There is a fascinating and chilling survey on the state of free speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The newly released Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) survey shows a growing fear among faculty over their ability to speak freely in classes or other forums on campus. Conversely, a majority of students believe that it is acceptable to shout down or block speakers who hold opposing views. The survey captures the downstream impact of students who have been taught in their primary, middle, and high school educations that speech is harmful and preventing free speech is a noble and necessary action.
A recently discussed poll showed roughly 60 percent of students say that they fear speaking openly in class. That percentage is consistent with other polls taken across the country. The MIT polling shows that many faculty feel the same way and that the perceived intolerance on campus has increased dramatically in the last few years.
MIT is a microcosm of these concerns and underlying confusion over free speech and academic freedom protections. We have been following the struggle at the university after the outrageous decision to cancel a lecture by University of Chicago geophysicist Dorian Abbot in 2021. It was a disgraceful decision that tarnished the reputation of MIT as an institution of higher learning. Yet, no one was punished or reprimanded for the action.
MIT recently seemed to redeem itself to some degree with a powerful statement in support of free speech. However, many faculty and students are clearly not convinced.
The survey found that roughly 25 percent of faculty reported they are “very” or “extremely” likely to self-censor. Forty percent of faculty are “more” or “much more” likely to self-censor on campus now than in 2020. It further found that 32 percent of students and 41 percent of faculty “agree that the administration’s stance on free speech is not clear.”
There should never be any such widespread doubt on the position of free speech on a campus. It should be clear and unambiguous. However, almost half of the faculty are unsure. The reason is obvious after the Abbot disaster. The university leadership is clearly not viewed as a reliable ally in free speech fights. It is one thing to mouth free speech values. It is entirely a different thing to stand by a faculty member’s free speech and academic freedom rights when a flash mob forms around a cancel campaign.
Only 14 percent of MIT faculty believe that it is “extremely likely” or “very likely” that the university would stand by a faculty member in a controversy over controversial speech. That is an indictment of the entire university administration and the university board. What is notable with this data is that only a small percentage (if any) of faculty self-identify as Republican or conservative. Yet, a significant percentage still fear speaking openly in their own classes or on campuses.
Yet, what is most striking is the attitude of the students who have been taught for years that free speech is harmful. Seventy-seven percent of students believe that it is acceptable to shout down speakers with opposing views to prevent others from hearing them. Another 52% believe it is acceptable to physically block access to such events or speakers. That is the result of the new orthodoxy taught in our school system where free speech is viewed as harmful.
Cancel campaigns are now a common pattern in schools ranging from Yale to Northwestern to Georgetown. Blocking others from speaking is not the exercise of free speech. It is the very antithesis of free speech. Nevertheless, faculty have supported such claims. CUNY Law Dean Mary Lu Bilek showed how far this trend has gone. When conservative law professor Josh Blackman was stopped from speaking about “the importance of free speech,” Bilek insisted that disrupting the speech on free speech was free speech. (Bilek later cancelled herself and resigned).
This dangerous trend in academia is discussed in my law review article, Jonathan Turley, “Harm and Hegemony: The Decline of Free Speech in the United States”, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
We have seen how this can turn into a type of “heckler’s veto” where speeches are cancelled in advance or terminated suddenly due to the disruption of protesters. The issue is not engaging in protests against such speakers, but to enter events for the purpose of preventing others from hearing such speakers. Universities create forums for the discussion of a diversity of opinions. Entering a classroom or event to prevent others from speaking is barring free speech. I would feel the same way about preventing such people from protesting outside such events. However, the concern is not with outdoor events where all groups can be as loud and cantankerous as their voices will bear. Both sides have free speech rights to express. The issue on campus is the entrance into halls, or classrooms to prevent others from hearing speakers or opposing viewpoints by disputing events.
This has been an issue of contention with some academics who believe that free speech includes the right to silence others. Berkeley has been the focus of much concern over the use of a heckler’s veto on our campuses as violent protesters have succeeded in silencing speakers, even including a few speakers like an ACLU official. Both students and some faculty have maintained the position that they have a right to silence those with whom they disagree and even student newspapers have declared opposing speech to be outside of the protections of free speech. At another University of California campus, professors actually rallied around a professor who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display. In the meantime, academics and deans have said that there is no free speech protection for offensive or “disingenuous” speech.
