John Coleman, Apocatastasis Institute,
My colleague John Coleman, founder of Apocatastasis: Institute for the Humanities, sent me this troubling but real article on truth of the growing problem of anxiety, fear and mistrust in the entire fabric of higher education these days. Gen Z, the digital-kids, are particularly plagued with (from an extract):
"We are often right to be careful, cautious, watchful, wary, chary or circumspect. A certain level of cynicism can be healthy. Each of us has been browbeaten, manipulated, stage-managed, swayed and taken advantage of, and no one likes being conned, deceived, duped, hoodwinked, sweet-talked or taken in.
But distrust can also be toxic, fueling anxiety and suspicion. it is all too easy for a healthy skepticism to lapse into paranoia. Indeed, Wilkinson-Ryan’s theme is that “the ‘healthy’ skepticism we inevitably acquire as a result of experiencing fraud and living amongst bad actors may not be healthy at all and that our fear of being a fool causes us to be less generous, less kind and less compassionate than we truly want to be.” As a result, we’re less likely to give our students the benefit of the doubt."
[for the full article, go to: https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/2023/06/02/trust-gap-higher-education
[apocatastasis - is a theological term for restoration of perfection once again]
