Overheard a prof in the hallway say trigger warnings are just for snowflakes

I was walking past the history department and heard him tell a grad student 'if you can't handle the lecture then drop the class' which made me wonder if ignoring student trauma is really the best way to teach critical thinking, or are we just making people dig in harder on both sides?

2 comments

2 Comments

christopher_flores4616d ago

I had a prof freshman year say something similar about a section on the Khmer Rouge. He got really heated when a girl asked if there was a heads up because she had family that went through it. He told her "history doesn't come with warnings in real life." But here's the thing - we give students content warnings all the time in other classes, like for lab safety or explicit material in film studies. So why is trauma the one thing we can't flag without calling it coddling? Is there a line somewhere between preparing someone for hard material and just using the shock value to prove you're tough?

calebm4616d ago

That's a solid point about lab safety warnings. Like, we're supposed to prep students for potential physical harm but mental harm is just "toughen up"? Really makes you wonder where the line actually is between being prepared and being "shocked into learning.