A protest against the exploitation and psychological abuse of graduate students in institutions of higher learning

I am a voice of dissent now.





October 4, 2014 was a wake-up call for me.   I hadn't thought time (20 years) could pass so fast.  If I had been bold and decisive, I would have written something like this and related blog posts much earlier to alert others to a problem whose extent is largely unknown, at least to me.


A protest against psychological abuse of graduate students by university professors, whose power seems unchecked at the University of Kansas, and in all likelihood, many, many other institutions of higher learning.  This lopsided balance of power between professor and grad student cost me a career.

I lost my innocence in graduate school.
But not my ideals, those I keep with me alive.


What I can say freely today that Marsha Weidner Haufler (professor of art history at the University of Kansas) was unequivocally the very worst teacher of my entire life.

She did everything but crush my desire to learn. Hers was an understanding that respect is based on fear, mine was that respect is based on trust.

And to learn is to think with freedom and dignity and to dare to make a leap into the unknown with courage in order to explore and touch what is deepest within us.

What Ms. Haufler represents for me is an aberration of the learning process (learning prompted by metaphorical electric shocks of varying voltages)*.

Children when yelled at or screamed at by other students will only be able to tolerate so much of this before they do the same in return, either verbally (yelling, etc.) or physically (hitting, etc.).

Adults are no different:  to force them to submit in silence to savage tongue lashings is doubly cruel: the verbalized assault on the emotions is accompanied by repression of any affect.

This amounts, depending on the frequency, to a kind of psychological torture, one not recognized as such, in general, in the United States.



* Denying people the belief that "I [they] am a human being and you [someone] are mistreating me" is what totalitarianism is about.   On another level, torture is not just about inflicting physical pain.

It is also the fear of the elemental ability and the right to feel fear and pain.  With certain adults and in certain social-political systems, even the whimpering is silenced, and the silence is then punished.

One is punished for being punished,for feeling fear and pain.   ("You are hurting me, but I must hide the pain, otherwise you will beat me even harder").

This loss of being able to simply fear is what is what crushes the human spirit, what leaves it broken, empty, and apathetic.

What kind of an educational system is this?  What is the philosophy of education ("meta-education) being received (and inculcated)?