Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" will be changed to be more PC
 

They are changing the title of this book in schools because "Old" is considered offensive, "Man" is considered sexist, and "Sea" is not fair to people living inland that may not grasp the concept of a large body of water.

How crazy has it gotten? You can nolonger use "polo" or "yacht" becase they are considered elitist. Check out the whole story and the list of 500 words no longer used in schools.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/05...eut/index.html

here's the problem


"To get the full 500-word list of what is banned and why, consult "The Language Police," a new book by New York University professor of education Dianne Ravitch, a former education official in President George H.W. Bush's administration and a consultant to the Clinton administration. "

Unbelievably Ridiculous!!! That is a violation of an artist's right to freedom of speech. :stop the maddness!!!! I don't care what is "PC" anymore. Isn't it a realtive term anyway?

one of my all time favorite novellas. classic.

Also a good movie with Spencer Tracy being the old man.

If someone is going to be offended by a book , they should home school their children.

Did you actually read the article? The guidelines are for textbooks, not literature.

Seems like many of the people in this thread didn't benefit from the old textbooks anyway.. at least not the ones that were supposed to teach reading comprehension.

These people want kids to think life is some utopian fantasyland where everybody is equal. Boy are these kids going to be in for a surprise when they grow up! Schools don't educate anymore, they indoctrinate.

The true political correctness these days comes from the crybabies on the right, not the left.

Criticize anything America has ever done (except Bill Clinton) and run for cover.

Remember when Republicans used to be against political correctness? Now they love it. :)

my absolute favorite as well.

Anyone who opposes this is a terrorist.

You know, your name fits your posts incredibly well.

Jesus H. Fucking Christ.... People need to lighten the fuck up and smoke a few joints, take a few Ludes and relax. :2 cents:

Do you deny that it's true?

Bill Maher was fired for daring to question the U.S. after 9/11. He is one of many people (Donahue, Dixie Chicks, etc.) who's only crime was to dare say "unpatriotic" words that people on the right consider "politically incorrect".

Whether you like it or not, Republicans are very strongly in favor of political correctness these days.

Republicans used to say they were against bigger government, now they aren't.

They used to say they were against nation building, now they aren't.

They used to say they were against more deficits, now they aren't.

They even (during Clinont's term) used say they believed in "accountability".

The list is long and boring.

Bush has changed your party into a whole different party than what they've been saying for the last decade.

Sorry to have to break it to you. :)

I don't think the Republicans are banning God in text books or against elitism and I don't think the Democrats are against the word hell or gay. Not sure on who would be more likely to ban the word babe or bookworm. Are Republicans more sexist or Democrats?

As far as sanitized textbooks *sigh*, I'd say there's pretty good evidence that textbook quality has decreased considerably in the US in the past 100 years. Would be nice to see higher standards.
On the other hand, education and higher education are open to more people and groups of people than ever so there is a positive also.

Look at 100 year old math textbooks and you'll see this to be true. Very, very true. In fact, any textbook from that era is at a much higher level than what you'll find today, math is just perhaps the subject that has been dumbed down the most.

100 years ago only the intellectually elite got to use textbooks at all.

And what do you mean "higher level"? Evolutionary biology, relativity, genetics, and many other things taken for granted today had yet to be invented. If anything, we suffer today because we've got too much information to process.

I think the elephants might have been against social programs but not against military spending. Ran some numbers. For what it's worth ...

Total Government spending as % of GDP (Last 30 years)

1972 21.8%
1973 20.7%
1974 21.5%
1975 22.1%
1976 21.1%
1977 20.4%
1978 19.8%
1979 19.6%
1980 20.4%
1981 20.2
1982 21.0
1983 20.8
1984 20.4
1985 20.8
1986 21.2
1987 21.0
1988 20.3
1989 20.0
1990 20.4
1991 20.6
1992 20.1
1993 19.5
1994 18.8
1995 18.5
1996 18.2
1997 17.9
1998 17.5
1999 17.7
2000 17.8
2001 18.4
2002 18.9

Yes, I've seen this too.

Go to an old bookstore. Pick up a 100 year old 5th grade reader. Compare it to what they read in 5th grade now. Huge difference. You can do this with any grade level and get the same results.

You can't compare modern science with things that hadn't even been invented back then but there are constants, math being one of them and English being another.

Bill Maher was fired because sponsors began to leave the show and his ratings also dropped...and you are assuming it was people on the "right" that viewed his statement that caused him to be in hot water. I would assume that moderates and people on the left also disapproved of his statement.

Agree with that too. Wider range of educational opportunities for more people (women, minorities) is a big plus. There's moreinfo but most people aren't getting it and most don't care. I don't think it really matters that much. The guy working at Wal-Mart has the same lack of education that a guy working at the "five and dime" did a few generations ago. Wal-mart employees and cashiers don't need an education. The American scientific output is still tops in the world and elite US schools still pump out thousands of exceptionally well-educated students. Yale. Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Cornell, Brown, Cal Tech, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn, Duke. That's an impressive list of schools just off the top of my head. Many more.

Just curious.. how many 100 year old 5th grade textbooks have you actually perused?

Public education didn't begin until the late 1800's. I can't imagine there were standardized textbooks until much later.

I have a few old texbooks I'll have to dig out. In one of 20 boxes :-(

I have a few old books, but they're mostly religious in nature. I think the oldest is a Book of Common Prayer from the early 1700's.

Gutterboy,

I see where you're going. It's a good point. There was probably much more variability in textbooks a century ago. One might find some comparatively advanced 5th grade texts from that era but there are probably some really backwards ones also.

agreed. this will be a major problem faced in the next century.

Quite a few actually. I used to sell used books and I'd come across them from time to time.

I have an old Catholic marriage manual (or something like that) that is pretty funny. Can't seem to find that right now. I remember the advice for women getting married was pretty amusing. '"Obeying". Another one in the boxes, I guess.

I'm not much of a collector. I just happen to pick up some interesting things here and there. I have quite a few German physics books from the great German physicists of the last century. A 19th century Rousseau. Some old chessbooks. I want to put together a collection of "end of the world" type books. All the books over the years that predicted the end of time, civilization, global depressions, or any number of scary things.
You know, the kind of books Webby or Massivecock would read ;-)

I have about 800 books in the library now. Used to be more but I tossed a bunch after college because I was moving around a lot.

Look at textbooks printed before non-whites were allowed to attend the same schools as whites, then look at textbooks printed post-integration. That's certainly part of the equation.

i didnt read the thread BUt the movie/book is one of my all time favs :thumbsup


:glugglug

Ridiculous. Political correctness is going way too far.

We might as well all become lawyers and never have a real opinion about anything. LOL