Global Crisis

I like this Jonathan Rees post about rules for online teaching. At Dominican, we've had many conversations about how to teach online while preserving our relationship-centered mentality. Rees is, similarly, thinking about how to make online teaching more than just a different delivery system.

The Trigger Warning debate is back. Did it ever really go away?

Here's my new piece of the argument: Trigger Warnings preserve access to offensive content that, nevertheless, has educational value.

A year ago I wrote this piece for CNN in the context of the TW discussion. I argued that best practices for teaching any content requires preparation or "scaffolding," and good scaffolding would cover many of the functions of what students are asking for in trigger warnings. I continue to argue that "content notes" is a more useful pedagogical context.

Here's an excellent essay by a TW-skeptic, Sarah Marian Seltzer, who interviewed teachers and was persuaded by their methodology. She writes:

Educators who choose to utilize these warnings in their classrooms often see more nuance in the issue. “We have to take [students demanding trigger warnings] seriously… because being more acutely aware of how students are responding to challenging material is just better and more responsible pedagogy,” wrote Aaron R. Hanlon last week. Faculty in this camp say that they’re committed to academic and intellectual freedom, but also to honoring students’ experiences, in particular the often silent presence of rape survivors — a trauma-prone group — among the college-aged population. Rather than debating whether to teach troubling material, as much of the anti-trigger warning contingent fears, they say they’ve moved on to asking how to do so in a respectful way.

So that's good and very much in line with my own approach. I especially liked this:

“Trigger warnings allow me to have a conversation, to say, ‘This is not a class about your personal life,’” Heldman told me. “This actually helps to make the class more academic. And it has the benefit of letting students prepare for what might come.”

This is very much my experience. I teach all kinds of difficult texts - stories of massacre, anti-Jewish polemic, Inquisition trials, anti-Latin polemic (Byzantium). Because I'm a medievalist, it's less directly emotionally affecting than if I taught the Holocaust, or say 20th-century American popular culture. Still, the pre-conversation about what we're going to read provides a framework for students to respond to potentially upsetting material. There are no spoilers in the history of the First Crusade.

Last August, I wrote about the need for a content note in This American Life's re-broadcast of a David Sedaris piece, one filled with jokes about the intellectually disabled. TAL uses content notes when they talk about sex and racism, but not for other kinds of troubling material, and that bothered me. Moreover, I suggest it should bother them, too, because without content notes, such pieces all go the way of "Little Black Sambo."

The trigger warning, therefore, emerges as a pathway towards preserving content, preserving material as its language ages our of the mainstream into the widely and wildly offensive. Because without the trigger warning, well, then I have to advocate that this never be aired again.

Norms change. Studying changing norms or just previous eras requires engaging with material that is offensive. Content notes are a way to say - I recognize the problem, here's why we're reading/discussing/viewing this, and let's go learn something.

Trigger Warnings are about keeping material in the curriculum, not banning it. Embrace them.

Lately I've been having lots of conversations about norms, code-switching, professionalization, and what our job is as teachers to model and suggest. I've written on the blog about code-switching as a skill that my students generally lack and that I think is useful for them. Others have countered, though, saying we should focus on changing norms rather than forcing conformity, a message I endorse and yet ... how do I tell one of my students that they should be the one to make that change?

I don't have any answers today, but thanks to a piece I first saw from Eric Grollman, have more grist for the mill.

In Huffington Post, Jacob Tobia writes about professionalism in, "Why I am genderqueer, professional, and unafraid." He writes:

Professionalism is a funny term, because it masquerades as neutral despite being loaded with immense oppression. As a concept, professionalism is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, imperialist and so much more -- and yet people act like professionalism is non-political. Bosses across the country constantly tell their employees to 'act professionally' without a second thought. Wear a garment that represents your non-Western culture to work? Your boss may tell you it's unprofessional. Wear your hair in braids or dreadlocks instead of straightened? That's probably unprofessional too. Wear shoes that are slightly scuffed because you can't yet afford new ones? People may not think you're being professional either.

