Discussion: What I Learned About Trigger Warnings From Teaching College Students

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Discussion for article #223072

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Let’s get this straight: Trigger warnings originally started on visual media containing ‘strobing effects’ as a way to warn Photosensitive Epileptics a seizure could be triggered by the visuals - It became more commonly used/seen with the proliferation of online video clips and video games (as well as clips shown on tv and some movies) with flashing/fast moving visuals and patterns years before it was co-opted for other use.

So when the author claims – “Trigger warnings, which originally started in online feminist and activist spaces 
[snip]
 have done that culture-jumping thing where they are no longer used in only those spaces.” – she is showing that the warning had already ‘culture-jumped’ so far that many don’t even know/remember it’s origins.

But I’m an old - so I remember way back to the 90’s when ‘Trigger Warnings’ started popping up in new graphic-rich media/entertainment.

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I have a dream of walking into a classroom with a shirt that says “Trigger Warning: I’m the Prof” across the front.

So we’ve established you teach.

Given the subject matter and space I teach in, I think it would be a valid critique the use of trigger warnings, but also a necessary intervention into the classroom space.

Huh? Not sure that made sense, but it’s probably just me; the subject looks interesting so I’ll keep reading

For many students, realizing that, as the professor, I am the person my students who has knowledge and power over them, is traumatic.

twitch

While I find the term “Trigger Warning” problematic because of the very specific type of violence it eludes to, I understand the need 


Sorry, can’t take it anymore. This article desperately needed an editor to review it prior to giving it a hall pass through the CMS gates and into the land of the published.

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I think the thing that most struck me about the NYTimes piece was the examples. For example, the most popular target of trigger warning demands is Merchant of Venice for antisemitism. First of all, if you somehow neither know about about that content nor think to Google before reading despite knowing that you have issues, you deserve your mental breakdown. Second of all, this is the most insulting Great White Hope thing I’ve ever heard. No actual Jew is going to be shocked by this, as every single one of our holidays at least mentions genocide at least once.

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Too bad you didn’t keep reading. You would have encountered these gems:

“In learning, I think the general reaction is where we begin to shift or solidify our own perspectives.” Does that actually mean anything?

“However, the second we start talking in the larger historical, we have to confront oppression to the point of erasure by putting those students and professors who are often the visible subject of oppression after a trigger warning.” That one seems tantalizingly close to being a grammatical sentence, but after 4 times reading it over, I still can’t understand what it is saying.

“Perhaps if I were someone else, a different gender or ethnicity, the things the New York Times article would be the hurdles I have to get over with my students.” The things the NYT article TALKED ABOUT perhaps? Not a sentence as it stands, in any case.

“However, the movement of “Trigger Warning” to a general University level classroom practice takes away the ability to have a genuine reaction, and this can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the context.” This one is grammatical, but just lame. Is taking away the ability to have a genuine reaction really a good thing in some cases?

I find some of these articles in TPM CafĂ© quite interesting. But this is not the first one that is horrendously written. (Maybe from now on these articles should come with their own trigger warnings: Warning! What you are about to read may offend your grammatical sensibilities.) I am not sure why grammatical, intelligible content does not rank higher on TPM’s list of priorities.

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@David_Kurtz this one’s for you buddy. Desperately needed some review process in place

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Silly
this article was made for skimming, not reading.

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If anyone would like to read an article on trigger warnings that is actually intelligible, here you go: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/05/trigger-warnings-and-the-novelists-mind.html?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=facebook&mbid=social_facebook

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I read the entire piece three times. It only got worse the more I read. In addition to the things others have pointed out, this, “I have had approximately one class almost fail.” Approximately one? Either it’s one or it isn’t. Then, she writes, "[t]his series was too much for approximately two students . . . ". Here again, it’s either two students, or it isn’t, right? But then we learn that these two students had, “documented mental health problems”. Huh? What’s going on here? Was the whole class going to fail because of two mentally ill people? And how does she know what mental health records say about her students?

Frankly, in addition to the poor writing, I am left wondering what exactly the author is even trying to say. When sitting in a college course that deals with controversial subjects some people might find themselves becoming upset? No kidding. This is nothing new, is it?

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Don’t teach The Merchant of Venice because it sucks. So does Romeo and Juliet. Love The Bard, but both of those need the ax.

