Trigger Warnings
Trigger Warnings: A Threat to Education in America
Imagine a world where anything could be considered offensive. Now imagine that world full of college students who are apart of a generation coddled to a point of disgust. In this world, the slightest challenge of a college student's ideas is considered offensive and disgraceful. This is the world that is being built right before my eyes. The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board wrote an essay titled “Warning: College Students, This Editorial May Upset You” wherein the topic of “triggers” is heavily spoken of. Triggers are essentially any subject topic in a class that could be found offensive to certain people. The editorial discusses how college professors are now being told they must warn students so as to not trigger them. The students can leave class if there is a possible trigger in the lecture and no points will be deducted. This is a disgrace to our bedrock of education. The real world, one without professors and people helping you through every step of the way, is mean, dirty, offensive, and unfair. College students are not learning what it is like to live in the real-world. The fundamental base of College and how it opens your mind to new ideas would essentially vanish if all professors started to offer trigger warnings. Some classes, even, would fully be eliminated if this were to happen. Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University, says in his article “A Warning Against Trigger Warnings” that at the beginning of each semester of his class, Constitutional Law II, he tells the students “I don’t believe in trigger warnings. But if I did, I would have to include one for virtually every day of this course. We are going to cover subjects like slavery, segregation, sexism, suicide, the death penalty, and abortion. There is no way to teach this course without discussing these issues. And there is no good way to cover them without also considering a wide range of views about these subjects and their
Imagine a world where anything could be considered offensive. Now imagine that world full of college students who are apart of a generation coddled to a point of disgust. In this world, the slightest challenge of a college student's ideas is considered offensive and disgraceful. This is the world that is being built right before my eyes. The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board wrote an essay titled “Warning: College Students, This Editorial May Upset You” wherein the topic of “triggers” is heavily spoken of. Triggers are essentially any subject topic in a class that could be found offensive to certain people. The editorial discusses how college professors are now being told they must warn students so as to not trigger them. The students can leave class if there is a possible trigger in the lecture and no points will be deducted. This is a disgrace to our bedrock of education. The real world, one without professors and people helping you through every step of the way, is mean, dirty, offensive, and unfair. College students are not learning what it is like to live in the real-world. The fundamental base of College and how it opens your mind to new ideas would essentially vanish if all professors started to offer trigger warnings. Some classes, even, would fully be eliminated if this were to happen. Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University, says in his article “A Warning Against Trigger Warnings” that at the beginning of each semester of his class, Constitutional Law II, he tells the students “I don’t believe in trigger warnings. But if I did, I would have to include one for virtually every day of this course. We are going to cover subjects like slavery, segregation, sexism, suicide, the death penalty, and abortion. There is no way to teach this course without discussing these issues. And there is no good way to cover them without also considering a wide range of views about these subjects and their