Community Colleges should strive towards cultivating a paideia that reflects the world, not a sanitized version.

There is a community college in Texas that I have had the opportunity to observe and what I found is concerning.

Every bulletin board, every wall and corner is policed by the campus. There is no public message board. The only way for a student to express their correspondence is by submitting their flyer to inspection by the administration and then posted for a short amount of time in a dimly lit and nearly unused hallway. If you post anything with out the permission of the administration you can get expelled from campus. When I contrasted my observations with a nearby University, it was astounding. Students had the opportunity to develop a community and influence the culture of their school. But at this community college, when I met with their provost, I was told the reason they did not have a public message board was because they it made it difficult to control the "brand" that was the community college.

Students, young adults, do not need a sanitized version of life. No fish lives in clean water. It's embarrassing that some colleges act more like bleach in their community than fertilizer.

Submitted May 09, 2022 at 10:20PM by 9Wahle https://ift.tt/vU4DxoY