Curious: How does one learn the humanities, i.e. arts, languages, literature, music, "from life experience"? And how does being poor makes you automatically better at it? Psychology isn't part of the humanities; it's classified as a social science.

But historically, at least in Europe, to be considered an educated person required a person to be well read, speak several foreign languages, play instruments. Here, I feel education sadly is viewed only as a means to a (monetary) end and not as a value in itself.

That is true. However, not being *allowed* to try and to find out can be a life-long source of resentment and seriously damage the relationship. I struggled into my 40s with my mother talking me out of (I can't say forbidding, but she made it very clear that she was against, and since she was a prof at the conservatory, that was as good as not allowing me) pursuing my dream of being an opera singer. Yes, I may not have made it, and yes, it'snot family friendly- but what rankled is that I never got the chance to find out. I was in my mid-forties when I could finally let go. And while "you can do music as a hobby" may be true to a certain degree, the location that I ended up didn't allow me to pursue the hobby at the level I would have wanted, because there are no opportunities.

I have artwork, some framed, some not, on my walls. No small photographs. I have several posters size prints of my travel photos in the bedroom and on the basement stairs. I won't have stuff on tabletops. Our tables are in use; I don't have decorative side tables that attract clutter.

Yes, I have let my 7th grader stay home alone. Unless the kid has developmental challenges, I see no reason not to. Fwiw, back home, kids are expected to navigate public transit in 5th grade.

Oh absolutely. I see wonderful motivated young people every day.

We now have a small outdoor school here in our town!

I believe a disconnect to nature and the outdoors fuels the current crisis. Kids spend their day in front of screens instead of playing in the mud, wading a creek, climbing trees, and becoming intimately familiar with their natural environment. When I was a kid, pediatricians recommended 2-3 hours of outdoor play each day. As an adult, I feel acutely how harmful the typical Western lifestyle is to mental health. I can take steps to adjust my life, and increasing physical exertion outdoors, way more than we think we should have, has helped me immensely. Kids don't have much agency. And when parents prioritize structured activities and constant supervision, kids don't get these experiences which I believe are crucial for healthy development. We haven't evolved over thousands of years as sedentary indoor creatures.

This. Here is where I see a negative effect of the (very valid and important) focus on mental health, self-care, etc. When simply disagreeing causes young people to feel "unsafe", when criticism "traumatizes", when college students feel threatened in their emotional balance because they are exposed to different viewpoints, the pendulum has swung too far. As for the cause, the constant online presence is very likely a strong contributor. Teens lounging in echo chambers and parroting language they find appealing. And yes, it's ironic, as pp pointed out, that young people never before had such easy access to information and education, and as many options for life as now.

I am not sure that this is the root of the issue. I grew up in a country where you definitely could not trust the police, where you knew the leadership was evil, where you knew that some teachers would turn you in to the secret service if you said the wrong things, where you knew that any protest would be quelled by soviet tanks, where you did not feel a shred of hope that the totalitarian system would ever crumble (when it did, it was a huge surprise to everybody; we had all expected to spend our entire lives without escape). It was an actually hopeless situation - yet it did not cause the issues we are discussing here. Plenty of other issues, but none of this learned helplessness and refusal to figure things out, (Actually, people were pretty good at figuring things out because you had to to navigate a very complicated life.)

My childhood in Germany involved lots of required reading about the war and the holocaust, some including graphic accounts of torture, class trip to a concentration camp in 8th grade, teachings how to build a fallout shelter in the apartment, school-mandated pre-military retreats and camps, being graded on donning gas mask and protective suit in under 2 minutes ...

@Faith-manor yes, the kids face a lot of global issues. However, is it really that much different from previous generations? They each had trauma. WWI, WWII, cold war, nuclear threat.... There is more going on. Something that makes today's student generation incredibly fragile and without resilience. If a quiz over the homework brings them to tears and "traumatizes" them, something is very very wrong.

@Clemsondana We are observing something similar in our college classes. My attendance is the lowest it has been in 20 years, but even more concerning is what many instructors across disciplines report: students who attend but refuse to participate. They won't do the activities, won't turn in the completed work, play on their phones through the entire class. This is a four-year university. I regularly have students in the homework help sessions who say they don't understand how to do the problems. I ask "were you in class today?" "I'm in the online section." " ok. Did you watch today's lecture?" "No." Which means they expect me to spoonfeed them the homework solution because they couldn't be bothered to watch the lecture which contains several examples. It's aggravating.

What would I do? Ignore it. What else? The woman can post on her Fb page whatever she wants. She didn't attack or slander your DD; she talked about her own son.

That is unfortunate. We offer all our courses in person. Only summer courses are predominantly online because students won't be on campus.

And of course they can still cheat easily with a set of button-sized camera and rice-hrain-sized ear piece, available online if you google cheating tech. It's impossible to prevent cheating.

You can go to testing centers of community colleges, but staffing those is expensive, and they are already stretched to the max Oral exams will never be popular in this country because it's such a litigious society and folks would just sue. Back home, the important tests are oral, but I wouldn't want to touch this in the US.

Another scary one: coming out of the Grand Canyon from a backpacking trip, about an hour below the rim, we meet a lady who carries nothing but a cell phone and sunglasses. She asks how much further it is to the river. Lady, it's another nine miles and 3000 vertical feet and you'll have to come back up and you have no water and it's already past noon. She was very determined and hard to dissuade from her plans.

I don't think they think at all. On a canyoneering trip, we came across four women sitting above a drop-off with a waterfall that required rapelling down. They had a rope, but no idea what to do with it. We spent over an hour helping them down, me belaying from top, DH standing in the pool and receiving them and guiding them to dry land. It was quite remote and we were possibly the only two parties there that day.

FERPA release so you can get info about grades and they can talk to you if there are any problems.

Dark floor makes sense because any light color would get dirty so fast.

I also want to comment on "money-making on housing". I grew up in a country where property owners were not permitted to make money and rents were set by the government. The consequence of that was that buildings could not be maintained (because the low rent did not cover that cost) and fell in horrible disrepair, and there was no incentive for any new construction. If owners cannot make money of the houses, then they won't build any and it won't help the housing crisis. It's complicated.

We should not generalize, since the situation is so dependent on location. In my area we have a dire need of short-term furnished housing for traveling nurses, business travelers, visiting scholars, etc. It is practically impossible to find a place to house a visitor for a couple of months that is not a hotel. The person who saw this need, invested their savings (from regular jobs, btw) and built a block of furnished short-term housing as their retirement investment is to be commended, not condemned.

I would give them a week. It's a busy time in the semester. What time frame did you tell them? I.e. is that a "would you in principle be willing" type question or a "dealine is in four weeks" one? Can you approach them in person? Ideally, these would be professors with whom you are in regular contact.

@Miss Tick To be fair, some commitments are unavoidably during evenings and weekends. Anything with student organizations or major outreach events. It has been my experience, however, that the people involved in these activities usually understand and do it gladly. I mean, sure, I can think of a better way to spend my Saturday than at advising incoming first-year students, but I understand why it needs to happen on weekends, and I consider it a very *meaningful* task. That seems to be key - the people who are doing activities they consider meaningful don't mind giving their evenings or weekends. It's all the *nonsense* that's imposed by administration that makes it difficult. Don't quote either: commiserations from another department chair spouse, lol.