The two sides of the FIRE survey on faculty and student views are clearly and dangerously related. Faculty are engaging in greater self-censorship as students become more emboldened in seeking to silence those with opposing views. At the same time, as students assert the right to shutdown events and speakers, the Administration is seen as, at most, a pedestrian or, at worst, an enabler of the cancel culture.
The MIT survey shows that we are raising the most speech-intolerant generation in our history with students taught for years that speech is harmful and must be controlled, censored, or confined. It is not enough to protest, it is a license to silence speakers and to prevent access to events or lectures. It is the face of the new American orthodoxy that has taken hold of our institutions of high education.
You people miss the point…everyone should have a yonder pouch. No one should speak unless the admin calls on them! Etc etc what do you want! I’m approved speech getting out there? How unamerican! Why not just yonder pouch college kids?
So, I will repeat this again. A kid graduates from high school, gets accepted to a four year university. As soon as this 18 year old kid gets on campus he can tell the faculty to go screw. What the hell is going on here. There are no responsible adults here, certainly non with any intestinal fortitude. If a kids family can come up with $60,000.00 to$80,000.00 per year, this has to be what matters. Money talks and responsibile faculty members can walk.
Why do dependents, parasites and unions consistently engage in violence?
They are all afraid of the facts and the truth.
They cannot compete with success and merit.
They understand their own inadequacy, they know that they covet and steal the success of other people.
Violence is their only tool, their only weapon.
Violence is all they’ve got.
If the Supreme Court and the judicial and executive branches supported the Constitution, merit would out.
In America we discuss feelings and the woke mafia demands you accept their views or face cancellation. This threat ends up censoring speech on campuses as much as actual censorship… meanwhile 7th graders in China are learning quantum physics… this is not going to end well.
“It’s the [merit], stupid!”
– James Carville
_____________
“It’s [merit] that matters.”
– Randy Newman
Basically, only homogeneous societies survive for any length of time, until they find they have no balls, literally and figuratively.
It appears that the faculty at MIT may have the brains but they definitely don’t have the balls. I think if I had to choose one over the other I choose the balls, who in the hell needs brains in this world.
@Larry
Someone told me when I was a young person that I needed two things in life: balls and spine. Some of the best advice I ever got. Both of those things are MIA in 21st century America.
James & Larry Folds–
Democrats: the party of undescended testicles.
Lo, they are testicularly-challenged.
I was wondering how to comment without being derogatory, but you most certainly sumed it up.LOL
“we are raising the most speech-intolerant generation in our history”
What bunk.
Emmett Till was murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman, and his murderers were absolved by an all-white jury.
Anonymous – Flirting or wolf-whistling is hardly polticial speech, which is what JT was talking about. If sexual innuendo is communicated to a woman, she can easily claim sexual harassment. Have you forgotten how Anita Hill claimed that she was devastated when Clarence Thomas supposedly referred to Long Dong Silver? Indeed, it has been proposed in the UK that wolf-whistling could be criminal under proposed anti-sexual harassment laws. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11520431/Wolf-whistling-harassment-street-crime.html Words directed to another person, with the intent to get that person to give you something, is not political speech. The only issue here is whether public issues of the day can be openly and fairly discussed in a forum whose raison d’etre is free inquiry.
No, actually, the issue here is whether Turley’s claim that “we are raising the most speech-intolerant generation in our history” is true or unproductive hyperbole.
You think Black Americans were able to freely engage in political speech prior to the Civil Rights movement?
You think women, who were long considered their husband’s property, were able to freely engage in political speech for much of US history?
You think that Japanese Americans, who were interned during WWII, were able to freely engage in political speech at the time?
…
“Women who … husband’s property … freely engage….” You serious? In other words every woman was forced to marry, so that there would be no free women? How stu__d a comment.
Yes, I’m quite serious. Read up on coverture: https://www.britannica.com/topic/coverture
For much of U.S. history, it was also legal for men to rape their wives. Women only got the right to vote just over 100 years ago.
“In other words every woman was forced to marry”
Those are your stupid words, not mine.
Dummies rely on historical relativism to make their arguments.
