Christopher, Robin & Sandra, et al, I’d appreciate your historical and professional perspectives: Bessel van der Kolk, MD wrote a book about healing from trauma, called The Body Keeps The Score. 2014. Page 1: “One does not have to be a combat soldier, or visit a refugee camp in Syria or the Congo to encounter trauma. Trauma happens to us…
I’d appreciate your historical and professional perspectives:
Bessel van der Kolk, MD wrote a book about healing from trauma, called The Body Keeps The Score. 2014.
Page 1:
“One does not have to be a combat soldier, or visit a refugee camp in Syria or the Congo to encounter trauma. Trauma happens to us, our friends, our families, and our neighbors. Research by the CDC & Prevention has shown that one in five Americans was sexually molested as a child, one in four was beaten by a parent to the point of a mark being left on their body; and one in three couples engages in physical violence. A quarter of us grow up with alcoholic relatives, and one out of eight witnessed their mother being beaten or hit.”
I’m sure the numbers are low.
I’m guessing that if one is lucky enough (with those odds) to make it to college, or be employed at one, that in order to expand one’s intellectual curiosity of contributing to society at large (economically notwithstanding) why would one not want to utilize a portion of their time there continuing to put trauma behind them through some courses and sharing?
Sure the simple answer is “ do it in therapy”, not at college/work.
But aren’t most of them there to move forward in life?
Can that be accomplished by ignoring the past?
Or does the pendulum have to eventually shift towards “feminism” in order to, as Christopher states, meet in the middle?
After umpteen centuries of overly masculated patriarchy, how does “balance” occur?
Are the institutions of higher learning grounds to achieve that ultimate goal, or are colleges “hands off” to that curriculum?
I wish I had time to write further, but I truly believe that the CDC and other public health organizations and universities have plighted their troth with groups promoting poorly constructed and un-reproduceable soft science studies. I no sooner believe that one in four children are "beaten" by a parent or that one in three couples engage in violence than I do that the Earth is shaped like a disk. Hyperbole, and specifically hyperbole for a political point is most definitely the order of the day in the soft sciences. And rational actors like John Ioannidis have long been debunking their radically unscientific studies. Remember the study that supposedly showed that gay and lesbian couple supposedly produce happies/more successful/mentally stable children? Of course the two studies coming to those findings were carried out by...a gay prof and a lesbian one and the participants were told what the study was about. The background of it is readily available on the internet for those interested in digging. The modern world seems to need a boogeyman to encapsulate all of its ills; it is simply not enough that life is difficult in some measure to all of humanity, that we are made lazy by our wealth, that we inhabit our vices too readily and that we don't easily remediate mental and emotional privation. I don't WANT CNN telling me that the CDC says I'm probably ADHD, that it's natural and that I don't have control over it...poor me! The CDC also went through an entire pandemic criminally cheerleading an experimental "vaccine" and not once suggested that the easiest way to not die of Covid was to avoid foods causing obesity, hypertension, heart disease and diabetes. Nor did it say to exercise because apparently that would entail fat shaming. No, I have no belief whatsoever in the platforms the CDC and our other public health agencies now inhabit. They are as scientifically rigorous as Brown's Gas theory.
So, quickly, yes I believe every adult carries with him/her a past which has emotional and mental trauma within it; it is real and it is mostly more subtle than the simplistic idea that everyone has the equivalent of an alcoholic parent or has been beaten as a child, even though those things have ever existed. And it seems obvious to me that most of us don't really unpack our traumas and it actively hinders us in our daily lives in unseeing ways. If affects our significant others, our children, our friends, etc. But we avoid the long and arduous journey to enlightenment because that takes a huge amount of time and effort. And it's painful.
I hope my answer is at all useful. I know it stopped short of your query. I just want to get to foundational ideas before agreeing to assumptions that I think are flawed. I'm a fan of Occam.
Thank you for your thoughtful post. You raise some excellent questions, and I can't do them justice here. Generally, I am in favor of not including a lot of personal growth programming in academic classes. I have been focusing recently on what is going on in K-12 curricula in my state. At those levels, the Social Emotional Learning concept is being totally abused by critical social justice radicals. The CASEL package that is being imported into most schools reads like a blend of CSJ indoctrination and trauma therapy. It is not appropriate for teachers who aren't licensed in counseling, psychology, or any mental health profession to become so involved in students' mental health issues. In addition, the teachers are being encouraged to engage in a lot of mental health interventions without parents' knowledge or permission, and that is also completely inappropriate.
