I wrote a previous article on safe spaces and what triggers mean to millennials, and in the article I touched upon the belief of not allowing trigger warnings to completely censor or take away from a lesson plan or the class material.
It's important for people to feel safe in a classroom and never fear the onset of PTSD or traumatic memories because of a material covered in an academic setting. This being said, it's also very important academic freedom to be protected as well as the preservation of the integrity of the classroom.
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A close friend of mine was explaining in her psychology class, her professor brought up material that was both pertinent and relevant to the subject at hand, yet could not show nor present it to the class because the dean thought it had too many swear words in it.
Listen to us, as adults and students trying to soak up as much knowledge and experience before falling into the realm of reality outside our college bubble: stop censoring our education.
Swears don't bother us. Profanities won't damage our purity. Curses won't damage the level of our intellect.
We are all imperfect, flawed humans and our mouths mirror that. We say dirty things, pretty things, dumb things, intelligent things. We say things we shouldn't; we say things that we absolutely should. We keep our mouths open at inappropriate times and fail to speak when our mouth should not be shut. Humanity is so raw and messy and censoring this fails to reflect the nature of how we function in this world.
If there is a piece impassioned with rhetoric that's not exactly... eloquent, it will not somehow ruin or hurt my literacy or my cognitive ability. As a writer and a poet, I can genuinely appreciate a beautifully articulate piece. It promotes literature and a sophisticated tongue. However, as a poet and a writer, some of my best and favorite pieces are the ones that are dirty, raw, and filled with profanities and muddy, simple words. It exposes the gritty underbelly of humanity and all the dirt under our nails. The rough language and brokenness of grammar -- the near illiteracy of it reveals the blips and flaws of life.
I don't want my education to be polished; it doesn't need to smoothed over to portray a perception of reality that is closer to a utopia than this sloppy world we live in. We are paying thousands of dollars to be educated in a way that will best prepare us for the world we embrace outside the gates of the college. I don't, and we don't, want to be censored from harsh realities or else we'll suffer from shock.
We want an education to prepare us for the imperfect, messy, insane world we live in. We are imperfect, messy, insane people and we can't possibly protect ourselves from every scratchy word or inappropriate notion -- we simply won't function in a society educated by glossy ideals.
We're giving you our money to teach us how to be the best kind of adults in a nation incredibly divided, in a world separated by turmoil -- a world constantly spinning and changing. Curse words aren't going to stop us.
Swears aren't going to hurt the growth of my brain nor my ability to be a professional so please, let me read the freaking article and play the damn video, professor.
