You Couldn’t Make It Up

Having studied in Aberdeen this has me cringing!

We lived in a paper bag in't middle of't road and we were grateful for it.

The millenials are the most pampered, spoilt snowflakes that have ever been born. Warning signs on classic novels. What next! Young people are pathetic wimps. How would they have gone on in my dad's day? He was born in 1925, no NHS, forced to leave school at 14, conscripted to WW2 at 18, and turned down for a war pension when he had a tropical fever that left him with permanent intestinal damager. Young people need to get in the real world

Gwyneth

So will the students need counselling before hand to emotionally prepare? Will the University be providing this?

Not in the report I read, but maybe the one you saw had more detail? If someone was feeling raw enough to need counselling, however, that is usually provided by the welfare department of universities, and the cost is covered by a combination of student fees and HEFCE funding (in England, and equivalent funding bodies in the other home countries).

I assume it's just so they don't find themselves in a room full of others, reading about (eg) details of a death from cancer and reminded of their mother dying in the same way - that sort of thing. I'm not a fluffy bunny by anyone's standards, but I don't think it's being particularly over-sensitive to let someone know in advance that the content might be upsetting, so that they can prepare.

Anyone know whether the Dept. of History is to conform to the same guidelines?

They will have one heck of a problem with the French and Russian revolutions, the rise to power of one Adolf Hitler, Hitler Jugend, Kristalnacht and Treblinka, Neuengamme etc. etc. won't they?

Maw - Lydia Bennet elopes and lives with Wickenham before thy are married, and Georgianna Darcy had agreed earlier to elope with that ne'er-do-well. Maria Betram has an affair as a married woman with Henry Crawford, so I suspect the University of Aberdeen is concerned more with students' morals than mental health. The same university refused to put up a vending machine selling condoms in or around 1975 when I had old school friends studying there, as they , the Provost and Deans, felt that selling those articles would be tantamount to encouraging promiscuous behaviour ! Oh, the Presbyterian conscience!

As a child I found Treasure Island more harrowing than Kidnapped, I must say, and yes, the title of a book ought to tell you what it is about,and R.L. Stevenson's actually do so.

The girls' school responsible for my secondary education in the early 1970s used Bowderlised versions of Shakespeare's plays, the Latin curriculum was utterly devoid of anything that remotely touched on the erotic, and what is described in the French Lieutenant's Woman as and inexplicable error in taste in Holy Writ, namely the Song of Songs wasn't read at all.

But by all accounts we were minors - university students are legally adults as most if not all will be over 18, so no, you couldn't make this up and be believed could you?

Crazy!???

vegansrock

Some people on here are so gullible they believe everything they read / hear on Facebook without a question. There is also such a lack of empathy or sensitivity concerning genuine issues some may have. You may have all grown up with Enid Blyton but kids these days are exposed to so much explicit and dangerous material that surely we should be made aware of this?

I read Lorna Doone aged 8 or younger. I did skip some of it, but it was the longest convoluted sentences, not the account of climbing up a near-vertical waterfall, or fighting the Doone brigands, or Lorna being shot by Carver Doone on her wedding day, or JCarver Doone being sucked into the marsh.

Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee

Apparently Misomer Murders might have mild violence!! Don't get me started on Talking Pictures. If you're watching a show from 70s 80s it's going to have views not condusive with todays wokery

So will the students need counselling before hand to emotionally prepare? Will the University be providing this?

The following are quotes from the VP of the SU at Aberdeen University:
This policy does not stop the university from talking about these subjects.

It just calls on it to better safeguard students by presenting content warnings and provide a list of resources when needed.

Students are still going to be exposed to all the material, they will just be aware of what they can expect and prepare emotionally.

We all need to be more accepting and aware of people surrounding us and their experiences and protect each other.

And this one is from UCU's Scotland official representative:
This is being reviewed but is still in very early-stage discussions and no decisions have been made at this stage.

So nobody is saying that the students will no longer study the texts in their entirety - just that they will be prepared in advance about the subject matter.

I have no issue with that, and don't fear for the quality of their education, so long as they are still taught to look at the whole context of something before forming a one-sided opinion.

The fact is that much of great Literature is disturbing and upsetting - shocking even, to a greater or lesser degree.

Who can forget the murder of Nancy by Sikes in Oliver Twist, where he bludgeons her again and again, even after she's dead? I remember being shocked by the sheer violence.

I read some of the French classics when I was a teen - real eye openers.

Modern literature can be equally disturbing, can it not?

Perhaps instead of highlighting particular events or scenarios it would be a better idea to simply warn that Literature will contain descriptions of violence, rape, abduction, misogyny, and that it will recount unsettling historical events (Zola - Dreyfus), "which some readers may find disturbing".

You cannot expect every work to be scrutinised for what might upset or offend someone. There are simply too many possibilities.

Art - Literature, by their very nature, are works that will rouse the emotions and challenge the mind - and present us with scenarios we might find outdated, uncomfortable, alarming or even frightening. If you are going to study Literature, you just have to be aware of this.

Lucca

Harmonypuss

I've not read the whole thread so apologies if someone has already said this.

Taking the "starting bleeding obvious" thing further,

A bag of pants has a warning "May contain nuts" - well, I should damned well hope so!

It was funnier before, specially if they were men’s pants

This one!

The quote facility doesn't carry over from one page to another seemingly.

Oops!!
I wasn't laughing at the last post on here.

Thought I'd quoted a post about nuts
Apologies

???

katy1950

Double standards once again poor little darlings who will be upset by words but will happily play very violent games on their phones

Do you have some sort of special insight into what every young person does or have you consider that young people are not all the same and don't like the same things?

BTW video games have very clear age ratings and warnings for content

Harmonypuss ??? Brlliant!

You couldn't make it up - definitely not ???

Harmonypuss

I've not read the whole thread so apologies if someone has already said this.

Taking the "starting bleeding obvious" thing further,

A bag of pants has a warning "May contain nuts" - well, I should damned well hope so!

It was funnier before, specially if they were men’s pants

Double standards once again poor little darlings who will be upset by words but will happily play very violent games on their phones

Sorry, bloody predictive text and me being too lazy to proofread before hitting post....

A bag of peanuts, not a bag of pants!

I've not read the whole thread so apologies if someone has already said this.

Taking the "starting bleeding obvious" thing further,

A bag of pants has a warning "May contain nuts" - well, I should damned well hope so!

That’s what we need - another war! That’ll sort them out.

All those 18/19/20/21 year olds who massed in the trenches……. climbed aboard their ships….. and sat in their planes , while the enemy threw everything it could at them!!! Did they get a warning that their ‘sensitivities’ were in danger. Let’s hope this country never has to fight another war…..