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Comment by 333c | Hacker News Reader

Wow, that's… gross. The university is treating its employees like young teenagers. There are always better things for schools to spend money on, such as faculty and staff salary. One wonders why they instead buy silly services like this.

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Believe me, young teenagers find these meetings just as abhorrent

Of course; I didn't mean to imply they enjoy them. I just meant that they're often subjected to them.

Why are teenagers subjected to this kind of stuff anyway? It's usually pretty apparent that they don't like this stuff. They won't tell you outright, because they're trained to be compliant and taught to never entirely disagree, but it should still be apparent to those who understand teenagers, no?

It's horrible! I always hated this kind of stuff in middle and high school. I think that it's a combination of school administrators being out of touch and having pressures from their higher-ups. But for the sake of today's teenagers, I wish these sorts of trainings and assemblies were done away with.

As the parent of a teenager, I now realize just how hard it can be to get some messages to really land with a teenager. Unless the message that you're trying to get through, no matter how important, is already something that's of interest to them, most things end up feeling like a lecture to them. Upon reflection, I was the same way. As a result, you (the parent) sometimes try to make things "fun" as a way to engage with them and drive home a message. (spoiler: it often turns out lame and not fun...)

Because it's easy to do and gives you an answer to "What are you doing about X" where X is one of:

Bullying

Drugs

Sex

Cheating

Whatever

Chauvinism really. It is assumed they have no opinions of worth and best to be overridden by someone "right" higher than them (administratiors).

That tendency is in no way unique to teenagers and has a long and dark history.

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