Ugh. Wife is watching Dateline

Kids can't just "turn it off". A determined bully is going to follow you anywhere you go online and it isn't even that hard. When you are getting it from school, your instagram, your twitter, your youtube, your cell phone texts, etc. etc., you can't just tell kids "don't go online". A little bit of google, a couple bucks online, and some common acquaintances and I could follow any one of you anywhere you went on the internet. It would be the same thing in your day if an adult told you "just don't go outside! Stay in your house and nobody can bully you!" And the bully is literally waiting on your sidewalk hoping that you venture out. "Just toughen up" is going to lead to more mass killings.

I also don't buy into the "we're raising a generation of pansies thing". I think it's a bunch of old man yells at cloud bullshit and I think it's been said for every generation since the beginning of man.
 
Alex W said:
Kids can't just "turn it off". A determined bully is going to follow you anywhere you go online and it isn't even that hard. When you are getting it from school, your instagram, your twitter, your youtube, your cell phone texts, etc. etc., you can't just tell kids "don't go online". A little bit of google, a couple bucks online, and some common acquaintances and I could follow any one of you anywhere you went on the internet. It would be the same thing in your day if an adult told you "just don't go outside! Stay in your house and nobody can bully you!" And the bully is literally waiting on your sidewalk hoping that you venture out. "Just toughen up" is going to lead to more mass killings.
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This part, yes.
Alex W said:
I also don't buy into the "we're raising a generation of pansies thing". I think it's a bunch of old man yells at cloud bullshit and I think it's been said for every generation since the beginning of man.
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This part I disagree with. We give kids trophies and awards for existing instead of winning. Kids don't fail at school anymore, not because the teacher helps them improve, but because the teacher can no longer grade that way and people freak out about red marking pens. It's beaten the spirit of improvement out of kids. Kids that misbehave are either ignored or drugged into submission. It's really sad.
 
BlackCat said:
I happened to see a news item recently where collage students were demanding trigger warnings on their course syllabi. Well I'm an old bastard so I had to look up trigger warning. Apparently it's a warning that the material may be upsetting to some people.
My mind is officially boggled.
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GilmourD said:
That's just being a bunch of pansies.
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I wouldn't presume to know whether either of you has ever been diagnosed with PTSD. I haven't. But I understand that if you have been, then you would probably appreciate trigger warnings.
 
jaxn slim said:
I wouldn't presume to know whether either of you has ever been diagnosed with PTSD. I haven't. But I understand that if you have been, then you would probably appreciate trigger warnings.
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PTSD is one thing, and is quite valid. However, what we're talking about here are kids in COLLEGE that are like "OH, NO!!! YOU MEAN SOMEBODY DIES IN A SHAKESPEARE PLAY!?!?!? OMG!!! I NEED TO SEE MY SHRINK!!!"

Now, on a similar note, had my wife and I known that the dad in Big Hero 6 died in an explosion, we probably wouldn't have let our five-year-old watch it. Now he's a bit freaked out by that. But he's a five-year-old, not a college kid.
 
GilmourD said:
PTSD is one thing, and is quite valid. However, what we're talking about here are kids in COLLEGE that are like "OH, NO!!! YOU MEAN SOMEBODY DIES IN A SHAKESPEARE PLAY!?!?!? OMG!!! I NEED TO SEE MY SHRINK!!!"

Now, on a similar note, had my wife and I known that the dad in Big Hero 6 died in an explosion, we probably wouldn't have let our five-year-old watch it. Now he's a bit freaked out by that. But he's a five-year-old, not a college kid.
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Is that how trigger warnings actually came about? I understood it was more associated with PTSD.
 
