Hanlon says:
I write this as a professor.... Here’s a brief and by no means exhaustive list of things I’ve carefully selected for college syllabi and deliberately taught in college courses: a pair of poems about impotence and premature ejaculation; a satire about slaughtering human infants and feeding them to the poor; a poem that uses the c-word twice in a mere 33 lines, and describes King Charles II in coitus with his mistress with the phrase “his dull, graceless bollocks hang an arse”; a novel in which a wealthy man gets his maid to marry him by kidnapping her and continually cornering her with unwanted sexual advances; a graphic history of the torture methods and other cruelties done to African slaves leading up to the Haitian Revolution; a poem written in the voice of a male domestic servant and attempted rapist contacting his victim from prison....
Those of us who occasionally use trigger warnings are not as naïve as we’re made out to be; we understand that there is no magical warning that will assuage all anxieties and protect students from all traumas.... 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.
I’m not blind to the problems with trigger warnings and hyperbolic political correctness. The examples Lukianoff and Haidt cite are alarming: Harvard law students asking professors not to use the word “violate”; Brandies students calling even critical acknowledgment of racial stereotypes of Asian-Americans “microaggressions”; Northwestern professor Laura Kipnis being accused of Title IX violations for an article she wrote for The Chronicle of Higher Education. But I’m not convinced that we can lay these problems—and by extension, adverse developments in the mental health of college students—at the feet of trigger warnings....
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26 comments:
As in any movement, you have the true believers, the hangers-on, the people who work it as an angle to get what they want, etc. All are on display here.
Oh, and the people who go along to get along, the intimidated who pretend to believe, and those who like the in-group feeling or the feeling of power. All using the cause du jour and each other to advance their personal story and settle scores where available.
Trigger warnings are the symptom not the cause.
I'm looking at you Emma Sulkowicz. And Rolling Stone. But not Jackie because she's just a loon.
Yes, exactly, Gahrie. They don't cause anything, they're the symptom of a movement run amok.
Someone needs a federal grant to study this further............
L&H are wrong that coddling drives students crazy. It's just an educational Prog power play. Coddling and trigger warnings appropriately prepare students for a Prog-dominated society in which holding any non-Prog view is dangerous to their careers and reputations.
Hanlon is also wrong. Trigger warnings are not an invitation to discussion but invariably privilege Prog sensitivities more than others. What course ever warned conservatives that "Political bias in this class may trigger nausea in right-of-center-students," or: "Mindless PC prattle in this class will insult the intelligence of any non-PC student"? Of course, Progs never check their privilege.
At several institutions, it seems, trigger warnings are indeed "expected." Especially lower-level instructors will be inclined to protect themselves in any case by including them in their course materials, if only to help fend off legal attacks.
Hanlon also posits a false equivalence. Prog censorship comes from inside the system, with approval of the powers that be. Attempts to "oppose the teaching of sexually explicit material because it’s “trash”" are exceedingly rare, come from the outside, and are easily dismissed.
So, it hasn't hit him yet. Big deal.
It will.
In loco parentis. The loco parents are now the prudish progs.
I read Hanlon's article, and it wasn't as bad as it first sounded.
Still, even though he made a case for deliberately (perhaps even proudly) teaching 'a pair of poems about impotence and premature ejaculation; a satire about slaughtering human infants and feeding them to the poor; a poem that uses the c-word twice in a mere 33 lines, and describes King Charles II in coitus with his mistress with the phrase “his dull, graceless bollocks hang an arse”; a novel in which a wealthy man gets his maid to marry him by kidnapping her and continually cornering her with unwanted sexual advances; a graphic history of the torture methods and other cruelties done to African slaves leading up to the Haitian Revolution; a poem written in the voice of a male domestic servant and attempted rapist contacting his victim from prison,' he did so as an Assistant Professor of English, focusing on the Enlightenment, British Exceptionalism, and the interplay between novels and "science writing" at a leading academic institution.
Yes, the humanities are in fine shape.
a poem that uses the c-word twice in a mere 33 lines, and describes
Yet he can't bring himself to write out the word "cunt". Or, at least, c**t. No, he has to call it "the c-word".
In doing so he does an excellent job of countering the point he is claiming to make.
Unless by "c-word" he means cow, corpuscle or some other word beginning with c.
Shame on you professor and the school that pays you.
John Henry
When I was young, we were interested in reading the "good parts" of, say, From Here To Eternity. I wonder if trigger warnings make the good parts easier to find.
It's always all about getting laid, especially in college. Which is a probl nowadays huh?
I think the growing anxiety on college campuses has to do with young people having no idea what they are supposed to do with their lives. I don't think you see much of this among the students seeking a career oriented credential or among those with a genuine curiosity about the world.
A. D. Hope's "On a Fine Day in Summer" uses cunt only once, but it's only 8 lines long (12 as he stupidly does the line breaks).
It's taken to be his worst poem, but women are voting.
It's always all about getting laid, especially in college. Which is a probl nowadays huh?
I think if I was in college these days I would probably be gay, at least till graduation. We hear a lot about LUGs (Lesbians until graduation) but pretty much nothing at all about GUG's (gay until graduation)
Seems like hooking up with women, especially on campus, gets more dangerous every day.
John Henry
attempted rapist
A fine point, but it would be rape attemptist. Real professors ought to know that already.
William -- Isn't it neat how today's hardore progs have become their tight-ass grandparents?
Assistant Professors are not yet tenured. What does he think will happen to his tenure chances if he speaks out against trigger warnings vs speaking out for them? He knows perfectly well.
The whole liberal arts education enterprise started to go off the rails when leftist English professors began referring to literary works as "texts."
"particularly if they suffer from PTSD"
Really? This is a thing with college students? Medically diagnosed, and being treated by a physician? How can they function in a classroom?
I think what he means is the pop-culture version of PTSD, which just means that there things you don't like and don't want to be exposed to.
Lukianoff and Haidt's article is chock full of the same kind of psycho-bullshit that led to the coddling in the first place.
That list of horrible stuff sounds like a typical Sunday night on HBO.
McArdle had a good point about how schools are more student-driven than parent-driven these days due to more of it being financed by loans rather than parent money, so when the students complain about anything that displeases them (from unpleasant subjects to getting a lower grade than they think they deserve) the schools are more likely to kowtow to them.
I'm not sure how much of this "coddling" including "trigger warnings" and "safe spaces" is really widespread or if we're just hearing about the more egregious outliers. It still deserves ridicule, though, because none of this has any place in an educational environment.
Schools should be challenging and provocative. If you don't want that, you don't need to go to college.
Seems like hooking up with women, especially on campus, gets more dangerous every day.
As I've said before, when my boys get to college --- if they even go --- and if this shit is going on --- I will recommend prostitutes.
Of course, brandies students will be hypersensitive to triggering events. Binge drinking will do that to you.
Oh. Did you mean Brandeis students? Never mind.
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