This year’s
tragedies include the kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls, the
disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the mudslide in Washington
state, flooding in Bosnia, the recent shooting in Santa Barbara, California,
and so much more. And the year's not half over. Life isn’t easy or pretty or fair.
As adults, we have to prepare the next generation to navigate a world that's both glorious
and treacherous. That’s why we must say no to “trigger warnings" for college texts.
Students at several U.S. colleges and universities and the student government at the University of California-Santa Barbara have called for trigger warnings or
alerts for classroom material that may upset them.
The works trigger-happy activists think should come with warning labels include Shakespeare’s The
Merchant of Venice with its look at anti-Semitism and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs.
Dalloway, which addresses suicide. Read the New York Times article on the trigger-warning
trend here.
Anti-Semitism
was an issue in Shakespeare’s time and is one today. Slapping a warning
label on books, plays, exhibits, and movies that depict it won’t make it go
away. Confronting it, on the other hand, might change a few hearts and minds.
The suicide of
World War I vet Septimus Smith in Mrs. Dalloway is relevant today as it was
then. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a war wound that may not show on the
outside but can cause more damage as a bullet. The number of male veterans under the age of 30 who commit suicide jumped by 44 percent between 2009 and 2011, according to the
Department of Veteran Affairs. We honor our vets by educating people about PTSD and erasing the stigma of
mental illness. We dishonor them by slapping warnings on books that touch on the effects of war on warriors.
Education, be it via college or the school of life, exposes us to
triggers. We’re supposed to be shocked disgusted, and angry. We learn how we
think when we’re challenged.
In The Guardian, Jill Filipovic writes: “But
the space between comfort and freedom is not actually where universities should
seek to situate college students. Students should be pushed to defend their
ideas and to see the world from a variety of perspectives. Trigger warnings
don't just warn students of potentially triggering material; they effectively
shut down particular lines of discussion with 'that's triggering.'"
Kristen Lamb, who teaches writers social-media
skills, says writers should be as concerned by the call for trigger warnings as college professors. Here’s Lamb on the issue: “My fiction
isn’t about rainbows and unicorns and the world holding hands. I don’t
write My Little Pony. I strive to write about regular (often
innocent) people thrust into the bowels of darkness who through sheer force of
their humanity confront evil, grow into heroes and WIN.”
As you can tell, the trigger-warning movement triggered my anger. I’d
be less a person if I hadn’t read certain books. How about you?