jaxn slim said:
Is that how trigger warnings actually came about? I understood it was more associated with PTSD.
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From http://www.newrepublic.com/article/...s-have-spread-blogs-college-classes-thats-bad:
On college campuses across the country, a growing number of students are demanding trigger warnings on class content. Many instructors are obliging with alerts in handouts and before presentations, even emailing notes of caution ahead of class. At Scripps College, lecturers give warnings before presenting a core curriculum class, the “Histories of the Present: Violence," although some have questioned the value of such alerts when students are still required to attend class. Oberlin College has published an official document on triggers, advising faculty members to "be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression," to remove triggering material when it doesn't "directly" contribute to learning goals and "strongly consider" developing a policy to make "triggering material" optional. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, it states, is a novel that may "trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide and more." Warnings have been proposed even for books long considered suitable material for high-schoolers: Last month, a Rutgers University sophomore suggested that an alert for F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby say, "TW: suicide, domestic abuse and graphic violence."
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Also, from http://www.aaup.org/report/trigger-warnings:
A current threat to academic freedom in the classroom comes from a demand that teachers provide warnings in advance if assigned material contains anything that might trigger difficult emotional responses for students. This follows from earlier calls not to offend students’ sensibilities by introducing material that challenges their values and beliefs. The specific call for “trigger warnings” began in the blogosphere as a caution about graphic descriptions of rape on feminist sites, and has now migrated to university campuses in the form of requirements or proposals that students be alerted to all manner of topics that some believe may deeply offend and even set off a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) response in some individuals. Oberlin College’s original policy (since tabled to allow for further debate in the face of faculty opposition) is an example of the range of possible trigger topics: “racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression.” It went on to say that a novel like Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart might “trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide and more.” It further cautioned faculty to “[r]emove triggering material when it does not contribute directly to the course learning goals.”

As one report noted, at Wellesley College students objected to "a sculpture of a man in his underwear because it might be a source of 'triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault.' While the [students’] petition acknowledged that the sculpture might not disturb everyone on campus, it insisted that we share a 'responsibility to pay attention to and attempt to answer the needs of all of our community members.' Even after the artist explained that the figure was supposed to be sleepwalking, students continued to insist it be moved indoors."*
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The bold/underlining is mine.

EDIT: To add about Shakespeare, since my hyperbole above was about Shakespeare.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/20/opinion/perry-trigger-warning-label-for-shakespeare/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/us/warning-the-literary-canon-could-make-students-squirm.html?_r=0

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121790/life-triggering-best-literature-should-be-too

http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...-books-are-ones-who-need-them-most-ian-tuttle

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB11871130314313103897904581072491560572586
 
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jaxn slim said:
Ok. Yeah. I see where you are coming from. Looks like something that might have been valid in the beginning but has been hijacked and taken to levels of absurdity.
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Yeah, it's one thing to say "Hey, this [insert whatever material] contains [stuff that might make you feel funny]. But this is life. Deal with it."

It's bad enough that my wife (who teaches at and works otherwise for a college) has to deal with the parents of students that are 18+ on a constant basis but now we have to protect and coddle them from history and stories about real life? C'mon.

I totally understand PTSD... I might not really have it, but I still get bugged out every time I hear a fire truck since my house fire in April, and I was dropping off the kids in the pool at work when my landscaper set off the fire alarms in my facility (there I am, sitting on the can, with fire alarm flashing in my face). I wouldn't want to imagine what soldiers and people who have been through horrible trauma feel like.

But we're not talking about people that have gone through trauma. We're talking about kids (who are really legal adults in college) that have grown up in the suburbs living a middle-class or better life, and they don't want to read shit because it'll make them sad. Boo fucking hoo, Little Jimmy. Buck up. Life is sad sometimes. But how do you know you're happy if you don't have some sadness to compare it to?
 
I wish I could be more sympathetic, but I've never met anyone who ever thought school was a dreamy vacation. Even popular kids get shit and deal with their own special social pressures. Coddling makes them worse.

Buck up Little Timmy. Welcome to life.
 
How about a bit of effective parenting: your kid bullies another kid, have a candid conversation, take away the cell phone, Internet access at home, and ground the bully?

If the new-age approach doesn't work, whoop that adze. CPS comes a callin', let that strike fear in the bully: "you think you can do a better job teachin' why not to bully, be my guest."
 
I remember my dad telling me that his school didn't have bullies. A couple of kids tried, and the rest of the classes male students would all get together and beat the crap out of the bully.

That method of problem solving probably wouldn't go over so well in todays society.
 
The problem with the 'just unplug' solution is that while the kid may not then see the bully's post......every single one of his or her friends/enemies/acquaintances will see them for sure and everyone will be talking about it at school the next day. The ability to use photoshop to make embarrassing photos or drop stuff into a youtube video and post it on Twitter, instagram, ect just makes it easy to do devastating to people from a distance. It takes different tactics to deal with now - though sometimes a good old fashioned ass whooping is called for. Or contacting the police when stuff steps over the line into threats of harm.
 
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