Anonymous @ 4:03 pm. Yours is quite a twisted view of American history.
BLACKS. Were blacks able to freely engage in political speech before 1960? Yes, of course. Frederick Douglas was one of the most prominent public speakers in America in the middle of the 19th centruy. He freely criticized Lincoln and everybody else. W E B Du Bois was another well known black thinker, speaker and activist. Although political activity of blacks may have been restricted in the Old South, that was not true in the north. A black man, Charles Diggs Sr. was elected to the State House in Michigan in the 1930s and his son was elected to Congress in 1954. If you can identify one instance where a black politician or scholar was prevented from speaking at a college in the North, please provide the details.
WOMEN. Please. Women have never been considered property of their husbands in American or even earlier English law. It is true that married women surrendered legal control of their personal property to their husbands in most instances, but that was never true as to the more important real property. http://ap. gilderlehrman. org/essay/legal- status-women-1776%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%80%9C1830. In any event, the legal disablility of women was wiped out during the 19th century by the Married Women’s Property Acts. But we are talking about speech, aren’t we? Women writers and activists acted freely even before women acquired the vote. Harriet Beecher Stowe was credited by Lincoln for starting the civil war. Carrie Nation chopped up saloons, Margaret Sanger campaigned for birth control and eugenics. Women have always forcefully expressed their opinions. Haven’t you noticed?
JAPANESE-AMERICANS. Well, obviously the Nisei had trouble speaking when they were imprisoned by your favorite President, Franklin D. Roosevelt. But nothing prevented them from participating in the political process before or after the Roosevelt internment. Of course, there was strong prejudice against the Nisei on the west coast, and there do not appear to be many Nisei who actually chose to participate in politics. But neither is there any evidence that any Nisei were shouted down when the attempted to speak at a college or elsewhere.
The postulate of Prof. Turley is that the current level of intolerance of, and more, actual suppresion of, speech on college campuses is unprecedented. Insofar as your argument is even relevant, it does not challege that postulate.
There are so many comments that is almost impossible to respond… yet I will!
Do not look back at ‘what was’ and look forward to the what can be and we should not discount the tremendous advances made to make our society more tolerant and equal in opportunity for all. While our society isn’t perfect and we should keep striving to do better, without growth, we might as well turn our brains over to the robots! I will NEVER understand why any rational person would give up the ability to be speak freely or so easily abdicate their own thoughts to that of the mob. I applaud Jonathan Turley for having the courage to defend freedom of speech and to keep us informed on issues with facts to stand behind the words. Sadly, those who only tolerate their own thoughts are nothing more than bullies and intellectually inarticulate. Let’s demand facts to defend positions instead of allowing conversations to be lead by tantrums and expletives. If our ideas and thoughts can’t withstand intellectual scrutiny that perhaps they are not worth listening to.
Here is something to think about:
A short course in human relations (author unknown)
:
The six most important words: ” I admit I made a mistake”
The five most important words: “You did a good job”
The four most important words: “What is your opinion?”
The three most important words: “If you please.”
The two most important words: ” Thank you”
The one most important word: “We”
The least important word: “I”
“Were blacks able to freely engage in political speech before 1960? Yes, of course.”
I’m gobsmacked. They were literally enslaved for much of that history, and you think they were free to say what they wanted?!?!?!
It’s you who has “quite a twisted view of American history.” You mention individuals, when Turley’s claim and my response was about the entire generation, and then you conveniently ignore the parts of that individual’s history that’s inconvenient. Douglass was enslaved in the earlier part of his life. He could not speak freely for a significant part of his life. Other Blacks were lynched for their speech. Gay people were beaten up if they even kissed in public. Women were raped as punishment. …
If you were to ask each generation in US history whether they felt that they could speak freely in public, what do you think the percentages would be, compared to the percentages at MIT?
It was your type of person that did the beating and killing. You are following the same path as you try to destroy the Constitution. You are fighting with people who wish to preserve the Constitution and its amendments, with the rights provided to all. Your fellow travelers of today believe that color and race are more important than character.
Soy,.. Very doy.
The discussion isn’t about Emmet Till, quit trying to change it and try to stay focused on the topic.
