Unsuitable For Children Under 30?

The absurdity of protecting university students from "harmful" literature reaches new heights.

I can still recall how I enjoyed reading Hamlet in my final year of high school. Diving into Shakespeare’s brilliant text, analyzing it, comparing with the Icelandic translation, criticizing, discussing, learning, internalizing, and growing; intellectually, emotionally, aesthetically…

Now, according to Toby Young of the Daily Sceptic, Hamlet is considered too dangerous for university students. They have to be warned, according to new rules at the Open University.

And not only Hamlet; the whole body of English classics, from Shakespeare to Jane Austen, is considered so distressing and trauma-inducing that students have to be warned about the contents.

What then about the rest of our literary tradition? What about Homer, Rabelais, Dostoyevsky, Orwell, Hemingway, Solzenitzyn? Is there anything, anything at all in art, literature, cinema, even music that cannot cause distress, cause difficult feelings?

But for God’s sake, isn’t it the whole point? Isn’t it the whole point with literature to provoke feelings, be they positive or negative; to provoke thinking, doubt, anxiety, distress?

When a university starts warning students who enroll to study literature that practically the whole of the curriculum can cause them distress and should be avoided, then there isn’t any point to that university any more. It should be closed. Even if it is called the Open University.