The Benefits Of Trigger Warnings

There has been recent discussions of trigger warnings, a controversial issue has been whether it protects students or take away freedom of speech. Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that people can do or say, without any intent, which will end up offending other people. Students are starting to use the word “trigger warnings”, a word that first appeared on blogs and other online forums to alert people of content that contain sexual assault (Wilson). Universities are using them more on campuses and due to this, college students are calling out for professors to put trigger warnings on materials that can cause some kind of traumatic experience. Trigger warnings harm the ability of college professors to convey academic content
According to Medina, she states in her article, Warning: The Literary Canon Could Make Students Squirm that “trigger warnings stifle, rather than encourage, debate effectively censoring important texts” (Medina 90). Professors will not be able to teach America’s most important work of classical literature because trigger warnings will intrude and not let them talk about it. Classrooms would be boring because there will be no point in reading an important piece of literature without being able to debate and state your opinion. To read “a classic work with a warning label is to neutralize the author's intent” (Caution: offenses ahead). The author at the time of writing their book had no intentions of causing people with traumatic experiences because they wrote according to how the world was for them. The points of debate is not to harm anyone but it is a way to teach students how to listen to the other side. According to Bloomberg, he states in his article On the Repression of Free Expression “weighing arguments without prejudging them, and determining whether the other side might actually make some fair points” (Bloomberg). Learners need to realize that there will always be two sides in an argument and that both sides deserve to be heard without people judging them. Students cannot see America literature or any work as some kind of threat to their health or safety because
Universities who are allowing trigger warnings are teaching the students that the world will come with trigger warnings of its own which they know that is not true. They should instead “equip students to thrive in a world full of words and ideas that they cannot control” (Haidt and Lukianoff). There will be things in the real world that can and will upset some people, but that is the point of universities, to teach them how to confront these experiences. This can be painful, but according to Jon Overton states in his article Beware the Trigger Warning, “that’s the point: to expose yourself to new ideas and points of view” (Overton 99). Like that when they encounter someone who has a different point of view from them, they will know how to deal with it and not take it personally. Universities are teaching students’ vindictive protectiveness which “prepares them poorly for professional life” (Haidt and Lukianoff 45). According to Bloomberg, he states how if a student graduates with “ears and minds closed [then] the university has failed both the student and society” (Bloomberg 107). The student had been failed because they are not prepared for their future and society for giving them an unprepared adult. According to Haidt and Lukianoff, they state how the new generation that are