I have in the past been in favor of teaching K-12 students simple communication strategies for resolving conflicts without violence, but at this point I would not trust that this kind of learning could be offered without destructive indoctrination included.
I am in favor of having a mental health professional available to teachers and students for consultation when significant mental health issues are suspected. With regard to universities, I am also in favor of well-staffed university counseling centers. I worked in a university counseling center for six years. This was a major department at the university, with about 45 psychologists and half a dozen vocational counselors able to provide full scale vocational counseling for students who were uncertain what to chose for a major. We saw thousands of students yearly, many of whom had significant mental illnesses, including major depressions and psychoses as well as unwanted pregnancies, academic struggles and simple homesickness their first year. Counseling centers of this quality no longer exist, having been cut for economic reasons.
I would support reversing that trend, and restoring at least in part some of the services that have been cut. Unfortunately, my profession and all of the other mental health professions have been captured by the critical social justice radicals, and I am not confident that students would receive competent, ethically delivered assistance on campus. That would be a lot more possible in a system like Gov. DeSantis appears to be aiming for in Florida. In that situation, mental health professionals could be held to the ethical standards that the competent members of our field still honor and abide by. In that case, yes, I would support inclusion of a range of counseling services, including psychoeducation groups and evaluation and/or treatment of students with mental health issues.
Capture by pharma and the industrial medical complex adds another layer of challenge in my opinion, where there’s a pill/drug for every ailment/issue. Most only numb or block one’s ability to actually address the source(s).
Your comments of what once was, and now is no longer available to students/staff is only kicking the can down the road. Makes one wonder what is the end goal? Slow death of a once functioning educational system?
It looks to me like our universities are going down at a rapid rate, but professional academics report that they have been going down for decades. I try to look at this positively, like maybe the universities have outlived their usefulness and need to be re-invented. They often do not equip students for employment. The tuition fees have outpaced inflation while the efficiency of education decreases.
But when I try to think that way I also recall that Harvard has lasted nearly 400 years. As is the case with our Constitution, that means something. Our younger generations, think they can tear down everything and life will be so much better. Like many of my generation, they have the arrogance to think that they will be able to replace our flawed but resilient systems with utopia. Unfortunately, this time few people seem to have the resolve to stop them, and their campaign of destruction has been remarkably successful so far.
Christopher, Robin & Sandra, et al,
I’d appreciate your historical and professional perspectives:
Bessel van der Kolk, MD wrote a book about healing from trauma, called The Body Keeps The Score. 2014.
Page 1:
“One does not have to be a combat soldier, or visit a refugee camp in Syria or the Congo to encounter trauma. Trauma happens to us, our friends, our families, and our neighbors. Research by the CDC & Prevention has shown that one in five Americans was sexually molested as a child, one in four was beaten by a parent to the point of a mark being left on their body; and one in three couples engages in physical violence. A quarter of us grow up with alcoholic relatives, and one out of eight witnessed their mother being beaten or hit.”
I’m sure the numbers are low.
I’m guessing that if one is lucky enough (with those odds) to make it to college, or be employed at one, that in order to expand one’s intellectual curiosity of contributing to society at large (economically notwithstanding) why would one not want to utilize a portion of their time there continuing to put trauma behind them through some courses and sharing?
Sure the simple answer is “ do it in therapy”, not at college/work.
But aren’t most of them there to move forward in life?
Can that be accomplished by ignoring the past?
Or does the pendulum have to eventually shift towards “feminism” in order to, as Christopher states, meet in the middle?
After umpteen centuries of overly masculated patriarchy, how does “balance” occur?
Are the institutions of higher learning grounds to achieve that ultimate goal, or are colleges “hands off” to that curriculum?
I’m curious and hope you’ll offer perspectives.
Thank you.
