SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
⚠ Warning: Contents of summary and comments may be offensive. ⚠
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: 4, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 20 2017, @02:29AM (13 children)
All that is happening is, dipshits are being taught that it's alright to go off the deep end, provided that they can point to an "appropriate" trigger.
And, everyone involved is a simple fuckwit. Each and every one of them should be sent to boot camp. Paris Island, 1950's or 60's style. The drill instructor in your face, about 20 hours each day. You get (maybe) four hours of sleep, and the DI is right back in your face. You learn pretty damned quickly that words are just words, and none of it means shit - or you suffer for being a fuckwit. That may not be enough to teach some, but when the rest of the company starts to suffer for you being a fuckwit, the fuckiest of fuckwits begins to learn the lessons of life.
Don't like being called (whatever)? Don't act like (whatever).
In short, grow the fuck up. If you refuse to grow up, stop pretending to be an academic. You don't get to act like an idiot, and be honored for being intelligent at the same time.
Little children begin learning that lesson, almost as soon as they learn to speak intelligibly. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me!" Usually accompanied by a protruding tongue, and looks of contempt.
Safe spaces. Private little areas on campus where idiots can be programmed to be useful.
Alternative für Deutschland
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20 2017, @02:44AM (1 child)
Safe spaces.
Thanks Obama!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Friday October 20 2017, @06:30AM
https://splinternews.com/what-s-a-safe-space-a-look-at-the-phrases-50-year-hi-1793852786
I've not read more than a small portion of is so far, but just thought it might be an interesting read over ones morning coffee. (Assuming you don't spit it out or choke on it!)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20 2017, @03:07AM (5 children)
No, you're too far removed to see how reality is playing out, but the majority of kids are learning they can work over the older generation. They see their more ridiculous peers pulling the shit you're complaining about, and it is lame. The coming generation is another generation of human beings, best stop treating people like their children grandpa cause you're demographic is shrinking faster than theirs. Treat them like adults, some deserve the respect, others deserve the lesson of reality. No one is telling you to hand out trigger warnings.
99% of students laugh at "trigger warnings", and I'd like to remind you of all the teachers who have had to have parent teacher talks over evolution. One is a sentence on a page, the other is a pain in the ass. So the scale of this current "problem" truly doesn't worry me, the same way that White Supremacists don't seem to worry you.
I guess what you're seeing is delayed adult hood, but not too surprising given that kids now expect to be 21/22 before they're even out of school. Idiots, or dupes, are always being programmed to be useful, citation: entire history of the military, church, state, PTA board, HOA, etc.
Just to remind you, you're ranting like a semi-loon over: '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."'
Ooooh, the pillars of academia soaring in the ivory towers raining molten fire upon the lives of good Americans.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by chromas on Friday October 20 2017, @03:22AM (1 child)
This is an important point. While some of the kids are demanding segregation and trigger warnings and safe spaces, the faculty—the adults—are enabling them. The parents haven't taught their kids how to adult and other adults are giving in to the crybullies and coddling instead of trying to fix them. This is our fault.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20 2017, @03:46AM
and its not that big of a deal, you can't skip that part of what I said.
(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.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20 2017, @03:12AM (1 child)
Runaway is clearly triggered at least. Takyon was even good enough to include a trigger warning, too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @09:32AM
Triggered? Hell, he's evacuated!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tfried on Friday October 20 2017, @08:56AM (2 children)
Um, to start with your ramblings on the educational value boot camps: One of the primary lessons of a military education is to accept authority. In contrast, the ideal of an academic education is to teach critical thinking. I'm not going to argue that the two are mutually exclusive (and in fact a well rounded individual should be capable of both to at least some degree), but to put it mildly, it seems rather obvious that you're not going to teach one using the educational toolset of the other.
But to your question:
The same as any other warning. If you intend to require your students to work on tesla coils in your class, you better include an appropriate warning, even if your target audience is statistically unlikely to carry any pacemakers. If you intend to show a hardcore splatter movie half-way through your lecture, then it's certainly polite to hint to that from the start.
Warnings can actually be an important tool to increase the range of what you can teach. Challenging the political/religious feelings of big-donor-daddy snowflakes includes a real danger of ending your academic career, early. Including an appropriate up-front warning will reduce that risk a lot.
OTOH, this also leads us to see the deeper logic behind the proliferation of trigger warnings: Avoiding liability. I don't think colleges and lectures are overly afraid of hurting their students feelings. However, they are afraid of those lazy asshole students who will try to weasel their way through college by playing innocent victim. "Oh, I just couldn't do any better when faced with all that gruesome cruelty. How could I have known Shakespeare would be so violent! Give me my credits or I'll give you a shitstorm!" Now, I agree that trying to stop that by way of warnings is an obvious, but terrible strategy, as it just leads to the academic equivalent of the "don't touch the cooking plate while hot" warning.
So, yes, you can take the warnings too far, and clearly TFA is an example of just that, but that does not mean that warnings are bad in principle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @02:40AM
You're mostly right about the military, but there is the concept of the illegal order and the military does train people to deal with situations where an authority is unavailable.
You're wrong about college. If a student engages in critical thinking and refuses to accept authority, they might just decide that a professor is full of nonsense. The student might come to the unacceptable conclusion that Islam is associated with abuse of atheists, homosexuals, and women. The student might come to the unacceptable conclusion that diversity causes conflict, distrust, and misunderstanding. The student might come to the unacceptable conclusion that there are not in fact 72 different genders. The student might come to the unacceptable conclusion that Cuba is not paradise.
This idea of "critical thinking as long as you submit to authority" is not in fact critical thinking.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday October 23 2017, @02:19AM
I've seen Titus Andronicus when it was on the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, Ontario.
Short summary:
It's hard-core splattergore.