I disagree that students are not in college voluntarily -- they may be under parental persuasion, even pressure, but even then they have chosen their college, they have chosen their classes, maybe they don't care that much about your subject, it may be required, but still their presence there is voluntary.
I detest the people who sit next to me on a plane, have me captive for two or three hours, and decide this is their time to persuade me of the exellence of their life philosophy, religion, or whatever, of course entirely for my own good.
You bring in by the back door a very interesting question of modern life, though. There are homeless people on the streets of Seattle. Some are offered beds at night, but refuse them. Is it my or your or the shelter operator's obligation to try to persuade them, against their desires, to come into the shelter to sleep? Or do we accept that they have the right to decide to spend the night on the street if they wish to, our job is only to offer the choice, but not to make it for them?
My position, it's probably clear, is the latter. I don't know what keeps them on the street, I don't know why they choose to spend the night on a bench in Pioneer Square rather than in a bed in one of the shelters, but they do, and I don't see it as my right to impose on them the choice that I think is better and would make for myself in the same situation (though of course I'm NOT in their situation, and maybe if I really were, I would make the same decision for the same reasons they do. I really don't know.) |
