Stories of trauma: How can we approach ‘dark content’ in schools? Kieran Dale-O’Connor Inquiry Learning Leader, Conde Library
BACKGROUND Several years ago, while I was working at a secondary school in New Zealand, I chose to teach The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath to my Year 13 (final year) English class. It is a novel that is reasonably popular across the country in senior English classrooms, and I felt encouraged by the engaging class discussions and the strong insights that the novel provoked. I was eager to teach it again after some decidedly muted enthusiasm from students for previous book choices. However, at the end of the term I was
confidence, or anonymously, if they were uncomfortable with starting the novel, or continuing once they had started. I provided the opportunity for the class to vote on several novels and choose which one they wanted to study. The Bell Jar was the overwhelming favourite. Only one student in the class opted to study alternative material (he stayed in the class, and I relied heavily on small group work so that he was not exposed to the ideas and content of the novel). I was surprised to hear that my colleague
who had a firm request: please, don’t
thought the book should not be taught,
teach that novel again. Sadly, but not
ever. She went on to suggest that
altogether unsurprisingly, the novel had
teachers should strive only to teach
resonated strongly with some of the
material that was life affirming. It is a
students in the class. I was aware of this;
premise that I find enticing – the thought
several students had confided in me
of delving only into content that is
that the novel was powerful precisely
‘light’ – uplifting, and affirming – is a
because of this resonance. It made them
comforting one. Even if we were to forgo
feel, as they said, like they were not the
teaching some of the most challenging
only ones to feel the way they did.
material, such as The Bell Jar, the reality
introducing the material in The Bell Jar. I spoke to the class before they had laid eyes on the book and gave them content warnings (something discussed later in this article) about what they would encounter (which, in the case of this novel, covered a significant amount of traumatic material). I made it very clear that no one would be made to study the novel, that alternative texts and Illuminate Research and Innovation | Edition 6 2021
chose, and that they could tell me in
approached by a counsellor colleague
I was not, I believe, unprepared
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topics were available to study if they so
of only ever teaching life-affirming content is potentially problematic if it means that we cannot confront some of the most pressing and urgent issues our society faces. Assuming that we cannot totally avoid content that is dark, traumatic, or upsetting, this article seeks to investigate what the growing body of literature says about traumatic and dark content in the classroom, and what practices teachers should be considering when dealing with such material.