You’re conflicted because diversity is dictatorship and dictatorship is unnatural, causing it to be counterintuitive and unnatural to forcibly impose, or even entertain cognition of, diversity.
Freedom is natural; go with that.
It’s shut up being bellowed by functional illiterates.
What’s the future hold for these closed-minded ninny’s accept shock when like-minded fools are not gathered around for support. When they have to stand alone and lack the capability to cancel opposing thoughts. Will they just melt away?
Quoting Eric Bentley from New Republic 1952: “Ours is the age of substitutes: instead of language, we have jargon; instead of principles, slogans; and, instead of genuine ideas, Bright Ideas.”
“MIT Cancels Lecture By UChicago Professor Who Criticized Diversity Programs”
– Professor Turley
______________
“THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM”
Merit must prevail.
Diversity is coerced dictatorship.
It is impossible to mix freedom and dictatorship.
Homogeneity was the design and intent of the Founders.
_____________________________________________
“The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”
– Alexander Hamilton
_________________
Immigration law required citizens to be “…free white person(s)….”
It is impossible to mix oil and water; that unattainable amalgamation requires emulsifiers.
The antithetical, forced mixture in America requires ever-increasing numbers of political emulsifiers.
The lunatics were never intended to takeover the asylum.
America was designed to be a severely restricted-vote republic.
The “manifest tenor” of the Constitution was intended to, and must, hold dominion.
__________________________________________________________________
“[We gave you] a [restricted-vote] republic, if you can keep it.”
– Ben Franklin
___________
You couldn’t.
People must adapt to the outcomes of freedom.
Freedom does not adapt to people.
Dictatorship does.
While surveys provide useful information about what is happening on college campuses, I would like to hear more about what JT is actually observing and hearing at GW based on his classes and his interactions with students, administrators, and other professors at the law school as well as the undergraduate and graduate levels.
The expression “Clowns running the circus” comes immediately to mind when I read that professors are worried about what students might object to for supposed political reasons.
I can easily envision a segment of the student population masking their displeasure with calculus being difficult or disinteresting (to them) by concocting a political “philosphy” that calculus is a form of “white supremacy,” and then after that intellectual Hail Mary surprisingly works, using the same sort of scheme to target any difficult subject matter or challenging professor.
Next thing you know, mental midgets like Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton have licenses to practice law when they SHOULD be working in turnpike toll booths making change for one-dollar bills handed to them for a fifty-cent toll.
This is the 21st century, man. People working to toll booths have been replaced by overhead cameras that read your lice
Last time I drove the NY Thruway, not that long ago, there were still toll-takers making change, except in the “Express Lanes.”
They have been replaced.
The expression ‘remedial education’ comes to mind. That’s what happened to me. .. after years of educational abuse and neglect.
*not sure about the faculty @ MIT .. . but the kids will be ok. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElaExCEv0vI
Faculty fear speaking. Students fear speaking. From whence does the Fear come?
Or, perhaps more crucially, why the lack of courage?
Jonathan: Your column is a continuation of your claim that “free speech” is in danger at universities around the country. At MIT you say “we are raising the most speech-intolerant generation in our history…”. Quite a sweeping and unsupported generalization. You also say the FIRE survey “captures the downstream impact of students who have been taught in their primary, middle, and high school educations that speech is harmful and preventing free speech is a noble and necessary action”. Another sweeping generalization without any evidence–certainly not in the FIRE survey that deals only with free speech issues at MIT. That survey doesn’t “capture” anything going on in grades K-12.
But facts are not important because conservatives, like you, are on a quest to try to show that kids in K-12 are being “groomed” to oppose conservative and libertarian ideology. So when they get to college they will be part of the “mob” that will shout down speakers whose views they don’t share. Apparently, it starts with 5 and 6 yr old’s whose minds can be molded by “wokeness” .CRT ideology and other similar types of political “indoctrination”. That’s how bizarre the argument has become which implies there is some guiding hand behind all of this. That teachers are part of some “5th column” trying to poison the minds of our kids. It’s a sad and cruel joke that anyone could believe this fantasy. But that’s what you are peddling.
