A practice has been adopted recently largely by the students to protest against the curriculum that triggers offense

A practice has been adopted recently largely by the students to protest against the curriculum that triggers offense, fear or trauma among them. They are trying to make the campuses free of any such words, ideas, and subjects that might trigger even a slight negative response by the students. The justifications given for this specific behavior are that the use of text that is offensive or violent may evoke a negative feeling or fear in that particular student who has encountered such thing in his life. The authors, however, think that this has lead to a culture that impedes students’ ability for critical thinking. The students are using emotional reasoning, mental filtering, and have developed zero tolerance to the views that are against their mindset. This would prepare them poorly for their professional lives where they had to use their critical reasoning abilities.
Fear of a certain situation often links to trauma and stress in future life. When encountered with any such situation, our brain automatically triggers a negative response. The students and administration in their campuses are trying to avoid any such curriculum that causes offense or trauma among the students. They are aiming to built an environment that does not illicit such response. But creating “safe spaces” to avoid such trauma is not the solution to the problem. Rather making the students habituated and able to face their fear would be more effective because creating safe places would also badly affect the other students.
Before this practice, Professors were the one who used to control classroom curriculum, but in the current situation, students are the one that control classroom curriculum. The students influence their curriculum by making complaints to the authorities and by running social media campaigns. Their sensitivity to the offensive and violent texts in curriculum has led the authorities and the teachers to plan their curriculum accordingly. However, this situation is not all helpful as the students are choosing what they want to study. Instead of providing safe places for the students, the need of providing them a world full of words is required. It would enable them to reason and analyze their situation with an open mind.