Trained Immaturity, or, the Problem with Reading

There are scenes in films, on television, on the internet, and in books, which can deeply disturb me. I have actually walked out of theaters, once less than ten minutes into a film, because the soundtrack accompanying killings made it impossible for me to stay. There are books I had to pause in the listening, often, before I could resume reading - one of those comes immediately to mind, Stephen King's novella Apt Pupil in his Different Seasons collection, another was Robert Daley's Prince of the City- because, yes, literature is a powerful thing.

Bailey Loverin, sophomore at the
University of California-Santa Barbara,
committed to "trained immaturity"
[Photo, The New York Times]

So I know, and you know that I know, what Oberlin College dean Meredith Raimondo is trying to say when she tells The New York Times, "I quite object to the argument of ‘Kids today need to toughen up. That absolutely misses the reality that we’re dealing with. We have students coming to us with serious issues, and we need to deal with that respectfully and seriously." But I know that dean Raimondo also completely misses the point when she suggests that - thus - all literature read on campus should come with "trigger warnings" about disturbing content.

Authors have a right to surprise and shock. We might even hope that they have a duty to surprise and shock. That's a duty which converts a simple "story" - the completely predictable world of, say, a Tom Clancy, into "literature," something which forces the reader to see the world anew.

"Should students about to read The Great Gatsby be forewarned about “a variety of scenes that reference gory, abusive and misogynistic violence,” as one Rutgers student proposed? Would any book that addresses racism — like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or Things Fall Apart — have to be preceded by a note of caution? Do sexual images from Greek mythology need to come with a viewer-beware label?

"Colleges across the country this spring have been wrestling with student requests for what are known as “trigger warnings,” explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans.

"The warnings, which have their ideological roots in feminist thought, have gained the most traction at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where the student government formally called for them. But there have been similar requests from students at Oberlin College, Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, George Washington University and other schools." (The New York Times)

A variety of issues collide here. Feminist Theory collides (perhaps) with Queer Theory and Disability Studies. The norms of Social Media collide with the purpose of the university. Individualism (and maybe Reader Response Theory) collides with the purpose and intent of literature and its authors. Attempting to become an adult collides with the contemporary American middle class/upper class norm of the prolonged childhood. Community Rights collide with Individual Preference.

"Trigger warnings, which originally started in online feminist and activist spaces as a way to warn community members that the topic being discussed might “trigger” unpleasant memories of sexual assault, child abuse, domestic violence, etc.," says professor Jade E. Davis on her blog, "have done that culture-jumping thing where they are no longer used in only those spaces. They are now somewhat ingrained in Internet culture as sort of the anti-troll, and they have become a standard that is used at times when the actual thing being discussed is not traumatic, but rather simply an uncomfortable encounter.

"What I find fascinating, and a bit odd, is that rather than entering the realm of popular culture, a place where a trigger warning might make sense, they’ve entered the realm of the university, a space where people are supposed to be challenged, pushed, and learn to think and understand in new, different and more diverse ways."

One of the biggest concerns I see is that certain issues seem to be afforded "Trigger Warnings" while others do not - a politically determined list created by elites. So, sexual assault, yes, the use of the term "Nigger" in Huckleberry Finn, probably not. Certain forms of violence, "Ms. Loverin draws a distinction between alerting students to material that might truly tap into memories of trauma — such as war and torture, since many students at Santa Barbara are veterans," but probably not the kind of street violence not experienced by "many" on a University of California campus. What about a story of absent mothers? What about, I wonder, a book like mine? What might I need to label... since none of it deals with Ms. Loverin's "many"?

The next biggest concern is the academic/political. I did not work within Feminist Theory, but I did/do work within Queer Theory and Disability Studies, or even a far left version of Disability Studies I have called "Retard Theory." In those there is a commitment to the challenging and the shocking. Those "Trigger Warnings" would compromise 'our' ability to attack the comfort of the status quo.

Man in his underwear. What do we censor?
National Geographic

Then there is what I might call, the "Trained Immaturity," the expectation of the eternal protection of perpetual childhood. This has changed dramatically since I was young, as I realized recently when I saw a librarian censoring National Geographic magazines before offering them to students, something unthinkable in the 1960s or 1970s. This problem comes from many things: the corrosive effects of helicopter parenting, television and film age-warnings, limited open play opportunities, and, yes, of the limited canonical reading list of many American Advanced Placement English teachers on not just their own students but, via the 'prep for AP mindset' which exists in many US high schools, on all the middle class children in those schools.

We screen for the "acceptable," we screen to "not disturb," we screen, all too often, to make the adults comfortable, to let the adults not have to deal with complex conversations. Oh how easy to let the concerns of 18th and 19th century wealthy white male novelists dominate our classrooms than to struggle with issues which challenge today's children.

