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Brave New World banned from High School curriculum

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Re: Brave New World banned from High School curriculum

#151

Post by rbanffy »

kenjackson wrote: post #148
rbanffy wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is not what happened, but what can we do so it never happens again. By the time the events you mention happened, my family was still coping with having to leave its ancestral home after WWII and having to move to Brazil as refugees. We can hold grudges for many generations if we want, or we can learn from the past and move on.

I think one of the main lesson we learn is that the past influences today. And asking children to read books from the past, without giving them the tools and context to understand it, is asking for trouble. US high schools are a playground of intolerance. At least where I went to high school, having the class read a book that made use of "nigger" would have certainly meant that the Black kids in class would be called…

It seems to me the teachers were neither prepared to teach the book nor to defend the book in front of the parents. Making a second mistake - taking an important book (after all, we seem to have avoided 1984 just to fall into BNW) off the curriculum - does not correct the first one (not preparing teachers to... teach).

Like I said elsewhere, this whole mess is depressing. Sometimes I wonder if our species will be able to find a way out of this or if I will just wish the cockroaches better luck...

Re: Brave New World banned from High School curriculum

#152

Post by electromagnetic »

philwelch wrote: post #146
electromagnetic wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that would require people to actually want to pay taxes for the things they want. It would be like paying for competent non-tazer psycho cops.

Americans pay more for their crappy schools and incompetent teachers than every other rich country in the world pays for their good schools and competent teachers.

Yes, but that's just because the government butt-fucks unions. I've never seen any country that actively worships its unions as badly as America. If automobile unions didn't have such huge wages and crazy pensions and benefits, the auto-sector wouldn't have collapsed from being ridiculously uncompetitive. The only reason the school sector hasn't collapsed is because it's not selling anything to go broke off of.

It's notable that the US is one of the few countries where private schools have a huge lead on public schools. I remember when I was in highschool in the UK that it actually came out that (on average) private school students graduated a grade-average lower than public school students. It's good if you're in a slum area, but if you're in a slum area you don't have the money to pay for private school to begin with.

Re: Brave New World banned from High School curriculum

#153

Post by detst »

Anechoic wrote: post #143
absconditus wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your comment as baffling as the article under discussion and for much the same reason.

That reason being...?

I can't speak for absconditus but...

It's my belief that no one has the right not to be offended and I would rather live in a society of people that are brought up to be exposed to realities of our history and culture that offend them.

I say let kids think for themselves and sometimes be offended. Expose them to religious writings; it's part of who we are (no, I'm not religious). Let them read the writings of dictators to get inside the heads of men that did terrible things to better understand history. etc.

What would we have to lose other than to have a society of people that better understand the world and the history that brought us here?

Re: Brave New World banned from High School curriculum

#154

Post by dinkumthinkum »

enjo wrote: post #11
rbanffy wrote: post #2

"the text lacks literary value" Oh boy... Why not ban Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 while we are at it. And let's burn all copies too. What kind of spineless school principal is this?

I wish I could get 1984 banned. Far too many believe that saying "it's just like 1984!" somehow makes it a valid argument against something. Really I just want a required class in formal logic for everyone.

So why doesn't it exactly? What exactly do you think formal logic is and what is it used for? I mean, this sort of thing is an observation and an insinuation not a syllogism. Who needs all these formal logic classes again? The structure of the society in 1984 is widely considered "bad" and it is quite clear what is meant by saying something like "this is like 1984" when it deal with something quite analogous. It's quite clear what is meant by this and the reasoning is very evident. Now, you could counter with something like "No, no I think we need Big Brother because ..." or "We must burn books because ..." I don't think everyone has to construct formal syllogisms for all their arguments, presumably we are intelligent people rather than some kind of x86 processor that can't deal with anything beyond very formal, rigid syntax.

Re: Brave New World banned from High School curriculum

#155

Post by jbooth »

rbanffy wrote: post #141
jbooth wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

45 short years ago, use of the n-word was typically followed up by turning a firehose or a pack of dogs on people who just wanted to be treated like human beings -- this was happening, in modern America, while your parents were in grade school or high school (presumably). You might not have been aware of that, given that you seem to think that everyone should just get over it and not be offended by things that don't…

The question is not what happened, but what can we do so it never happens again. By the time the events you mention happened, my family was still coping with having to leave its ancestral home after WWII and having to move to Brazil as refugees. We can hold grudges for many generations if we want, or we can learn from the past and move on.

I'm just saying don't be a jerk about it -- it's one thing to say yes, we should teach Huck Finn, another to demean the idea of being offended by the word.

Re: Brave New World banned from High School curriculum

#156

Post by Anechoic »

detst wrote: post #153
Anechoic wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reason being...?

I can't speak for absconditus but... It's my belief that no one has the right not to be offended and I would rather live in a society of people that are brought up to be exposed to realities of our history and culture that offend them. I say let kids think for themselves and sometimes be offended. Expose them to religious writings; it's part of who we are (no, I'm not religious). Let them read the writings of dictato…

I say let kids think for themselves and sometimes be offended.

I totally agree - let them think for themselves and let them read and research what they want. Forcing them to do so on the other hand helps no one.

YMMV. Like I wrote, my exposure to Mark Twain just resulted in me not going anywhere near his other works.

What would we have to lose other than to have a society of people that better understand the world and the history that brought us here?

Life experience was a much better instructor to me than nigger Jim.