I wish I had time to write further, but I truly believe that the CDC and other public health organizations and universities have plighted their troth with groups promoting poorly constructed and un-reproduceable soft science studies. I no sooner believe that one in four children are "beaten" by a parent or that one in three couples engage in violence than I do that the Earth is shaped like a disk. Hyperbole, and specifically hyperbole for a political point is most definitely the order of the day in the soft sciences. And rational actors like John Ioannidis have long been debunking their radically unscientific studies. Remember the study that supposedly showed that gay and lesbian couple supposedly produce happies/more successful/mentally stable children? Of course the two studies coming to those findings were carried out by...a gay prof and a lesbian one and the participants were told what the study was about. The background of it is readily available on the internet for those interested in digging. The modern world seems to need a boogeyman to encapsulate all of its ills; it is simply not enough that life is difficult in some measure to all of humanity, that we are made lazy by our wealth, that we inhabit our vices too readily and that we don't easily remediate mental and emotional privation. I don't WANT CNN telling me that the CDC says I'm probably ADHD, that it's natural and that I don't have control over it...poor me! The CDC also went through an entire pandemic criminally cheerleading an experimental "vaccine" and not once suggested that the easiest way to not die of Covid was to avoid foods causing obesity, hypertension, heart disease and diabetes. Nor did it say to exercise because apparently that would entail fat shaming. No, I have no belief whatsoever in the platforms the CDC and our other public health agencies now inhabit. They are as scientifically rigorous as Brown's Gas theory.
So, quickly, yes I believe every adult carries with him/her a past which has emotional and mental trauma within it; it is real and it is mostly more subtle than the simplistic idea that everyone has the equivalent of an alcoholic parent or has been beaten as a child, even though those things have ever existed. And it seems obvious to me that most of us don't really unpack our traumas and it actively hinders us in our daily lives in unseeing ways. If affects our significant others, our children, our friends, etc. But we avoid the long and arduous journey to enlightenment because that takes a huge amount of time and effort. And it's painful.
I hope my answer is at all useful. I know it stopped short of your query. I just want to get to foundational ideas before agreeing to assumptions that I think are flawed. I'm a fan of Occam.
Thank you for your thoughtful post. You raise some excellent questions, and I can't do them justice here. Generally, I am in favor of not including a lot of personal growth programming in academic classes. I have been focusing recently on what is going on in K-12 curricula in my state. At those levels, the Social Emotional Learning concept is being totally abused by critical social justice radicals. The CASEL package that is being imported into most schools reads like a blend of CSJ indoctrination and trauma therapy. It is not appropriate for teachers who aren't licensed in counseling, psychology, or any mental health profession to become so involved in students' mental health issues. In addition, the teachers are being encouraged to engage in a lot of mental health interventions without parents' knowledge or permission, and that is also completely inappropriate.
I have in the past been in favor of teaching K-12 students simple communication strategies for resolving conflicts without violence, but at this point I would not trust that this kind of learning could be offered without destructive indoctrination included.
I am in favor of having a mental health professional available to teachers and students for consultation when significant mental health issues are suspected. With regard to universities, I am also in favor of well-staffed university counseling centers. I worked in a university counseling center for six years. This was a major department at the university, with about 45 psychologists and half a dozen vocational counselors able to provide full scale vocational counseling for students who were uncertain what to chose for a major. We saw thousands of students yearly, many of whom had significant mental illnesses, including major depressions and psychoses as well as unwanted pregnancies, academic struggles and simple homesickness their first year. Counseling centers of this quality no longer exist, having been cut for economic reasons.
I would support reversing that trend, and restoring at least in part some of the services that have been cut. Unfortunately, my profession and all of the other mental health professions have been captured by the critical social justice radicals, and I am not confident that students would receive competent, ethically delivered assistance on campus. That would be a lot more possible in a system like Gov. DeSantis appears to be aiming for in Florida. In that situation, mental health professionals could be held to the ethical standards that the competent members of our field still honor and abide by. In that case, yes, I would support inclusion of a range of counseling services, including psychoeducation groups and evaluation and/or treatment of students with mental health issues.
Capture by pharma and the industrial medical complex adds another layer of challenge in my opinion, where there’s a pill/drug for every ailment/issue. Most only numb or block one’s ability to actually address the source(s).
Your comments of what once was, and now is no longer available to students/staff is only kicking the can down the road. Makes one wonder what is the end goal? Slow death of a once functioning educational system?
Thx as well for your thoughts and response.
It looks to me like our universities are going down at a rapid rate, but professional academics report that they have been going down for decades. I try to look at this positively, like maybe the universities have outlived their usefulness and need to be re-invented. They often do not equip students for employment. The tuition fees have outpaced inflation while the efficiency of education decreases.
But when I try to think that way I also recall that Harvard has lasted nearly 400 years. As is the case with our Constitution, that means something. Our younger generations, think they can tear down everything and life will be so much better. Like many of my generation, they have the arrogance to think that they will be able to replace our flawed but resilient systems with utopia. Unfortunately, this time few people seem to have the resolve to stop them, and their campaign of destruction has been remarkably successful so far.