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I had the same reaction. I fear goethean (above) is right when s/he says, “Silly
this article was made for skimming, not reading.”
I also followed denny’s link to the New Yorker article on the same subject, and after reading that thoughtful, beautifully expressed piece of writing, I started feeling really depressed about the amount of time I spend (waste?) reading stuff on TPM. Okay, TPM CafĂ© articles don’t have to be New Yorker quality, but this one is ridiculous.

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White privilege presumes that affirmative action is something to help non-whites. White privilege does not understand that affirmative action is something that corrects the color-bias in the vision of the members of dominant society, a bias that is built into the screening devices used by the dominant society to ‘select’ from the best and brightest for some group or other, like the almost completely unproven ‘educational programs’ offered by UNC Chapel Hill and its ilk.

Exactly why doesn’t UNC publish the results of the test administered to its faculty that assesses how well its faculty can and does teach? What? There is no such test, you say? That seems mighty convenient for supposedly highly educated people who specialize in creating googols of tests to assess the progress and capabilities of their students
not to have developed a test of whether or not they can actually teach. Is that why UNC and its ilk demand that its applicants can already teach themselves (by scoring well on standardized tests)?

Since the screening device already includes a built-in bias in favor of those who don’t need teachers, then correct its bias against folks of color by using an affirmative action tool. The real ‘trigger warning’ should be that when a white person, particularly a male, is present, something is going to be askew.

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Students are indebted clients. Teachers are content providers, working mostly on the same employment model as Wal-Mart “associates.” The degree awarded is a credential, required for entry into a profession. This transaction requires that the clients must be made to feel comfortable at all times. They must never be challenged, questioned, critiqued, or told they are wrong. The grotesquely inflated ranks of administrators serve in loco parentis. Trillions in debt are incurred by the clients to make this state of affairs happen. Billions in profit are exacted from the transaction.

Education, critical thinking, assessment of values, scrutiny of the self and society: none of these things matter now.

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“trigger warnings” are bullshit.

I think it inhibits the growth of a person to be able to see all possible offense and outrage coming and decide you’re going to avoid it.

People SHOULD be offended and outraged once in a while
it makes you stop, think, and possibly even reconsider your beliefs and convictions. Even if you don’t change your mind, you at least exercised your brain and put your beliefs to the test.

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Is it the policy of TPM to edit all submissions by external authors? I don’t really expect TPM to do this. This one reads like an academic trying to sound academic.

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I don’t think it’s the policy of TPM to edit ANYTHING.

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When you tell your students that you’ll be covering things they might find disturbing, uncomfortable, angering, or upsetting, you’re giving a trigger warning. You’ve obviously already bought into the idea of a trigger warning, you’re just arguing over individual words.

I think part of the problem is that “trigger warning” is strongly associated with “naive college students.” They’re different problems, it’s just that some naive college students are using the language of trigger warnings. It’s like dismissing all social justice work because you’ve been on Tumblr and apparently “social justice” means “the right of someone to insist on being addressed as a deity.” (Yes, that’s a real thing.) They’re college students, stop taking them so seriously.

Really, trigger warnings are not some terrible censorship tool that will destroy academia. It’s a simple as, “We’re going to be looking at some photographs documenting the Holocaust. Many of them are quite graphic.” Your obligation stops there. Is that really such a burden?

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I live in Arizona where the word “triggers” does not refer to uncomfortable classroom subjects. Initially 
within the first two sentences I thought the article was gonna be about guns in the classroom or something along those lines but
nope. I’m not sure what the heck the piece was about other than that I gleaned that the author is a black female with a chip on her shoulder and she teaches.

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I appreciate some trigger warnings, but this is getting out of hand. I don’t think it’s reasonable to take a college course on war and expect not to see images of bodies or torture. However, if I’m browsing a news site or blog, I expect to see a graphic content warning so I can avoid clicking on pictures that I really don’t want to see. I’ve seen enough in real life, thank you.

I took a course in human sexuality, knowing that it would involve frank discussions (and guest lectures) about subjects that are personally painful to me. I was a bit anxious, but I chose to take the course because I thought it would help in the long run. It was difficult, but I’m still glad I took it.

So, yeah, I prefer to be given the choice. But come on, Shakespeare??

Edit: I meant to just leave a comment, I somehow entered this as a reply to Captain Commonsense. I swear, I haven’t been drinking.

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Thank you for your
common sense. :wink:

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