As I have pointed out in previous comments you completely ignore the real threats to “free speech” in education these days. In Florida GOP Gov. DeSantis is on a crusade to wipe out “wokeness” in Florida schools. He bans books from school libraries and muzzles teachers. DeSantis just told the College Board he will oppose a new proposed AP high school course in African-American history. Why? The Governor says the course “leaves large, ambiguous gaps that can be filled with additional, ideological material, which we will not allow”. DeSantis thinks the course promotes a “political agenda”.
If MIT were to block a conservative speaker using the same argument and language as DeSantis I can imagine your response. You would be up in arms over MIT’s suppression of “free speech”. So why are you silent when DeSantis is doing exactly what you complain about in other parts of the country? I think I know the answer. When conservatives suppress free speech that is apparently acceptable. When conservatives are allegedly the victims then it’s a different matter and you are alarmed. I call that duplicity. When you write a column opposing DeSantis’ suppression of free speech I will treat your complaints about MIT seriously.
you say “we are raising the most speech-intolerant generation in our history…”. Quite a sweeping and unsupported generalization.
I challenge you to name a worse time for free speech on campus, since 1985.
It looks like you agree with Dennis’s criticism since JT said “in our history” and your challenge limits the time period to “since 1985”.
Dennis writes, “In Florida GOP Gov. DeSantis is on a crusade to wipe out ‘wokeness’ in Florida schools. He bans books from school libraries and muzzles teachers.”
Dennis, free speech is a right for and about ADULTS, only. What is taught to MINORS is a matter of parental concern and NOT a free speech right. Governor DeSantis is simply speaking on behalf of most parents (including many Democrat parents), and that is a documented fact.
Thank you, Diogenes, you saved me a lot of typing. Perfect and FACTUAL response.
It’s amazing he didn’t see the distinction, himself.
Diogenes, he didn’t see it because he didn’t WANT to see it. I think the term is willful ignorance.
I understand your larger point about parental concerns about what is taught, but your statement “free speech is a right for and about ADULTS, only” is contrary to first amendment jurisprudence that recognizes significant free speech rights of minors.
I’ll concede that students and teachers have some limited rights of free speech inside school (based on Tinker v. Des Moines), but those rights are not nearly as extensive as they are outside the school and must be weighed against the rights that parents have with regard to the education of their children.
I still hold that DeSantis is completely correct in his approach to the law.
Your claim was that “free speech is a right for and about ADULTS, only,” and that’s patently false.
ATS, Your play with words is a forced error and accompanies a context failure.
“free speech is a right for and about ADULTS, only” is false.
For example, SCOTUS ruled that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate” (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 1969). Also see Mahanoy Area School District v B.L., 2021.
Schools are not free speech zones. Speech can be abridged in many places. That you don’t recognize that demonstrates an inadequate education.
Any luck locating that HONEST man?
Keep up. The College Board agreed with the Florida DoE and changed the course
Dennis – I must suggest that you are the one out of touch with reality. The teacher unions, who are possibly the most loyal and powerful ally of the Democratic Party, push radical left-wing politics in our public schools. For example see: “The Teacher Unions Go Woke,” https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-teachers-unions-go-woke-11625697757 It is a powerful and corrupt alliance. The unions push a left-wing agenda, and give money and origanizational help to the Democrats, and in return they are given benefits like non-enforcement of anti-strike laws and closure of schools during the COVID panic.
“When you [JT] write a column opposing [Salmonella] I will treat your complaints about [E. coli] seriously.”
And that, today, is what passes for “logic?”
The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. We’ve been letting daycare Marxists do this, and it shows.
A little outrage is in order. When the brats disrupt, the school has them arrested for disorderly conduct. If they do it, again, permanent expulsion. If they launch protests and shut down the university, then expel the troublemakers for the semester with NO REFUND. Let them explain that to Mom and Dad. I double-damn guarantee it will stop.
And if the milquetoasts in administration won’t, the governor had better. Reagan knew how to handle these things when California wasn’t controlled by these Gucci communists.
Show some guts, Democrats, or this will become one more blue state / red state difference that will make up a lot of minds.
“The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. “
That is well understood by the left and why they wish to break up families permitting government to ‘rock the cradle’. Thanks for the wording.
Alan, Georges Clemenceau once quipped, “War Is Too Important to Be Left to the Generals.” It looks like education is too important to be left to the educators. Very sad state of affairs.
