­A good old RANT about an oft-misused phrase

Today I would like to articulate something, try to make something clear, crystal clear, because I am so very weary of the asinine commentary surrounding the whole concept of “trigger-warning” in educational spaces. The most misguided comments, mainly around how “political correctness” (what that is even supposed to mean is entirely dependent on who’s speaking) is “silencing” people, are most often uttered by people who don’t spend any time in classrooms, so there we are. But still. MAY I PLEASE PRESENT AN ACTUAL EXAMPLE OF TRIGGER WARNING:

Today in my college classroom I am showing a video about conflict in the workplace. The opening screen says: “Including moving childbirth scene!” There is no such scene in the video: it’s a joke involving a teddy bear (whatever, long story). So. There is a student in my class who experienced a stillbirth last year and is just recently opening up about it, and is very raw. So I go to her beforehand and quietly say “Listen. There is no childbirth scene in the video; the title screen is a joke, don’t worry.”

And what does this enable her to do? It enables her to watch the video without freaking out, without a churning gut waiting for “it”, thinking she’s going to have to deal with seeing it, to watch it without the hissing drones of cortisol drowning out reality. It allows her to stay present to learning about workplace conflict, which is after all the lesson’s topic, without being fixated on her own state of being (such fixation, and its attendant fight/flight/freeze reflexes, is rightly called being triggered).

So. Trigger warning is about being mindful and tender and choosing how we communicate. It’s about being attuned to how very powerful words and images can be – how they have the power to shut people down and scare them out of classrooms and away from learning.

Trigger warning is not: “We can’t read this text”; that would be a crime against education and against language (I do realize there are some maddeningly extreme examples of shutting down classic texts out there; it’s just I can only rant about one thing at a time). It is: “Hey, this text uses the n-word. Let’s name that and discuss it in advance of reading it so the Black students (and everyone else!) in the room are reminded of the scholarly context and assured that the teacher/institution isn’t underwriting this language”. I don’t know, school just seems like a natural place to sort of… talk about things, sometimes hard things, and sometimes even explosive things. And to do so with intention.

Heather Lash 2017

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