The Age of Authenticity is Really Here.
I noticed this headline today in my news feed:
To Help New Students Adapt, Some Colleges Are Eliminating Grades
I was stunned at the rationalizations made for removing letter grades (scoring a student's work). Mental health issues due to grades? Well, no, unless the stress of achieving those grades is defined as a "mental health issue."
Studying, being tested upon what you studied, is now a "mental health" issue?
Unfortunately, NPR chose to continue the political divide by using the "conservative" term as a definition for the opposing viewpoint. Why label opinions in that manner, NPR?
The article was particularly interesting because I've been reading Andrew Root's book, "The End of Youth Ministry?" I'm a fan of Dr. Root's books.
Here are a few quotes from the book that I was trying to wrap my head around:
It becomes a parent’s primary job to protect the child from emotional injury so that the child never gets the idea that his chosen identity is wrong or bad.
Emotional injury is terrifying because it threatens to damage the internal self, like frying the internal circuits of your computer’s motherboard by plugging in too many unsafe USB devices. To be emotionally injured brings a dark, stormy chaos to the internal quest, making life much harder. Emotional injury can strike in two directions, both of which frighten parents. First, emotional injury risks upending (or negatively redirecting) the construction of identity. It is assumed that because of your emotional injury, you can never be happy with who you are. Second, emotional injury can happen when a young person who is expressing her chosen identity finds no one to embrace it, no one who recognizes her unique expressions of her unique self. She’s emotionally injured because she feels like her way of being her is recognized only by haters.
Dr. Root is making an observation about high school and college kids from the viewpoint of the parents and their child in this "age of authenticity."
I am interested in what your viewpoint is.