Re: Brave New World banned from High School curriculum

#157

Post by roel_v »

wazoox wrote: post #150
roel_v wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're ascribing all sorts of moral judgments to this world but don't make a case for why any of these things are bad, if they manage to make people feel (truly) content and happy. What's wrong with reality TV, Lady Gaga and advertisements if that's what people like? Do you honestly thing people would be better off if they didn't have those things and only had a Chopin record to put on at night? Maybe I'm reading you…

> You're ascribing all sorts of moral judgments to this world but don't make a case for why any of these things are bad, if they manage to make people feel (truly) content and happy. Most probably sheep are perfectly happy in their pen. Being perfectly happy because you don't think about why you live and what you may be good for isn't in my opinion a good way to be happy. My opinion is that human being should aim hig…

"...a good way to be happy..." ... "...should aim higher than living an happy cattle life..."

I'm not sure. Some other posters also brought up a similar argument. I'm not convinced that there is a moral ordering or ways to be happy, as long as the criteria are constrained to internal ones (i.e., as long as the criteria don't affect others - a society of 9 male rapists and one woman is presumably one where 90% of the population is happy, but that doesn't make it a just or right society)

I don't agree that hardship and/or grief are required for great achievements. On the contrary, I think that most achievements are done by people who are already in the 5th layer of Maslow's hierarchy. It's subjective what 'great achievement' is, but in the trend of this site, let's take some big software companies; were Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg living in mud huts, going to sleep every night feeling hungry? I don't know the details about any of them, but it seems from a cursory Wikipedia glance that all of them grew up in environments where the 'happy cattle life' was the norm, and it was some other internal motivation that drove them to create and not a desire to get away from hardship.

Also, note that I didn't say 'intellectual snobbery', but 'pseudo-intellectual snobbery'. Being a rebel for rebellion's sake, agitating against everything that is mainstream, is not intellectualism, it's mostly a trait of wannabe students and hipsters who are still in their formative years and derive their self image from contrasting themselves with the rest of society. Now actual intellectual thought can also be contrary to mainstream thinking of course, but it needs to be backed up with solid reasoning from data, axioms etc. and not with 'most people are stupid, so what most people are thinking is wrong' (even leaving apart that by definition it's impossible for most people to be stupid, unless one sets the benchmark for stupidity at an arbitrarily high level, at which point it's just definition again).

Re: Brave New World banned from High School curriculum

#158

Post by wazoox »

roel_v wrote: post #157
wazoox wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're ascribing all sorts of moral judgments to this world but don't make a case for why any of these things are bad, if they manage to make people feel (truly) content and happy. Most probably sheep are perfectly happy in their pen. Being perfectly happy because you don't think about why you live and what you may be good for isn't in my opinion a good way to be happy. My opinion is that human being should aim hig…

"...a good way to be happy..." ... "...should aim higher than living an happy cattle life..." I'm not sure. Some other posters also brought up a similar argument. I'm not convinced that there is a moral ordering or ways to be happy, as long as the criteria are constrained to internal ones (i.e., as long as the criteria don't affect others - a society of 9 male rapists and one woman is presumably one where 90% of the…

> I'm not convinced that there is a moral ordering or ways to be happy, as long as the criteria are constrained to internal ones ...

This is an interesting and debatable matter. I'm probably not really convinced too :)

> I don't agree that hardship and/or grief are required for great achievements.

Neither do I, but I don't seem to have implied it.

Re: Brave New World banned from High School curriculum

#159

Post by rbanffy »

jbooth wrote: post #155
rbanffy wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is not what happened, but what can we do so it never happens again. By the time the events you mention happened, my family was still coping with having to leave its ancestral home after WWII and having to move to Brazil as refugees. We can hold grudges for many generations if we want, or we can learn from the past and move on.

I'm just saying don't be a jerk about it -- it's one thing to say yes, we should teach Huck Finn, another to demean the idea of being offended by the word.

We can only move forward when words like "nigger", "savage", "nazi", "polack", "redneck", "commie" or "yank" provoke no reaction. We don't have to like or approve the past (and certainly not be proud of most of it), but we must limit ourselves to learn from it and not seek retribution for crimes rooted generations ago.

If we don't, we will perpetuate cycles of injustice across generations and invite the worst of our past into our children's future. We must constantly draw lines and learn from our mistakes, even the ones made centuries ago.

We must also be careful on how we preserve our culture and our ways of life. The NA/AD culture shock that's in the root of this present discussion shows us how little progress our species made in deciding where to place the assimilation/integration divide. We try hard to be multi-cultural but, in the end of the day, we are much closer to naked apes than we may be comfortable thinking. Most of the battles we must fight were bred into our brains and we must fight them within ourselves.

Re: Brave New World banned from High School curriculum

#160

Post by jbooth »

rbanffy wrote: post #159
jbooth wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just saying don't be a jerk about it -- it's one thing to say yes, we should teach Huck Finn, another to demean the idea of being offended by the word.

We can only move forward when words like "nigger", "savage", "nazi", "polack", "redneck", "commie" or "yank" provoke no reaction. We don't have to like or approve the past (and certainly not be proud of most of it), but we must limit ourselves to learn from it and not seek retribution for crimes rooted generations ago. If we don't, we will perpetuate cycles of injustice across generations and invite the worst of our…

In America, the n-word is worse than all of the other words on your list, and you still don't seem to understand why. One generation ago, or the present for that matter is not some distant "generations ago". So go ahead with your one-man culture shock, the rest of us will just think you're a jerk.
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