offended or made to think. Challenging me or asking provocative questions in class was out of the question. The problem certainly isn’t from yesteryear. But it’s been getting worse, at least in my experience. The inability to take risks that this political correctness, this perpetual comfort and coddling have inculcated is staggering. And please don’t blame it all on the schoolteachers and university professors swimming with little pedagogical training against a powerful current of overprotective parents, erratic school boards, log-headed state and federal standards and hyperactive “community” organizations waiting for the slightest blunder to strip them of their tenure and whatever dignity they may have left. FACT: many colleges have “speech codes” for institutionalized censorship. FACT: few professors have the practice of calling on the shier students to participate in the discussion so they can build confidence and social skills. That is, if there is any discussion going on at all. FACT, BRUTAL FACT: in … Continue reading Dopamine Puppets?