You Couldn’t Make It Up

GrannyGravy13

Should A.A.Milnes’ Winnie the Pooh books have a disclaimer as Ee-ore is a manic depressive?

Just depressive I’d have thought

They'll not be wanting to play their computer games -

Warning: contains hunting & shooting.

I think it comes from the dreaded litigation fear.~The universities are not taking any chances.

I think this is just another case of people taking offence on behalf or others who are probably not bothered. Great fodder for the enraged readers of the Daily Mail too!

MaizieD

^BTW - the students voted for it. They asked for it.^

Which students asked for it, Alegrias?

Was it the entire student body?

Was it a student representative body that had canvassed the entire student body and taken a vote on it?

Was it a small 'interest group'?

I'm just wondering how they are gong to cope with contemporary fiction once they leave Uni? Some of it is horrific... Or perhaps they'll just never open a book again?

Contrary to the opinion of someone here MaizieD I'm neither familiar nor responsible for every decision taken everywhere in Scotland. I'd not heard about this before but I took to the website of the venerable P&J for some accurate reporting.

www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/aberdeen-aberdeenshire/3602709/students-at-aberdeen-university-vote-for-trigger-warnings-in-lectures-2/

My guilty pleasure is Gogglebox. I'm always a bit aghast at the warnings that you get before it starts. However I don't use it as a excuse to have a good laugh at people and think they are snowflakes.

They can’t be protected in the real world

Sarnia

It gets worse, doesn't it? When you think of some of the violent computer games this age group happily play, it makes no sense to me.

Now that is the most sensible take on this ridiculous obsession with 'safe guarding'!

I’m glad about the warning re Kidnapped. It could come as a terrible shock to some that it isn’t about a sleeping child.

Contrary to the opinion of someone here MaizieD

Who is this someone, Alegrias?
Or did you mean some on here ?
I’m not aware of anybody charging you with the responsibility for bonkers decisions made by academic institutions North or South of the Border.
But if you want to be their mouthpiece………

No xenophobia on my part either
Born and brought up in Scotland, my education including my degree was entirely in Scotland
Unless I am mistaken, a similar accusation was made about Cambridge.
Laughing at students ?
No laughing (or shaking head sorrowfully) at students, but at “those and such as those”, presumably highly educated, but clearly lacking in common sense,

I am more concerned on the effect present day twenty four seven violence shown on TV is 'having on those referred to as suffering a nervous disposition than books written years plus years ago.

Trigger warning :

Please be aware that many on GN take instant exception to anything you write and believe that it is most definitely aimed at them. Please be aware if someone uses the word xenophobia many will immediately assume that it was intended for them. Please be aware that many members of GN will make comic comments about you if you think people should be warned about things that might upset them. Please be aware that there is always a possibility of levity when students or academics are mentioned.

Yes MayBeMaw you are correct, typo. Some on

So it’s not official yet then? Just a Students Union thing
My gut feeling is it’s a bit OTT especially when the clue is in the title !

Alegrias1

I knew as soon as I typed angry someone would come along and say they weren't angry...

OK then - why does this make everyone think its OK to make fun of students?

It isn't the students that everyone is making fun of! It is those who haven't looked very closely at the students in their courses. They have left school (where they found out, sometimes at firsthand, all about bullying, the facts of life including the pervy ones and how to avoid adults keen to "get to know them better", and drinking, smoking, drugs and drug-pushers.) and have embarked on refresher courses in all these things, plus they are now "adults".

They are old enough to vote, drink legally, have sex and subsequently babies and/or STDs, get married or move in together, and make decisions about their present and future lives. They are studying specialised subjects which they will use in their careers and theoretical ones on which they will build their philosophies of life (if they are of a thoughtful bent) or which will indirectly influence them (if they tend to act first and think afterwards)

So how are they being treated? Like helpless infants just lifted from their cots, who have never ever thought or read about seduction, rape, kidnap, bullying, violence, death, war and balancing budgets, let alone had experience of at least one of those and heard in-person accounts of several others.

I like that younger generations are being shown kindness, consideration and empathy. That seems to have been missing before. It gives me hope for the future.

Great post Elegran. It's ridiculous.

