"Referential Quote"

you're racist and think there's no way racialized students could write an essay this good

you need to decrease your class average because it's the end of the semester and you haven't met your target average

one of your TAs gave out too many As and you don't want to regrade anything

you haven't redesigned your course in years and students have gotten advice on how to write their essay from past students

you're pissed off at a student with disability accommodations for making you do extra work

you want to feel powerful

you got into a fight with your wife

you want to bond with other professors over how lazy kids are these days and swap juicy stories about students crying in your office

abuse in caregiving professions (like teaching or nursing) is not solely a result of power dynamics. it's also because people who go into those professions tend to have a idea of themselves as Good People. recognising or acknowledging their own capacity for harm contradicts that idea. so they mentally put 'people who have inconvenienced me' into the 'Bad People' box (which conveniently doubles up as the 'People I Am Allowed to Hurt' box), and just like that, the world is made simple again.

i read ross greene a lot when i was working with 'difficult' or 'behaviourally challenged' children. his refrain is kids do well if they can - meaning, in short, that most kids act out only when the demands of a situation exceed their capabilities. punishing them for this is not only cruel but also completely pointless, because they also don't want to be doing what they are doing.

religious atheist: İ don't believe in Gd because Hashem commands us to seek truth and dialectical materialism is truth

Then maybe...

Maybe...