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Canuckstan, Alone On The World; What Ethnicities Would You Choose?
Topic Started: Feb 21 2009, 06:14 PM (1,079 Views)
Mock
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Mock
I suppose one must allow for minor mishaps, in the much larger nation-wide PC-indoctrination program. I wonder how many non-Western cultures would even bother with this type of Soviet-style social engineering. :lolly:

'What if' conversation between politically correct Armenian school teacher and young Armenian student:

"But they want to wipe us out, Miss!"
"They? THEY!?!?! How dare you differentiate between cultures young man!"
"But... bu..."
*RA-TAT-TAT-TAT-*splat*TAT-TAT-*splat, splat*TAT-TAT-BOOM-*splat**splat-TAT-TAT*splat*

Turkish soldier:
"One classroom less to march to Deir ez-Zor."


Quote:
 
N.B. education minister orders end to race-based Grade 4 assignment

New Brunswick's education minister has ordered the cancellation of a school assignment that asked children which lives they would save if they had to choose among different ethnic groups.

Kelly Lamrock's move came after outrage was expressed by a mother at the school.

"I can't mince words," Lamrock said. "It is unacceptable in every way. Whatever the intent was, it invites and encourages defining people by stereotypes. It needs to stop."

The education minister said the objective of promoting cultural diversity is a part of the curriculum, but that specific class project is not.

The assignment for the Grade 4 students at École Mont-Carmel in Ste-Marie-de-Kent was based on the notion that the planet was about to explode.

The students had three spaces in a rocket ship and they had to decide which person they would save among the following: an Acadian francophone, a Chinese person, a black African, an English person and an aboriginal person.

The assignment also included images representing each of the different ethnic groups that they could choose to save.

The controversy began after Jessie Lomax complained when her 10-year-old daughter was given the assignment, which, the woman said, is better suited for "concentration camp employees."

She said her daughter, Feven, whom she adopted from Ethiopia a year and a half ago, came home recently upset by the social studies project.

Lomax said her daughter felt troubled by this assignment.

"She definitely found it was upsetting. She felt it was wrong, she didn't understand it," she said.

"It's also terrifying for her. She's the only child of any other racial or ethnic group in that class. To then be walked through this exercise with limited understanding, to her it's terrifying.

"It's as though she is set in an environment where this is a possibility in Canada."
Unhappy with school's response

Feven has a sister named Halina who is in Grade 3 at the same school.

Lomax's mother, Laura Maillet, has a four-year-old daughter who was also adopted from Ethiopia.

Lomax and Maillet complained to the principal and the teacher. But they said the school's response was unacceptable.

"They seem to refuse to acknowledge it is inappropriate to suggest that it's the right way to handle racism or any of those issues in a class environment," she said.

"To me it looks like training for concentration camp employees. It's disgusting. And we're going to go further with it, obviously."

Maillet said the school assignment is asking kids to make a life-or-death decision based only on language and ethnicity.

"Then the exercise goes on with ludicrous questions like, 'Was it a difficult decision and how do you think the other people would feel?'" she said.

This is the second time the education minister has been forced to publicly distance himself from a decision made by a staff member of a provincial school. A principal at Belleisle Elementary School stopped the daily singing of O Canada and moved it to monthly assemblies.

That decision sparked a national controversy. Lamrock said he thought the anthem should be sung at the start of school.
Principal defends Grade 4 project

Before Lamrock made his ruling, the local school was defending the assignment.

Bernice Ryan, the principal of École Mont-Carmel, said she has listened to Lomax's concerns, but feels the exercise is a good one, as it is intended to show the students how to be respectful to all groups.

"Children would say, 'Well, we don't want to make any decision so we kept everyone here on the planet.' Or some of the students would say, 'Well, we've chosen to keep the three main ethnical groups in our community, which is English, French and Amerindian, because of being able to communicate,'" she said.

There's confusion over where the school assignment originated.

Ryan said the exercise was prepared by the Department of Education and is part of the curriculum. The principal said she doesn't believe the exercise is out of date, but she has passed concerns on to the district office.