I think the school curriculum board forgot to mentally prepare us 14 year olds about the trauma we could suffer when we were taught all about the MacBeth book in our English literature class. If I remember correctly our patient teacher took a lot of time deciphering many words as it was written a long time ago.
I am joking about the trauma we were in school had English lessons and the teachers just got on with that. There was a lot about planning the murder in the book and then carrying it out I quite enjoyed the book.

Ro60

That's Humpty Dumpty out then. In fact most traditional nursery rhymes. ?
I don't think I'm poking fun at the students, more the University staff who spent time/money implementing this.

One way to get the students to read the classics though. ? They probably think it's hilarious too.

I've always been so upset about Humpty Dumpty and the fact he couldn't be put back together again
Still, he was a dangerous weapon so should be banned.

Poor Jack - split his head open just fetching water, don't sing that one, little tots may be too scared to climb a hill (anyway, it's nonsense as the well would be at the bottom of the hill, wouldn't it?).

Elegran

Alegrias1

I knew as soon as I typed angry someone would come along and say they weren't angry...

OK then - why does this make everyone think its OK to make fun of students?

It isn't the students that everyone is making fun of! It is those who haven't looked very closely at the students in their courses. They have left school (where they found out, sometimes at firsthand, all about bullying, the facts of life including the pervy ones and how to avoid adults keen to "get to know them better", and drinking, smoking, drugs and drug-pushers.) and have embarked on refresher courses in all these things, plus they are now "adults".

They are old enough to vote, drink legally, have sex and subsequently babies and/or STDs, get married or move in together, and make decisions about their present and future lives. They are studying specialised subjects which they will use in their careers and theoretical ones on which they will build their philosophies of life (if they are of a thoughtful bent) or which will indirectly influence them (if they tend to act first and think afterwards)

So how are they being treated? Like helpless infants just lifted from their cots, who have never ever thought or read about seduction, rape, kidnap, bullying, violence, death, war and balancing budgets, let alone had experience of at least one of those and heard in-person accounts of several others.

And yet, the request was initiated by the students. ?

No conclusion unjumped.

Doodledog

What is the context of the warning? If the students are volunteering to teach English to refugees, for instance, it might make sense to warn them about content that could be upsetting to readers.

It’s difficult to know what to think without knowledge of the context- I can’t believe that there are stickers on copies of these books in the library.

DD teaches English to refugees but I think she tends to stick to the practicalities of everyday life rather than Shakespeare.

Kindness, consideration and empathy can be shown without the condescension of treating them as though they couldn't use their own brains. The books they will encounter on a course of English (or any language) literature are guaranteed to be about all the thoughts, emotions, experiences and sufferings that the authors had met or imagined and recorded. If they started on the course without being aware of that, or that some of those experiences might not be pleasant ones, they must have been living in a glass box for the last 18 years.

Nobody actually bothers reading the links, do they?

The ones that say the students' representative body asked for it to happen.

The ones that say no book is off the agenda.

The ones that say they are trying to prepare people for things they might read that might be upsetting.

No no, stop being so soft, be an adult, you'll be fine.

annodomini

*MayBeMaw*, All I can think of in Jane Austen's work might be in Pride and Prejudice: Lydia's elopement - under-age sex.

I think that promotion the white upper class patriarchy is rampant...

So one may assume these students
Won't have been watching many of the recent Netflix series,
The Walking Dead springs to mind and even Game of Thrones

Petera

annodomini

MayBeMaw, All I can think of in Jane Austen's work might be in Pride and Prejudice: Lydia's elopement - under-age sex.

I think that promotion the white upper class patriarchy is rampant...

Isn't that the whole point of reading this literature - to discuss it, the era in which it was written, the mores of the time, to explore ideas?

A Tale of Two Cities (my version)

I went to Paris once. I fell in love, he broke my heart, well it was more of a dent really but I've never forgotten him. Came home and lived in London.

The End.

And yet, the request was initiated by the students. ?

No conclusion unjumped

As their self-styled apologist * Alegrias* why bring in the notion of xenophobia into it at all and not just admit that maybe some young people in their late teens need to put their big person knickers on and face up to a literary representation of a past age which is infinitely less shocking than Game of Thrones, any x-rated film and the vast majority of computer games.
It is just bonkers though.