{"id":36171,"date":"2016-10-23T02:00:27","date_gmt":"2016-10-23T06:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36171"},"modified":"2016-10-21T10:26:04","modified_gmt":"2016-10-21T14:26:04","slug":"engaging-with-challenging-subjects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/10\/23\/engaging-with-challenging-subjects\/","title":{"rendered":"Engaging with “challenging subjects”"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Guardian<\/em>, Frank Furedi<\/a> talks about the challenges faced by university instructors when they need to expose their students to “challenging materials”:<\/p>\n

Students studying the archaeology of modern conflict at University College, London, have been told they are permitted to leave class if they find the discussion of historical events \u201cdisturbing\u201d or traumatising. This does not surprise me. Shielding students from topics deemed sensitive is fast gaining influence in academic life.<\/p>\n

My colleague at another university showed a picture of an emaciated Hungarian Jewish woman liberated from a death camp. A student, yelled out, \u201cstop showing this, I did not come here to be traumatised\u201d, disrupting his lecture on the Hungarian Holocaust. After the student complained of distress, caused by the disturbing image, my colleague was told by an administrator to be more careful when discussing such a sensitive subject. \u201cHow can I teach the Holocaust without unsettling my students?\u201d asked my friend. Academics who now feel they have to mind their words are increasingly posing such questions.<\/p>\n

Throughout the Anglo-American world universities have drawn up protocols warning of exposing students to \u201csensitive subjects\u201d. Astonishingly, the university is now subject to practices that demand levels of conformism historically associated with narrow-minded, illiberal institutions. The terms \u201csensitive subject\u201d or \u201cchallenging subject\u201d are used by administrators to designate a class of topics portrayed as a risk to students\u2019 wellbeing.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

It is difficult to think of any powerful literary text that does not disturb a reader\u2019s sensibility. Consequently virtually any classic text could incite a demand for a trigger warning. A Durham University student complained that his class was \u201cexpected to sit through lectures and tutorials discussing Lavinia\u2019s rape in Titus Andronicus\u201d, though he was delighted that \u201cwe did get a trigger warning about bestiality with regard to part of the lecture on A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, once sensitivity becomes a commanding value in academic teaching, the range of topics deemed sensitive will expand. This has far-reaching implications for academic teaching. Once the teaching of an academic topic becomes subordinated to a criterion that is external to it \u2013 such as the value of sensitivity \u2013 it risks losing touch with the integrity of its subject matter. At the very least, academics have to become wary of teaching topics in accordance with their own inclination as to what is the right way of communicating their subject.<\/p>\n

Sadly, far too many academics have responded to the pressure to protect students from disturbing ideas by censoring themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Guardian, Frank Furedi talks about the challenges faced by university instructors when they need to expose their students to “challenging materials”: Students studying the archaeology of modern conflict at University College, London, have been told they are permitted to leave class if they find the discussion of historical events \u201cdisturbing\u201d or traumatising. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,66,7],"tags":[238,764],"class_list":["post-36171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-health-science","category-history","tag-offensensitivity","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9pp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36172,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36171\/revisions\/36172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}