Professors give warnings of all sorts that, when not explicitly entangled in the national politics of political correctness, amount less to coddling than to minimizing chances of disengagement with material. “Block off more time this weekend than you usually do, since the reading for Monday is a particularly long one,” for instance, is a reasonable way of reducing the number of students who show up unprepared by issuing a warning. “Today we’re discussing a poem about rape, so be prepared for some graphic discussion, and come to office hours if you have things to say about the poem that you’re not comfortable expressing in class,” meanwhile, is a similarly reasonable way of relieving the immediate pressure to perform in class, which stresses out so many students… If you take away the media hysteria surrounding trigger warnings, you’re left with a mode of conversational priming that we all use: “You might want to sit down for this”; “I’m not sure how to say this, but…” It’s hardly anti-intellectual or emotionally damaging to anticipate that other people may react to traumatic material with negative emotions, particularly if they suffer from PTSD; it’s human to engage others with empathy. It’s also human to have emotional responses to life and literature, responses that may come before, but in no way preclude, a dispassionate analysis of a text or situation.
The Trigger Warning Myth, Aaron R. Hanlon.
it frankly baffles me that I’ve almost never seen people recognizing that “hey, here’s a preview of what we’re going to discuss next week” (’trigger warning’ buzzword optional) is good pedagogy, and so many of these professors who are very Defensive about being emotionally harmful to their students have a disproportionate sense of self-importance (and a really bad idea of what education is about). the material teachers use is not a surprise to be inflicted upon their students; classrooms are not places for them to “blow their students’ minds.”
(via locusimperium)