TRIGGER WARNINGS

Six months ago, some students at Globala Gymnasiet asked to be trigger warned about things that could occur in their teaching lessons. The head teacher at the school, Pernilla Ericols, said it could be rape scenes or racism in movies and books that are used, but it could also be depictions of heterosexual love between people who are experienced as norm confirming.

When asked about if the school is responsible for protecting students from what can be seen as uncomfortable and offensive, Mrs Ecols said, “It’s complicated. You can ask yourself how safe, calm and secure it should be in a teaching environment. When it comes to learning, you need to be confronted with different perspectives and your ground values need to be shaken. At the same time it can be easier to discuss harder topics if we prepare the students through trigger warning them.”

Ella explained it got quite blown-up in the media, and that she thought the situation was quite exaggerated. When a school is a home for the "weird ones" in society, it might make "normal" people feel unwelcome, like people who are straight or happy with the gender they have related to their biological sex. Ella said the reaction to the media attention were to hang up posters of two white heterosexuals saying that "even heterosexuals are welcome here." She assured that it is completely normal at her school to be heterosexual or to have a binary gender, and that that is accepted too.