Safe Spaces and the Death of Learning

In C.S. Lewis’ book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Mrs Beaver reveals her knowledge of Aslan, the lion King of Narnia—Aslan is not “safe” but is decidedly “good.”

If safety—conceived as a comforted or shielded place, free from challenging gaze or bared vulnerability—is what one seeks, then Aslan is one to avoid.

And yet, the almost irresistible draw of Aslan’s intriguing goodness entices the brave soul to traverse the discomfort of encounter. The allure of discovering something 'greater' compels the sojourner towards transgressing the reflexive pursuit of ‘safety.’ Certainly, safety is not the realm where one transcends narrow boundaries. Yet, with the ‘good’ offering its nourishing welcome, safety just might give way to bravery.

Places of learning, particularly universities, have long been centres of contestation—of ideas clashing in dialogue and argument, thesis meeting anti-thesis. This friction awakens a newness of knowledge and breaks open the hitherto hidden (nod here to Hegel). Without this friction—without contest, vulnerability, or the removal of safe harbours—the comfort of ‘what I know’ will ever fail to expand to ‘what I never expected.’ It is this understanding that fuels my continuing hesitancy toward the modern coddling appetite and language of ‘safe spaces,’ especially for scaffolding learning in high schools and universities.

Here, I wonder whether bureaucracy and professionalised management, more concerned with brand-name protection is sacrificing the very lifeblood of education for insipid political correctness or deadened virtue-signalling.

The potential for unawakened knowledge and the stretching of students to be brave explorers seems to bow its knee to the safety of safe. Such a focus cannot but increasingly inculcate the duress of carefully constructed, anodyne parameters, where the wilderness of thought and the threshing of ideas become restrained and quelled. On the wings of the inoffensive, education perilously morphs into mere ideology, accepting the tranquilizing offer of banal analgesia—consciousness without discomfort.

A safe space, perhaps, is where genuine learning goes to die.

But what should the places of higher education do? I would suggest we heed the wisdom of Mrs Beaver: seek the good, not the safe. Encourage abodes of learning that are welcoming and brave, where distinctions of view form the foundation of harmony, rather than triggering the silencing of hegemony.

Replace the language of ‘safe’ with the language of ‘seen.’

If we fail to intentionally shift the discourse in our learning institutions, we are inevitably laying the path for a future citizenry unable to advance or grow in knowledge and understanding, and where combat or suppression, ironically (and scarily), becomes the only way to keep our spaces ‘safe.’