{"id":1675856,"date":"2022-10-06T11:27:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-06T15:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1675856"},"modified":"2022-10-06T11:29:41","modified_gmt":"2022-10-06T15:29:41","slug":"gen-z-students-invoke-victimhood-and-nyu-chemistry-professor-gets-the-ax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/gen-z-students-invoke-victimhood-and-nyu-chemistry-professor-gets-the-ax\/","title":{"rendered":"Gen Z Students Invoke Victimhood And NYU Chemistry Professor Gets The Ax"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fgen-z-students-invoke-victimhood-and-nyu-chemistry-professor-gets-the-ax%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1675856&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>At the highest levels of education, we are allowing our children to exalt victimhood and denigrate excellence. The price will be more than lax standards and subpar achievement. It will result in a generation incapable of confronting the difficulties \u2014 and glories \u2014 of life itself.<\/p>\n<p>One of the most under-rated films of the past two decades is a movie called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0384680\/\">The Weatherman<\/a>, starring Nicholas Cage and Michael Caine. There is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RfbxD1M5YI4\">an extraordinary scene<\/a> in which Michael Caine\u2019s character attempts to impart some paternal advice to his son, an existentially bewildered weatherman struggling to achieve anything of real substance in his middle-aged, fledgling life.<\/p>\n<p>He asks his son, \u201cDo you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This week, the New York Times <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/10\/03\/us\/nyu-organic-chemistry-petition.html\">featured a story<\/a> about a much-celebrated Princeton and New York University chemistry professor named Maitland Jones Jr., who was suddenly dismissed from his adjunct position at New York University. Eighty two of three hundred fifty students signed a petition against him, claiming his chemistry course was unnecessarily rigorous and was becoming an unfair hurdle in their quest to win acceptance to medical school someday.<\/p>\n<p>The article inadvertently stumbled on the truth when it observed, \u201cIn short, this one unhappy chemistry class could be a case study of the pressures on higher education as it tries to handle its Gen Z student body.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The problem of how \u201cto handle\u201d Gen Z students is actually rather simple: students, even at elite universities, have the misbegotten notion that rigor is wrong, that sacrifice is a form of stealth oppression, and that any inequality of outcome is proof of a malevolent and systematic cabal foisted upon ambitious students who have an absolute right to achieve their dreams.<\/p>\n<p>Consider some of the quotes from Professor Jones:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStudents were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate . . .\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the last two years, they fell off a cliff . . .\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe now see single digit scores and even zeros . . .\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey weren\u2019t coming to class, that\u2019s for sure, because I can count the house . . .\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey weren\u2019t watching the videos, and they weren\u2019t able to answer the questions . . .\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A colleague of Dr. Jones made a comment that every high school and college teacher in America can relate to, \u201cI think this petition was written more out of unhappiness with exam scores than an actual feeling of being treated unfairly. I have noticed that many of the students who consistently complained about the class did not use the resources we afforded to them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Almost a decade ago, legendary researcher Jean Twenge noticed that modern students craved wealth and success but didn\u2019t particularly seem interested in putting in the time and effort commensurate with such success. In the past decade, the amount of time students spend studying, reading, or doing school work, in general, has absolutely plummeted. I have been guilty of catering to this cult of ease in my own teaching career\u2014the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TbJvSo5EoJ8\">most popular YouTube video<\/a> I ever taped for my AP classes, by far, was titled, \u201cPass AP Government exam w\/ 75 MINUTE REVIEW!!!!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>My colleagues and I have noticed that if we tape any review video over five minutes long, the students simply will not watch it. The notion they should spend time outside of class studying for a test is anathema to modern sensibilities, even for the most gifted students.<\/p>\n<p>And yet, this attitude is more than simple sloth or empty entitlement. It is an ethic which does not comprehend, or even recognize, that sacrifice rocks the cradle of genuine achievement, that time, talent, and an endless zeal for a particular ambition can still come up short of the ultimate goal for most people, most of the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But what is most worrisome transcends classrooms and boardrooms and reveals a more poignant ailment of the American soul: if young Americans think organic chemistry is hard, imagine what it is like to kick drug addiction or raise a special needs child or endure the hardship of chemotherapy or confront the infidelity of a spouse or the betrayal of a close friend. Life is not a festival of therapeutic accommodation and the world is not a global Make a Wish Foundation.<\/p>\n<p>In a League of Their Own, Tom Hank\u2019s character, Jimmy Dugan, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zyiQl2mDHsE\">attempts to explain<\/a> what makes baseball so special: \u201cIt\u2019s supposed to be hard. If it wasn\u2019t hard everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.\u201d It is fascinating and worthy of further exploration that most young Americans aren\u2019t exposed to movies with dialogue like this or characters of Dugan\u2019s ilk.<\/p>\n<p>For some reason, in the realm of sports, Americans are fully accepting of exceptionally high standards. We revel in stories of Michael Jordon\u2019s superhuman competitiveness, we are inspired that Kobe Bryant would take up to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.popworkouts.com\/kobe-bryant-workout-routine\/\">1,000<\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the highest levels of education, we are allowing our children to exalt victimhood and denigrate excellence. The price will be more than lax standards and subpar achievement. It will result in a generation incapable of confronting the difficulties \u2014 and glories \u2014 of life itself. One of the most under-rated films of the past &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1675858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1675856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1675856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1675858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1675856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1675856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1675856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}