Why do you say “we” when you mean “I”? Is there more than one of you in there?
A couple of decades ago, the students in my comp. class voted to see the film A Clockwork Orange after having read it and other books. (I had told them I’d rent the film version of any of those books they wanted to see.) I said that they could walk out if they wanted to.
No one did, and no one complained.
These days, I’d rather just show something PG13 so I won’t have to deal with students refusing to watch R-rated films (regardless of content; mentioned upthread) and demanding alternatives (despite my syllabus stating that no alternative assignments will be given.) It’s just too much trouble–and a waste of time, believe me–to try to convince them to come out of their bubbles and withstand a few F-bombs in a movie like Little Miss Sunshine or The King’s Speech.
For most people autopsy films are their own trigger warnings.
So, it WASN’T a parody? I’m still not convinced the idea was not first floated by a troll at the conference. The jazz hands gave it away.
And did your students know that there would be disturbing content in the film? I bet they did, because it’s really unusual to spring graphic rape scenes on unsuspecting audiences.
People aren’t asking that disturbing content not be shown. Indeed, if there was no disturbing content, trigger warnings wouldn’t be a thing. The whole idea is that people have some idea of what is coming, so that they are able to decide how they want to approach it. My understanding of PTSD is that sudden, unexpected things are more likely to “trigger” a reaction than something you know is coming.
They had read the book. It said so in the bit you quoted.
I suspect that vivalostwages hadn’t given trigger warnings that the book might be for mature audiences, mind you.
I’m sure I didn’t. That semester, we read Brave New World, 1984, Animal Farm, all of which contain some measure of disturbing content. I never bothered to warn anybody; that never even occurred to me. It was an English comp class in a university, so I assumed that people would be handle whatever I assigned.
These days, some students may raise objections to a book or film based on their religious beliefs. Here is just one case:
That particular student failed in her quest to get the prof’s decision overturned. But some might actually succeed. Then we run into the problem of violating a prof’s academic freedom, assuming that they’re not running amok somehow.
I suspect that the science teachers might have more of a problem, since they may have to deal with students who are determined not to learn anything that might conflict with their “dearly held, sincere” beliefs. (Damn, I’m sick of that phrasing—why do they think putting more adverbs in front of something makes their beliefs count for more?)
Anyhow, see the 4th comment in the link below. I don’t envy that prof.
Yes, you take classes, but learning the material could very well mean being exposed not just to new ideas but also to idea which might bother you–or conflict with everything you have been taught or what you believed until you arrived in college. If the students cling stubbornly to their preconceived notions–about, say, the age of the Earth–and refuse to do the work or answer correctly on exams, then they won’t pass the class and go on.
We watched El Norte in my high school Spanish class in 1986. Not only do I not remember getting any kind of content warning from the teacher, I don’t recall anything in particular about the film that would require a warning. 
So, if the test asks the age of the Earth and the students don’t answer “5000 years,” then they have rejected the Word of God and have doomed their souls to eternal damnation.
Is it fair to ask a student to choose between eternal damnation and passing the class?
Isn’t that part of learning to cope with a tragic/damaging event learning to live with the bad memories that might be triggered by disturbing content?
None of that stuff, IIRC, was beyond anything you might see on network TV these days (although admittedly, I don’t know if repeated uses of “chinga” would be allowed).
I just picked myself up off the floor from a laughing fit.
Okay…I’ll play.
If their omniscient god knows everything in their minds and hearts, it should understand that they need to write the correct answer on the exam even if they really don’t believe it. Colleges are, for the most part, not inclined to be Burger King U., where you get to have everything Your Way and object to damn near anything that’s against your religious beliefs.
Or we could try it this way:
god must have put the student in that class for a reason. Perhaps the faith is being tested. The student will not compromise and fails the class. The college will not allow infinite repeats of said class, so eventually the student drops out. Or maybe they find a religious, private university to attend instead…
but it costs too much and they can’t afford it…
but their god will provide…
or not, because it’s teaching them some kind of lesson…
but…
it’s your turn now.
Wait, were you joking?
We were shown that film at the courthouse when I was in gradeschool, and a lot of the kids had nightmares about it. I later found out that the film was never intended to be shown to children, it was only meant to traumatize the parents.
I had to watch it when it showed up on archive.com to see if it was as graphic as I remembered it, or if I just exaggerated it in my memory. Turns out it was almost exactly as I remembered.
I just started a thread in Great Debates, asking substantially this question.
I took a different approach: I would insist that a student in a science class should learn, know, and understand the scientific arguments, evidence, theories, etc. (I used evolution as an example) but I don’t really see the need to care if the student actually believes it, and I would try to phrase my questions so as not to put students (JW’s, for example) in such a bind. (Any further discussion along these lines could go in that GD thread. It’s all rather off-topic in this thread.)
I agree that you can’t make someone believe something. God knows, people believe all sorts of things despite all evidence to the contrary.
Check out this short vid—you can FF to 2:40 for the gist of it:
No, I’m pretty sure the Boomers don’t have much to do with this.
I disagree. I think that once university accept the logic that students need to be officially warned about disturbing content, the obvious next step is to remove the content entirely. And it’s already happening. In the Great Debates thread linked above, I mentioned the fact that many law school professors won’t teach about rape and sexual assault cases because they get so many complaints from students:
About a dozen new teachers of criminal law at multiple institutions have told me that they are not including rape law in their courses, arguing that it’s not worth the risk of complaints of discomfort by students. Even seasoned teachers of criminal law, at law schools across the country, have confided that they are seriously considering dropping rape law and other topics related to sex and gender violence. Both men and women teachers seem frightened of discussion, because they are afraid of injuring others or being injured themselves.
…
I first encountered this more than a year ago, when I showed “Capturing the Friedmans,” an acclaimed documentary about a criminal-sex-abuse investigation, to my law students. Some students complained that I should have given them a “trigger warning” beforehand; others suggested that I shouldn’t have shown the film at all. For at least some students, the classroom has become a potentially traumatic environment, and they have begun to anticipate the emotional injuries they could suffer or inflict in classroom conversation. They are also more inclined to insist that teachers protect them from causing or experiencing discomfort—and teachers, in turn, are more willing to oblige, because it would be considered injurious for them not to acknowledge a student’s trauma or potential trauma.
And another point is that a lot of this comes up in situations where gender is obviously involved. The New York Times article which started the thread was about a safe space set up in pre-emptive response to a debate about rape culture. While I’m sure it was officially open to both genders, the clear implication is that it’s women who need to see puppy videos and play with play-doh just because they witnessed some discussion. It’s almost as if they’re saying, “Turns out the Victorians were right after all. Women really are too dainty and fragile to deal with reality, so we need to protect them from even seeing the bad parts.”
Just curious… was it *A Clockwork Orange?
*