crazy school stuff

cfleck

cfleck

tired
http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/05/28/life.language.reut/index.html

go ahead and check it out. its about publishers banning words from textbooks for highschools and the like.

at one point they claim that it is a problem coming up with a new title for "The Old Man and the Sea" because "and" is the only acceptable word. you've got to see their reasoning for this one.

here is my beef. for one, i just got out of high school about 6 years back and as far as i can remember, the above title was not "The Older Person Who Happens to Not be Female and a Large Body of Water not a Lake or Ocean." So what the hell is this article about?

If it has any kind of truth then it is very much a sad state of affairs (worse than previously thought, if thats possible) for the schools of the US. But to me it just seems like a steep exageration to get some attention. what do you think?
 
orwell said in 1984 why it's wrong to ban words far better than I ever could, maybe whoever runs the US education system should have a read of it
 
but have any of you ever heard of these things being banned/altered? banning is one thing, but to alter a work like the article was suggesting is blasphemy.
 
The least common denominator always seems to win in these cases. It is a tragedy. How can you study history if you don't present the original text?
 
how can you possibly say that 'Sea' isn't a fair word because inlanders cant grasp it? if you cant grasp the idea of a big body of water what the hell are you doing in my child's class?
 
It means Redwoods, under the Redwoods. It's sort of a play on words. In Berlin there is an avenue called Unter den Linden. Loosely, the avenue under the linden trees.

The redwoods are truly impossible to explain to those who haven't seen a mature one. Pictures fail to capture their immensity I can imagine that it would pose problems to the pc textbook makers.
 
i think they should just go ahead and ban Wuthering Heights/Frankenstein

cuz they are really boring, consume time, relates nothing to the current world today, except for some fictitious moral values. AND KIDS HATE IT!!!


of course im joking
 
i am in canada, and all i can do is sit here and laugh at your now crazy country.... [laughing!]
Now i will look around me and weep at MY insane country. I think every country has their weird things
Canada: Ehhhh? Our money is worth less than a few countries...
USA: Constantly going to war, and now look at this crazy thing here.
Iraq: Do i even have to say?
England: look at their outlets! I like their accents though ;)
And that's about enough from me.
 
Originally posted by wiz
i think they should just go ahead and ban Wuthering Heights/Frankenstein

cuz they are really boring, consume time, relates nothing to the current world today, except for some fictitious moral values. AND KIDS HATE IT!!!


of course im joking
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Wuthering Heights is a good read but I can't imagine why you would have to read it in high school. As a matter of fact, you must go to a fairly liberal school, Wuthering Heights deals with some pretty strong topics.

I don't remember much about Frankenstein the book, but I can't imagine why you would be reading it either. Hmmm.
 
I had to read Wuthering Heights in hight school, too. Wiz, happen to live in Texas? Just wondering. ;)

Here's one I could have gone without: Fiddler on the Roof. Though we watched the movie rather than read it.

Actually, I probably would have enjoyed it (I actually like musicals :D). It's just that I had just gone through 9 weeks of Fiddler on the Roof. I like to do theatre (I'm a stage hand, I don't act :p), and the playhouse was doing that. I like to go to all the rehearsals to get to know everybody, though I don't really need to be there until they start doing the tech rehearsals. So I had gone through all the rehearsels, and the 4 weeks the show was playing and was very tired of Fiddler on the Roof by then. There's only so much you can take of one thing. But when I got to my English class that next Monday, lo and behold, the teacher tells us we were going to start watching Fiddler on the Roof.

Man, I tried to get out of that one...the play had been exactly the same as the movie. By that time, I knew every line, knew every word to every song. Hell, I could even do the accents. :D Didn't work, though, teacher made me watch it. <sigh>
 
What these companies are doing is completely immoral and should be illegal. They are altering someone's thought-out, well-chosen vocabulary pickings just to try to be PC. They are not taking into account the fact that many authors, especially Hemingway, choose their words very carefully because they have much more meaning than just "an old person." Besides, how is "older person" better than "old man?" It wasn't a grandma on that boat, it was a geezer.
According to Ravitch both the right wing and the left wing get what they want in American textbooks, for example an emphasis on family values and equality among ethnic groups.
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Yeah, and literature in general gets castrated! What is the point of discussing a piece of literature if it's been altered to remove the symbolic imagery? There's nothing to analyze when you remove anything "offensive."

In my county, some parents are causing controversy over some of the books advanced English students have to read. For my AP English class, I had to read Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. Parents objected to it because it contained a (brief) passage about a black (as in negro) girl (as in underage female) trying to seduce the main character, Inman. They don't get that this scene shows the corruption of the house that he's staying in, and he needs to cleanse himself of this corruption. Also, another book they object to is House of Spirits (though I can't remember what it's about (therefore why)).
 
quite frankley i think that the example of "old person and the big body of water" is rubbish. i'm a few years out of high school and we read the original work as far as i can tell.

i have mixed feelings about the situation. on one hand i'm pissed that such a thing could go on. while at the same time i have a hard time believing anything that book lady has to say.

i think someone needs to find a copy of "the old person..." so i can be pissed at these companies. until then, i think i'm just going to be pissed at the author of the book about this crap.

oh, and in regard to parents throwing a tantrum. a lot of it has to do, i think, with parents (a) not appreciating what the work actually portrays, and (b) being afraid that their child or a "lesser" child could be corrupted by such a thing. some people are convinced you have to play to teh lowest common denominator even at the cost of advancement.
 
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