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Cambridge Uni students get Shakespeare trigger warnings
Shakespeare contains gore and violence that might "upset" you, Cambridge University students have been warned. The "trigger warnings" - red triangles with an exclamation mark - appeared on their English lecture timetables.
Lectures including Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus contain "discussion of sexual violence, sexual assault", the BBC's Newsnight programme has learned.
The university said the warnings were "at the lecturer's own discretion" and "not a faculty-wide policy". The lecture timetables were issued to this term's students by the university's faculty of English.
[...] Asked about the warnings, one Cambridge academic who did not wish to be named, said their "duty as educators was to prepare students for the world not protect them for three years". Prof Dennis Hayes from Derby University's education faculty said: "Once you get a few trigger warnings, lecturers will stop presenting anything that is controversial... gradually, there is no critical discussion".
Cambridge University said the English faculty "does not have a policy on trigger warnings", but added: "Some lecturers indicate that some sensitive material will be covered in a lecture... this is entirely at the lecturer's own discretion and is in no way indicative of a faculty-wide policy."
Forsooth!
Also at Cambridge News, The Guardian, and The Independent.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20 2017, @01:59PM (2 children)
Respect is earned, not given. That's the lesson of reality "grandpas" are trying to teach.
Precisely. Yet the 1% are the most vocal and at times get violent when their demands are not met.
Then it is time to grow up. An adult first hurled that phrase at me when I was in the sixth grade. By the time you reach college, you should be responsible and reasonably mature. If not, it's time to rethink your life and do some growing up. Colleges and universities do their students a huge disservice catering to those immature losers and not teaching them to be responsible adults. Unfortunately, the faculty and administration are far too often immature themselves. The most vocal and enabling of them would never survive in a profession outside of academia. The problem is that the behavior tends to get reinforced as proponents congratulate themselves while declaring their personal enlightenment to everyone in earshot and work to prove their moral superiority all the while patting themselves on the back. And I say that with insight as a university employee. Methinks the bulk of those people should leave the moral indoctrination to the Philosophy and Political Science departments and focus on teaching their coursework, not their politics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20 2017, @05:33PM (1 child)
Trigger warnings aren't about politics ya numb nuts.
Well, everything can be about politics if someone twists it to political advantage, but that is a human problem not an ideological one. Are wheelchair ramps some political scheme? Are those little yellow signs that say "floor is wet" some leftist propaganda? I mean if someone can't figure out how to walk across a floor without some proscribed hand-holding then they just need to grow up! /s
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20 2017, @07:02PM
Where did I say anything about being "leftist"? Maybe you ought to do a little self reflection before projecting your poorly thought out attempt at sarcasm. My point was that the purveyors of this are childish and immature. And the enablers are more than happy to coddle so long as they are able to pat their own backs at their own self realized moral superiority and righteous indignation. I have often wondered if this was a result of increased competition for tuition dollars as Federal and State monies dry up. Each institution seems more than happy to lower the bar to bring in more students and bend over backward to keep them happy regardless if they get a good or even effective education. What the students don't realize is that all this shit costs real dollars to administer and implement (along with all the other shit like scheduling all the classes after 10AM and before 2PM) which drives up the cost of their education. You didn't think all those cultural sensitivity classes and seminars were taught Pro Bono did you? But, hey, the government will forgive all those student loans, right?
Students need to stick to the business of learning what they are there for instead of whining about how unfair the world is to their special sensitivities and needs. Otherwise, they have no business being there and need to be out in the real world getting the life education they sorely lack where their crying gets them wet eyes and nothing more.