e-Claire

Stop ! Thief !!

Photon Courier responds poetically to the travesty described in Diane Ravitch's book The Language Police. To give you an idea, if you've not yet heard, Ms Ravitch describes how PC "thinking" has been accepted to such a point that textbooks are restricted in what they can describe or discuss, thus:

A story that is set in the mountains discriminates against students from flatlands.

I surmise from this that hearing about anything outside one's own bathroom would be discriminatory and, therefore, banned. [And we wonder why kids seem stupid...] Actually, it does explain what became a mystery to me as I struggled to help some girls dear to me with Junior and Senior High School work. [Shall we stipulate for the purpose of this article that I have a post-grad sheep-skin, I am a print junkie to the degree that I will read shampoo bottles and instruction manuals if forced by circumstance, and that I am not unusually dim...] I discovered to my dismay that I could not read High School texts. Being of wide and varied interests, I have at one time or another managed to get sense out of esoteric law texts and documents, medical literature, statistical data, and even modern art history. I could not make Sense One out of these texts. Kept coming up, "semantic content: nil." I complained to the teacher who gave us yet more texts, swearing that "this one is better." Again and again, she would just look at me, *blink, blink blink,* like I was complaining that the book was made out of paper or that grass is green. Now I geddit. Someone stole all the content. Considering that knowledge of the world and of history is the backbone without which Democracy can not stand, I believe it to be concomitant upon us to bypass our discomfort at such utter *piffle* and learn about our enemy. Update: *piffle* is way too light-duty a word. I hereby instate the 1st Annual/Daily e-Claire Contest to find a more fittin' word. Articulators - start your search engines!

1. Can we call books flibbertygibbetish?

   I’m not surprised.  My son’s high school current events class was diet codswallop. They wer ein the middle of it when 9/11 happened, and they barely even talked about it.

   Posted by Patty  on  07/08/03  at  03:22 PM

2. I think “semantic content: nil” just about says it all.

   The only thing I would point out is that these courses are doing just exactly what they are supposed to do—and that has nothing whatsoever to do with making or sustaining a participatory democracy (though it has everything to do with making an electorate that will vote for either George Bush or Al Gore)

   Posted by  on  07/09/03  at  02:47 AM

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