S. Meyer and Diogenes: Good, true, and exacting. Thanks
It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Those faculty members that are cautious about speech understand the thug rule under which they are employed. The “students” (and I use this term loosely as they are, in reality, ignorant, brainwashed tools of the prog/left) are unaware of the dangerous game that is being played with their lives but are blissfully or willfully ignoring just those things that will eventually ruin their lives. We have allowed a monster to be created in this nation and we were warned of this back in the middle of the 20th century by a most unwelcome messanger – Tail Gunner Joe.
Thank you, Dr. Turley for your continuing effort to monitor and instruct us on the subject of free speech and the First Amendment. I confess that I have given up on most of the “mainstream” liberal arts colleges. I believe that ultimately these “halls of knowledge” will have to reckon with free market forces. Where that will go can only be speculated. It would seem at least two such forces should act to correct or steer the ship back on course. First, college will become (is already becoming) widely recognized as less and less important for the development of youthful minds and young, informed citizen. (economic impact – less demand). Second, it presents an opportunity for other colleges – perhaps smaller, less well-recognized – to attract a broader audience of potential students and expand their student body (economic impact – market shift). I am rooting for the colleges which observe our First Amendment.
William L. Shirer was an American war correspondent and war historian in the heart of Nazi Germany and was given access to the inner circle in Berlin and allowed within the Nazi leadership. He later wrote thirteen books, most of them were about the inner workings of the Nazi party. In his book “The Nightmare Years” He wrote the following observations about the German people. “What surprised me at first was that most Germans, so far as I could see, did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of their splendid culture was being destroyed and replaced with mindless barbarism, and that their life and work were becoming regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation.”
“A newly arrived observer was forced, however reluctantly, as in my own case, to conclude that on the whole the people did not seem to feel that they were being cowed and held down by an unscrupulous tyranny. On the contrary, and much to my surprise, they appeared to support it with genuine enthusiasm.”
(The Nightmare Years; 1930-1940, page 147)
Thanks for this insight and referral to read the Nightmare Years. Yet I wonder if fear or even of the need for social acceptance is the root of behavior. It is hard to be the ‘odd man out’. Who will be our brave souls to take us out of this madness!
How long before MIT institutes Two Minutes of Hate into the daily routine?
Ironically, how many of the 77% that say they are for shouting down speakers are actually afraid to not say they support such actions? What if 30-40% of this cohort actually disagree but are afraid to say so? This is how the fascists take over. It is slow, it is sneaky and it is deadly. Frog in boiling water time!
The fascists are winning because they are giving us the parameters of discussion. Being conservative is evil and must be banned. They cannot argue in good faith because vast majorities disagree with their insane positions and therefore they must use Leninist methods to take over. Who supports an open border? who supports sanctuary cities today? Who supports praising rioters as in 2020? Who supports banning gas cars and stoves? Who supports men playing in women’s sports? Who supports men in women’s locker rooms, bathrooms and changing rooms? Almost NOBODY! And yet here we are.
They took over the schools which led to the takeover of the media which led to the takeover of big tech which led to the takeover of Hollywood which has led us to where we are today. SEVENTEEN PERCENT of the people, when asked or told about it, support the border policy of the Democrats, which means that EIGHTY-THREE PERCENT oppose it, and yet it remains in place? How can that be? It can be because the media doesn’t tell millions of people what is actually happening at our border and so it remains a non-issue until people are informed about it. If this were the reverse we would have the media harping against a Republican issue day and night until it turned into a mass psychoses offending everyone. How else could we have EVERYONE supporting riots in 2020, Pelosi and Schumer kneeling with laughable pandering clothing on as they pretend to obey the current zeitgeist? We had people shining black guys shoes as an act of atonement…for doing nothing wrong!!!!
They left is winning and it is scary.
In a well-run educational system, the students fear the teachers; in a failing educational system, the teachers fear the students.
One would think in a well-run educational system the students would [at least] respect the teachers and the teachers would respect the students.
*other than that, I think you make a very astute observation.
My mother started teaching in a one room schoolhouse and retired in 1974. I went to her retirement diner and took her home before she left me she spoke these words—–“In the future the inmates will be running the institutions.” Her very words!!!