However, Gerald Richard, the District 11 superintendent, said the material was not made in the Department of Education. He said he believed it was locally produced.

Richard said the district has an education specialist in humanities and he has asked that person to call the parents directly. And if the specialist can't call the parents, Richard said he will talk to them personally.

"I have to admit it really doesn't sound good. It got my attention. We contacted the school," he said. "[The] exercise will no longer be used in that school or any other school."

Canuckstan Rag


Edit: Correction 'in'.
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Evil_Henry
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I love this - and have to admit the responses would be interesting.

"Ok, we can remove the aborigine from the equation right away as they aren't technically people." :dalekray:
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Pestiferous
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I don't see the problem with this excercise. All I see is parents taking it considerably out of context.
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ErgonomicLogic
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Obviously I'd choose white people from the Western world as we would need people capable of inventing and building things beyond 8th century technology. I'd also throw in a Coolie to pull my rickshaw to my house to be with my Hispanic concubine and to take me back to the science lab to oversee human progress.
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Evil_Henry
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Quote:
 
The students had three spaces in a rocket ship and they had to decide which person they would save among the following: an Acadian francophone, a Chinese person, a black African, an English person and an aboriginal person.

The assignment also included images representing each of the different ethnic groups that they could choose to save.



I suppose as long as the teacher doesn't mark the answers. :lol:

If the focus is to show how a person should be judged on their individual merit, rather than a supposed ethnic history, it's a nice point perhaps. That doesn't appear to be the case from this article - which begs the question - what is the lesson they are trying to teach?
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Evil_Henry
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It doesn't mention gender or appearance either. So many variables to consider.

Chinese Girl:
Posted Image


English Man:
Posted Image
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Pestiferous
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I did this exercise in school, in our cultural learning class. The point of it was to get us to ask questions about the individuals - who was a doctor, who was a teacher, who would you need to survive. We also learned a lot about each culture, considering some cultures we were given to choose from we didn't even know about.

It also helped some kids who readily chose which culture they thought should survive, and gave the teacher a chance to highlight the ignorance of those kids, and teach them tolerance they may not learn at home. It also gave us a chance to discuss sterotypes and generalizations, and learn stereotypes that people might have of us - and how it feels to be thought of that way.

It's a valuable exercise. The mother of the ethiopian kids is really just looking for attention.
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stevapalooza
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Evil_Henry
Feb 23 2009, 03:49 PM
It doesn't mention gender or appearance either. So many variables to consider.

Chinese Girl:
Posted Image


English Man:
Posted Image

Hard to believe it's the same species.
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Evil_Henry
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Quote:
 
It also helped some kids who readily chose which culture they thought should survive, and gave the teacher a chance to highlight the ignorance of those kids, and teach them tolerance they may not learn at home. It also gave us a chance to discuss sterotypes and generalizations, and learn stereotypes that people might have of us - and how it feels to be thought of that way.


Yeah, I think that's how it should be done. Seems like a decent exercise but very much open to the personal leanings of the teacher.

Quote:
 
"Children would say, 'Well, we don't want to make any decision so we kept everyone here on the planet.' Or some of the students would say, 'Well, we've chosen to keep the three main ethnical groups in our community, which is English, French and Amerindian, because of being able to communicate,'" she said.


Hmm. That sounds an awful lot like, "Children would refuse to take part in the exercise seeing it as some kind of Nazi trial by race whereas others would simply 'pick what they know'. <_<
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ConfusedMonkey
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We did something similar, although it wasn't a space ship it was a hot air balloon. Which is why it was called the Balloon Debate. The idea is the balloon is going down so you have to throw one person out so the rest of you can survive.

It wasn't done on race or culture though. The teacher gets five or six of you and gives each of you a character - for arguments sake they can be Einstein, Shakespeare, Florence Nightingale, Darwin, Churchill and Mother Teresa. So you have to prepare a speech on why you deserve to be saved, and deliver it to the class... and then at the end you all have a big debate on who can be chucked out of the balloon.

