B.C. school district removes 4 books from reading list, citing racial equity : britishcolumbia

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 25 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Fucking idiots

The whole point of to kill a mocking bird is to teach us that racism and stereotypes are bad.

Theyre removing it for containing stereotypes and being insensitive.

[–] Juno@beehaw.org 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

How the hell is Of Mice and Men sexual?

[–] snooggums@midwest.social 6 points 8 months ago

The Vaseline filled glove to keep his hand soft for the guy's wife is the only thing I remember even hinting at something sexual, but it has been a few decades.

[–] Jackcooper@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

Full circle moment

[+] Formes@lemmy.ca -21 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Divide, then Conquer. That's the name of the game of the Left right now.

The short is: If you want to push certain agenda's, the first thing you need to do is divide people. The best long term success strategy for this is attacking the education system to cripple critical thinking, and critical analysis. Finally - ensure the mainstream media is entrenched in it's place for official broadcasts and in control of the main message as much as possible: And get people to parrot the message - without consideration.

If the above sounds familiar: It should. USSR did this. China does this. and... Trudeau's Government does this. In many ways, it's in part why I think Trudeau attacks alberta so bloody often. Alberta has high education results - despite being conservative voting. In other words, the narrative of Alberta being some backwards hick place falls apart when people actually examine the evidence. When you look at what the Premier of Alberta is stating: Let adults do whatever they want, but protect kids in their developing years when going through a HUGE WILD WACKY CHANGE we call puberty. Even the thing about sports: Lets figure out how to ensure Woman can be safe when competing, that Men can compete, and those who are Trans can compete - and have this be as fair as possible. But the Media and Trudeau would have you believe it's all 100% anti LGBTQ+.

And I could go on.

So why would you remove things like To Kill a Mocking Bird? Because ultimately understanding that writing requries: 1. Critical thinking, 2. Critical Analysis, and 3. Mastery of language. Those three things are a huge threat to any organization attempting to push their narrative hard and fast.

If this is going to be fixed

Several things need to happen.

An alternative learning path. This may seem insane - but, it solves two problems in one go. The first - Those who drop out for WHATEVER REASON are granted a new path to work on in their time to achieve the requisits of a Diploma. Second - It provides a foundation for students to challenge and accel in their studies.
Constitutional Reform - Stop the verbatum attack on legal gun ownership which does not solve the problem, neutralize the ability to suppress rights like Freedom of Speech, Right to Protest, Etc. And in so doing stop the government from being able to make arbitrary things illegal, and require them to engage with those upset with the status quo. Seriously: Farmers and Truckers are the lifeblood of our economy - they get food where it is needed, and they grow food (respective of the relevant profession) These are people that DO NOT want to be standing around protesting, they want to be working and making money.
Electoral Reform
Stop the flood of immigration
Build more houses
Invest in infrastructure based on population, not on Political interest. It's time we have an investment tool for this country that ignores political interests. I don't know exactly how to make that happen - but it is needed.
Clamp down on administrative overhead of post secondary institutions. And if that means we change the rules on non-profits and accreditation to be a university/college so be it.

To Summarize

This problem started decades ago, and we are only now seeing the consequences of actions taken starting in the 1980's (or there about). It is going to take a monumental amount of work to fix the issue and move forward. I hope enough people see this and push back - but it is going to take action at both the Federal, and Provincial levels to force a change. And right now - the federal government is absolutely 100% on board with this kind of BS.

[–] Lypropos@beehaw.org 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yes it's the Liberals that are the problem. Not an oligarchic system of parties that we bounce between, slowly devolving us to the right of the Overton window.

Even the NDP and Greens are part of this corrupted system too, but voting for the ones (Lib/Con) that will dismantle our democracy further is not the answer.

To discuss some of the points you bring up (in no particular order):

Investing on infrastructure based on population means that all of our northern and rural towns get minimal investment, because their population will never increase unless we invest in them.

You also appear to be siding with the Freedom Convoy, a Russian incited and sponsored group that ran into our capital and essentially shut it down for a week or more while the Ottawa Police sat on their hands and the OPP looked away. That was police not willing to do their jobs and enforce the laws that existed against a group that they supported, that's called fascism.

Those "truckers and farmers", much like yourself from what I gather, are blinded by social media ignorance, corporate entities, and pot-stirring foreign governments, framing the narrative that it is the left that is trying to destroy this country and not the center and right wing factions that apparently want the world to be ruled by Kings.

Electoral reform doesn't go through because the parties that get in power know that if they put electoral perform through they're going to lose a bit of power in the long term.

Houses aren't being built because we have a government that is unwilling to support anybody but large developers to build houses. And large developers also push out smaller developers because of the amount of money they're willing to pay for property and that they can hold on to developable land for extended periods of time without actually building in order to extract the most value at expense of our population.

Immigration is only at the level that it is because we need to prop up our economy with cheap foreign labor. Why do you think TFW's are so popular? Big business does not want to pay locals a reasonable wage. As such locals aren't well off and don't want to have children driving the need for more immigrants.

I agree regarding post-secondary institutional reform.

You're looking at this from a liberal versus conservative standpoint when we really need to look at the policies being put into place that harm citizens and benefit corporations and those in power. It is a class war not a culture war that we are fighting. Liberals and cons both focus on the culture war and concentration of power, and also the NDP and greens to an extent. We need to drive all these parties to policies beneficial for the population, and not allow them to concentrate power at the top whether that be government or corporate.

[–] thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Just to provide some perspective for anyone who doesn't read the article:

The books are not in any sense banned
Teachers are still allowed to teach them
The significance of the "recommended reading list" is that it acts as a "pre-approved" set of titles for teachers to use in the classroom
If a teacher wants to teach a non-list book, they can, after getting approval from the principal
AFAICT, the books will all still be available in the library like normal

That's not to make a claim about whether it's a good idea or not-- It will probably make it less likely that teachers will choose these books, which might be bad. The reasoning (outdated handling of racial topics; discomfort for students) is dubious and under-explained, IMO. But unless I'm missing something, it's not even close to a book ban.

Just keep that in mind in advance of the "SOON IT WILL BE THOUGHT CRIME!" angle.

[–] Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The decision to remove the four books from the list was made by a panel of 12 teachers, led by a group of researchers and experts on racial equity and inclusive education. The teachers did independent reviews of the recommended resources, ultimately determining that the four should no longer be recommended, Matthew said.

This decision comes from a group of teachers. From the article and local reporting it also seems unpopular with both sides of the provincial political fence.

[–] thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 2 points 8 months ago

Correct, which is interesting-- I was surprised that Premier Eby a) criticized the decision, and b) referred to it as a ban.

[–] zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 8 months ago

As a survivor of the Surrey school district, it's always been fucking awful

[+] Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

[deleted]

British Columbia