Honestly, I think the use of trigger warnings sets up students for future failure in their chosen professions, and stunts whatever development of critical thinking might be possible in their precious little minds.
First, with respect to the Canterbury Tales, if you can't handle them then you don't belong in college (or possibly even high school). Same for Dante's Divine Comedy.
Second, PTSD is a real problem, but only for real trauma. When I attended a Catholic college in the '60s, we had a priest living in the residence halls who suffered PTSD (then called shell shock) from his WWII experiences as a bombardier with many sorties over Europe. Every once in a while, jerks returning from a night on the town, and drunk as hell, would slam their bedroom doors at the same time just to get a rise from him. Shameful - yup. But truly one of the few things that merited "trigger warnings" had we known at the time what they were.
Honestly, I think the use of trigger warnings sets up students for future failure in their chosen professions, and stunts whatever development of critical thinking might be possible in their precious little minds.
First, with respect to the Canterbury Tales, if you can't handle them then you don't belong in college (or possibly even high school). Same for Dante's Divine Comedy.
Second, PTSD is a real problem, but only for real trauma. When I attended a Catholic college in the '60s, we had a priest living in the residence halls who suffered PTSD (then called shell shock) from his WWII experiences as a bombardier with many sorties over Europe. Every once in a while, jerks returning from a night on the town, and drunk as hell, would slam their bedroom doors at the same time just to get a rise from him. Shameful - yup. But truly one of the few things that merited "trigger warnings" had we known at the time what they were.