So you learn more about the people that you might not know other than the obvious... it improves your public speaking and encourages discussion. It was pretty good fun. I have to say though, doing it with culture instead is a good idea, and no more barbaric than deciding to chuck an old woman out of the balloon because you think she's the most useless. :D
There are no promises or assurances in any shape or form contained in the above post. Do not trust this Monkey.
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Evil_Henry
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I still think that there is going to be a broad consensus and the teacher will probably gravitate to one set of the ideas, even if they appear largely impartial. A teacher may be a little bemused at your desire to eject "Fat Man Churchill" from the balloon but is unlikely to be too unhappy. Discarding the African race may have a different impact entirely.

You can isolate an individual and their qualities but you can't judge a person by their race... this test almost suggests that you can. I think the two tests are sufficiently different, although I appreciate that they are both thought provoking.
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Xx_SwordWords_xX
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Your whole education is a bunch of ideas from a bunch of fucked up teachers.

Get over it.
Posted Image
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Evil_Henry
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You mean that you are an advertisement for the Canadian education system?
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Pestiferous
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Quote:
 
You can isolate an individual and their qualities but you can't judge a person by their race... this test almost suggests that you can.


Huh? This tests actually shows students that they cannot judge a person by their race. That's the whole point of it.

And it's not even a test, it's a project. A discussion-provoking project.
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Evil_Henry
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It depends on what information the students are given, like I said. The article conveniently misses that out which is probably due to bias and a desire to cause shock in its readers.

You said that your project when you were a child contained details such as qualifications I think, "teacher" "surgeon" etc. This kind of test could be constructed to show that race is absolutely irrelevant and I imagine this is its purpose. If, however, the question is limited to a picture and a description of their ethnic background / culture (i.e. non-personalised) this is a different question entirely.

It's not clear from the article but I would suggest that it's entirely harmless (version 1) but depicted as ambiguous (version 2) to provoke readers. It got Mock to post so it clearly works, not that it requires more than a small nudge of course.

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esttelle
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Interesting...., the comments section after the article. How most people just assume, how it's going to go. Guess that proves it's worth it, in a way, eh?
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Mock
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Evil_Henry
Feb 24 2009, 03:48 PM

It's not clear from the article but I would suggest that it's entirely harmless (version 1) but depicted as ambiguous (version 2) to provoke readers.  It got Mock to post so it clearly works, not that it requires more than a small nudge of course.

:lol:

It's a clear case of Soviet-style social engineering (in overdrive) and a rather grim portrayal of the reality of certain educational practices in the Canuckstanian public schooling system. Naming and shaming small children for their so-described 'racist' views? This reminds me of a certain practice employed in the Madhouse of Europe, [size0]otherwise known as the UK.

It turns children into little intolerant Gestapo toddlers.
.........(Clearly I'm making a ludicrous point, as it's common knowledge that all children are wild, amoral animals, but don't let that get in the way of whatever nonsense you were about to spew.).........

Posted ImagePosted Image
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Evil_Henry
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Generalising based on race is wrong, don't you think? If so, it is within the mandate of education to pursue this at a young age.

Either each race is to be treated equally or it isn't.
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Pestiferous
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Quote:
 
Naming and shaming small children for their so-described 'racist' views?



So, anytime a teacher corrects a student they are naming and shaming them? Do you ever get tired of being so fucking melodramatic?

Kids go to school to learn. Correction of preconceived notions is part of that.

Like my avatar? It has your eyes, doesn't it?
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Mock
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Mock
The problem is that it doesn't just end with instilling a proper sense of inter-racial sensibility, it becomes a fundamental keystone for the subsequent 'white guilt' indoctrination, as orchestrated by the Leftist Church Of Multiculturalism. Those that hold factually sound 'aberrant' views (center right wing) are typically victimized by their peers and classified as racist. This intolerance is structurally sanctioned, endorsed and encouraged by the (overwhelmingly leftist) education system as a whole.

They should have called this 'project' - "Sniffing out the racist for a proper lynching."

I would imagine, that given the few cogent thoughts that these children are able to produce, these will not be wasted on matters of racial differentiation or equality, without external inducement.
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