Kiki
European diet can be very much centered around meat too unfortunately, farmers also have a lot of power here. Guess it is still better than the US, but we are part of the problem too.
I agree that just stopping subsidies and let everything in the hands of market forces won’t do. We cannot juste expect things to work better in the current system, it would need many other forces and institutions to develop another type of agriculture and scale down meat production and consumption and make other products more affordable for everyone, it cannot come only from making meat a luxury good.
In France, an ecological politician tried to talk about it recently, now she is receiving hundred of tweets of people taking pictures with huge pieces of meat, very proud of their own stupidity (including other politicians). I observe some changes around me though, in countries (home and host countries) where meat is still very important in the common diet, but far from being large and fast enough unfortunately…
I am myself an introvert so I get that very much. The pairing is about trying to diffuse the anxiety. If I feel it is not working well, there are ways to mitigate the issue. For many exercises, interaction can be a nightmare for introverts. I was organising a role play in a master course and I know I would have hated that when I was a student, but I am trying to rely on my own experience to avoid huge mistakes and making people too inconfortable. It is important to read the room but also to experiment to see what works and not!
Lecturer here, and I would say it really depends on the setting and the content of the class. I tried different things that worked, pairing students to introduce each other for two minutes, then they have to present each other (small groups). Surveys with menti for large crowds, and I am also answering the questions (mix of personal/content/opinion questions to understand the general atmosphere ok the lecture hall).
In a summer school, I did something I really liked, the walking exercise. 3 rounds, 3 questions: students have to walk in the room, and when I clap they have to pair with the closest person and discuss the question. Then we share altogether. But again the content of the questions may really depend. The summer school was about transformations for sustainability, targeting PhD candidates. We were asking about an important event explaining why there were studying sustainability, one question was ‘what are you good at’ and the last one was ‘what do you think should be transformed to become sustainable.’
How is the second statement problematic? It is a fact, that is largely documented in academia and many movements everywhere in the world. Disappointing decision…