Tobia, as it turns out, is wearing dresses, heels, and makeup. Read more of his story at the link.

I just think this is a very clear articulation with the problem of professionalism, but I still feel like I should teach my students to be able to code-switch, as it will help them. I do not have a solution to this conundrum.

My friend Jenn, when discussing this on Facebook, also linked to this useful piece on US Military hairstyles and the reactions of African-American women. The army has come out with new guidelines, many of which do not accomodate non-white non-straight hair. Here's the line that I thought was important:

In a written statement, the army said: "The intention of uniform policies is to ensure soldiers' appearance reflects the highest level of professionalism.
"None of the new standards, whether pertaining to tattoos, grooming, jewellery, etc, are designed to discriminate against any gender, race, or ethnic background."

I'm sure this is true. I'm sure they weren't designed to discriminate. But they still discriminate.

And here, because African-American women make up a substantial number of our service-women, it looks like instead of forcing soldier to confirm, codes are being switched to accommodate difference.

The backlash led the Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to call for a policy review at the end of April, giving military leaders three months to evaluate comprehensive regulations as they pertain to black women.

None of this lets me know what I should do in the classroom in terms of teaching and modeling code-switching. I still think it's useful. I still think it's oppressive. Any thoughts?

The issue of trigger warnings in the classroom, whether they are useful, attack academic freedom, are to protect our helicopter-parented elite students, or what, has become a fairly important topic in higher ed circles. I'm writing an essay on it now.

Here is a list of resources. Please recommend additional materials.

• Start with Amanda Marcotte (one of my absolute favorite feminist writers) on "The Year of the Trigger Warning." It's from the end of 2013, which suggests that the mainstreaming of trigger-warning is, in fact, relatively new. I always wonder if I've just missed it when a new idea suddenly seems everywhere to me, as the "TW" discussion now does.

• Marcotte links to this essay from Shakesville: "How Do Trigger Warnings Fit Into the Classroom Lesson Plan?" by Ruxandra Looft. It's a series of questions. They are good questions.

But what happens when a student is trapped in a classroom where a discussion brings up terrible and traumatic memories? How can a student easily and subtly remove herself from that moment?

I have thought about prefacing our discussions with a trigger warning introduction to the class but I question how effective that would be. By saying that we are going to discuss topics of a sensitive nature that may make some people uncomfortable and offering students the chance to leave, aren't the very students meant to be spared then singled out and isolated in front of the entire class? While well intentioned, that offer seems useless at best and marginalizing at worst.

The other option? Steering clear of volatile topics in the classroom and playing it safe. But by not talking about harassment, the sorry state of gender equality, and the heroic efforts put forth by activists seems akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There has to be a better way. But how does one work trigger warnings into the classroom lesson plan? How does a teacher effectively and sensitively negotiate topics that require trigger warnings and how are escape options presented in a sensitive and appropriate manner to students whose past traumas follow them into the classroom?

That's what I have so far on the "origin" of the Trigger Warning - Higher Ed debate. You can also read these Shakesville threads for a general defense of Trigger Warnings: here and here.

Things changed when the media started covering student-driven efforts to mandate trigger warnings in syllabi.

• The earliest piece I have comes from March, in The New Republic. The author, Jenny Jarvie, culled lots of information from student newspapers. I'd be interested to know if anyone has anything earlier?

• Tressie McMillan Cottom, one of my favorite writers, added a piece the next day that linked the corporatization of the university to the trigger warning movement. 

• Scott McLemee, on Inside Higher Ed, worked through teaching a book about rape in the era of the trigger warning. I'm a little confused by this piece, as it seems to conclude that triggering trauma is real then says, nah, no need for warnings as they don't do much good. Am I reading it wrong?

• Meghan Daum made fun of the idea in the LA Times. No quicker way to lose me as a reader.

• Inside Higher Ed on Oberlin canceling its new policy after pushback.

• They were covered in the New York Times this weekend and picked up by other outlets.