Even Even though the uninitiated could guess that Robert Louis Stevenson’s book Kidnapped contains an abduction, professors cautioned students that it ‘contains images of murder, death, and betrayal’.
The so-called trigger warning was issued by the University of Aberdeen, which also told students that Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar – written more than 400 years ago and set in 44 BC – features ‘sexist attitudes’ and has a plot that ‘centres on a murder’.
A warning was issued about Charles Dickens’s French Revolution novel A Tale Of Two Cities. It famously featured the guillotine and contains scenes of violence executions and death.
Aberdeen University has warned undergraduates that Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Kidnapped “contains depictions of death, murder, and family betrayal.”
Documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday under Freedom of Information legislation show the university, which was rated 158th in the recent Times Higher Education World University Rankings, is urging its teaching staff to draw up trigger warnings for literary classics – despite admitting there is no conclusive evidence that they serve any useful purpose.
According to the university, lecturers were told by students that warnings about potentially emotionally-dangerous and distressing novels, plays, or poems was a preferred option.
According to the staff guideline, ‘Consideration must be given each element of the course regardless of its historical period, fictional setting or medium.
The article states that you should be cautious and not hesitate to warn others about things they may overlook.
However, it acknowledges that there is no scientific proof to support the use of trigger warnings. Universities use trigger warnings for extreme violence and explicit sexual sex.
Critics claim that warnings helped create a generation of “snowflakes” who are unable to deal with life’s complexities.
Andrew Bridgen, Tory MP and last night’s comment was that the University of Aberdeen had gone too far with the trigger warnings regarding literary masterpieces.
Jane Austen’s Persuasion warns that there is ‘romanticized idea of military service within the Napoleonic Wars’. A Midsummer Night’s Dream cautions it contains’misogyny’.
Is it possible for students to read or watch the news live, given this? Are they to wrap themselves in cotton wool from a misguided, but possibly well-meaning institution?
According to the MoS, last week the University of Warwick even changed the expression ‘trigger Warnings’ by ‘content Notes’ as it is less ‘provocative’.
Aberdeen prefers to use the term “content warning” and has compiled a long list of subjects it considers offensive or potentially harmful for students. These topics include childbirth, miscarriage and abortion, depictions and entitlement of poverty and classism as well as scenes that feature blasphemy and adultery as well as blood, alcohol, and drug abuse.
Students have received instructions that they are allowed to leave lectures “without penalty” if the topics are not too disturbing.
This warning was also sent to five additional Shakespeare plays, and two Jane Austen books.
One spokesperson stated that while it was important that students be exposed to complex material, they also need to feel supported to do so.
Lancaster University warns students studying gothic literature about the dangers of this type of writing.
Its School of English Literature and Creative Writing has also applied warnings to classic films – Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window comes with a warning of ‘sexist representations of women’.
One spokesperson said that they take into consideration the negative impact texts sometimes have on readers.