All signal, no virtue: why an ineffective and harmful pedagogical practice spread (original) (raw)

The academically destructive nature of trigger warnings

First Amendment Studies, 2016

Trigger warnings are the latest concession to the notion espoused by some students and progressive professors that learning, particularly in higher education, should be pain-free psychologically. Such a premise is antithetical to the values of academic freedom and the marketplace of ideas and is inconsistent with students' learning and confronting ideas with which they are unfamiliar and which are outside of their comfort zone. Yielding to demands for trigger warnings when exposing students to ideas, topics and exchanges that may become uncomfortable negates growth for students. In short, acquiescing to the self-serving demands for trigger warnings makes education nothing but the reaffirming of ideas and positions with which students enter the academy. This article may upset undergraduates and progressive faculty and administrators…deal with it.

Trigger Warnings and Academic Freedom: A Pedagogic Perspective

In: Seckelmann M., Violini L., Fraenkel-Haeberle C., Ragone G. (eds) Academic Freedom Under Pressure?. Springer, Cham., 2021

In recent years, trigger warnings, microaggressions, speech codes and safe spaces have made their way into U.S. universities and gradually into universities around the world, seriously challenging academic freedom. What are the risks of excluding controversial questions from university debate? The chapter examines academic freedom, free speech and democracy in a pedagogical perspective, in search of a clear mission of universities in these uncertain times.

Uncoddling the American Mind: The Educational Ask of Trigger Warnings

Philosophy of Education , 2020

Over the last few years there has been growing attention to the work of schools-be it primary, secondary, or tertiary-as they provide (or fail to provide) students an education that is safe and inclusive. The rise of "safe spaces" and the development of practices that attend to the diverse student body have led to a veritable explosion of research, opinions, and debates about the contemporary state of education and its subjects. A central concept within this conversation is the rise of and request for trigger warnings. The "trigger warning"-a request for a pre-emptive warning about difficult material that could trigger past trauma-has often come to act as a stand-in that represents the larger fragile new world that places of learning have supposedly become. Students, within this context, have become snowflakes while faculty have become frightened of, or resistant to, students. However, rather than bemoan the rise of trigger warnings, so often done in op-ed pages and other journalistic sites, I argue that the request for trigger warnings by students represents an important educational ask. In this paper, I offer an argument that centralizes and unpacks the educational ask of trigger warnings, moving to the side of political and therapeutic discourses that have dominated how to receive the requests for trigger warnings.

Trigger warnings as respect for student boundaries in university classrooms

Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy

The fierce public and scholarly debate over trigger warnings in university classrooms has often characterized the issue as one of academic freedom and ignored the social justice arguments for trigger warnings. In this essay, we argue that trigger warnings expand academic speech by engaging students more fully in their own learning. Specifically, we understand trigger warnings as a means of respecting students' intellectual, emotional, and physical boundaries. By framing trigger warnings in this way, we argue that they are tools of worldmaking to the degree that they promise to improve accessibility, engage students better in learning, and cultivate more socially just and livable campuses.