But we do not have to. I have closely watched a seventh grade language arts class this year as they have read about the Holocaust, about American racism, about cancer and amputation - surely deeply disturbing topics for 12-13-year-olds, but I have seen them all rise to the complexities of the occasion. And I do not think, no matter what their personal issues, that they will need "Trigger Warnings" in their futures. First, they understand literary complexity. Second, they have enough Google skills to enable them to check out a book before they begin reading - at least to understand general themes. Third, they know how to advocate for themselves. Fourth, the are learning how to control their own learning environments - and thus know how to 'step outside' if they need to. These are all skills I wish those students at Oberlin and UC-Santa Barbara and elsewhere had learned in their K-12 school experiences.

As Dr. Davis says, "I would never give my students a “Trigger Warning,” but I do tell them every semester that we will be going over things that they might find disturbing, uncomfortable, angering, or upsetting. If this is the case, they are free to leave the classroom. The rule is they have to engage respectfully and openly, but only in the classroom. They can think whatever they want outside of the space, but inside the space, they are vulnerable, and I work with that. If things are too much, they are free to step out of the classroom as well. I only require that they email me and let me know why so we can make sure that the course will be okay moving forward."

So I guess I don't believe in "Trigger Warnings." Instead, I believe in  students learning the skills of mature adults, and I believe in the process of literature.

- Ira Socol

The "People First" Conundrum

That old question of language - who it empowers, who it injures, who makes the decisions: Amy Bowllan, school librarian in New York City, Twitter-pal, and blogger for School Library Journal did an e-interview with me recently for her blog.

Is people first language a positive step? Should we continue to encourage it? Read the interview, and for a balanced view read Goldfish (a favorite/favourite blogger) on The Language of Disability.

All your thoughts are welcomed. At Amy's blog or here.

- Ira Socol

Re-imagining Ability

When I taught my class last semester (“Special Education Students in the Regular Education Classroom”), I ran across a roadblock. The future “Special Education” teachers who filled the room clearly saw a bright line between “able” and “disabled.”

This is not surprising. The field they are entering exists because of this perceived difference.

Early in the course I suggested that I could “disable” any of them. That I might speak in a language they did not know (I asked them to read and pronounce Irish, for example), or that I might speak using words they did not know, using, for example, British educational jargon rather than American, or that I might ask them to choreograph and perform an interpretive dance as their second paper.

For some these concepts got the point across, but not for most.

So I decided to try to get them to “re-imagine ability.” I gave them a series of possible “tasks” and asked what “assistive technologies” they would need to complete them. One was getting from a neighborhood on the Atlantic coast of Brooklyn to Midtown Manhattan (near the United Nations). Another was bringing a refrigerator from a store into their kitchen. A third was getting from the street to a meeting on the 88th floor of the Sears Tower.

View Larger Map

Many of the students responded with comments about maps and map reading, about reading directories, about measuring doorways, but none understood the basic concept. They were all completely unable to perform any of these tasks without massive technological and human assistance. And the amount of assistance needed varied greatly across the student group.

But I pointed out to them even those they probably at least needed some kind of shoes/clothing to cross Brooklyn, at least some kind of assistance or at least a strongly woven cloth strap to carry the refrigerator, and if not the elevator, at least the stairs (a vary early assistive technology) to climb the Sears Tower. Not to mention a bridge to avoid swimming more than half a mile across a wild tidal strait in New York, or a truck for the refrigerator. Some, I'm sure, could have swum the river. At least two or three might have been able to, given enough time, have jumped and pulled and climbed up 88 floors without stairs. One guy might have been able to lug at least a fairly small (full-size) refrigerator from Sears to his house, and yet...

If they needed help would they be "disabled"? And what of the other four dozen?

This began to work on their thinking. Yet, every day they spend in our College of Education reinforces their traditional thinking about “ability.” “Ability” is everything “they” (the kind of students who go into education) do well. Reading, writing, speaking like a middle class protestant white person, answering questions with definite answers. “Ability” is not being able to attend to 25 things in a simultaneous mode, or entertain a class with jokes and stunts, or dream up really exciting fictional worlds, or a million other things that kids can be great at. No one is sent to the Resource Room because they throw a ball badly or can’t tune a violin or are unable to navigate an urban street scene effectively. I need special permission to turn some paper documents into electronic versions but the Dean of the College prints out her emails for reading without having to declare herself “disabled.

I'm not suggesting that individual differences in capabilities don't exist. I'm not very tall. That makes some things more difficult than if I was. Tom Shakespeare is right. It is not "all social" - we are born different, we end up different. Some of us struggle with things in ways others don't. Reading sucks for me. I wish it was easier. This month so does walking. And I sure wish that was easier. Still, I can fix my own computer (some of the time), and if you can not, do you need a government affixed label?

Back in May 2008 (on "Blogging Against Disablism Day") I suggested on my blog that we not allow anyone into an elevator without a note from a doctor, that we require that people with eyeglasses get special permission to use them, that we not let anyone ever convert digital text to paper, just to expand the realm of disability. Because as long as we think “disability” exists, it does indeed exist, and it limits who we are and what we can achieve

- Ira Socol