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 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 poppa G wrote:
I hate the way you guys spell things.

Blame the French. Or more specifically the Normans.

Normans weren't French. the French for Viking is Les Normands. England was conquered by the Vikings several times, and compeltelt conquered twice, the most recently in 1066. England was never conquered by France.
Most Frenchies know enough of Dark Age history not to try this one.

I know that. But they did speak medieval French (or a bastardised form of it) and the Norman invasion imported parts of the French language into England.

Hence I was joking "Blame the French for our weird spelling".

Ok, point taken. Yes there is Ferench influence in our language, but also so much else that it isn't really a problem. Nordic and Celtic languages make up English alongside the French and Latin. This is a good thing as it gives English it's exceptionally broad and expressive vocabulary. Now we just need to stop those Yanks from fething it up too much.

 kronk wrote:
Color and flavor shouldn't have a U in it!

Stop the madness!

The proper spelling on 'Colours' has 7 letters in it, making it a doddle to use in advertising
As for the 'u', I don't think we used it half the time when the US was getting set up. We just standardised on different formats.

 Orlanth wrote:

Instead of shouting tin foil tin foil, perhaps you should think a little and remove the blinkers.

I don't have any blinkers on, I simply am not eager to draw conclusions from dubious evidence. You still haven't explained exactly what 'UK culture' is either, without doing so you can hardly claim that it is being eroded on ideological grounds, assuming that is what 'New Labour' was doing in the first place.

 Orlanth wrote:
the French for Viking is Les Normands.

I thought the French for Viking was Viking.
Not trying to pretend “French people invaded England”, because I sincerely doubt projecting the French and English identity as we know them currently on entities from the Middle Ages that have little and less to do with them makes any sense, though.

 Palindrome wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

Instead of shouting tin foil tin foil, perhaps you should think a little and remove the blinkers.

I don't have any blinkers on, I simply am not eager to draw conclusions from dubious evidence. You still haven't explained exactly what 'UK culture' is either, without doing so you can hardly claim that it is being eroded on ideological grounds, assuming that is what 'New Labour' was doing in the first place.

Well that is a logical non-sequitor. It's equally difficult to describe 'French Culture' or 'US culture' per se without being trite. You could still tell if French culture or US culture were not being taught or accessed in their respective schools though.

As for revision on ideological grounds, the evidence is all around you. Here is some sourced just from this thread:
1. The OCR has chosen removed American literature from its curriculum as its means of complying with DfE guidelines, not Gove, but blamed Gove anyway. This is dishonest and politically motivated.
2. The OCR and similar examination boards are expected to review schools choices from the curricula available.
3. A history curricula consisting entirely on multiculturalism ethnic history and the events (mistakes) that led to the second world war must have been approved by an examinations board, which is expected to see that the curricula is not biased or politically leading.
4. There are cases of school curricula being eroded for ideological grounds going through the courts.

Of course the list goes on, but I wanted to just keep to what you can reference or infer from right here.
My evidence is not dubious, what is dubious is blaming the Education Secretary for not teaching 'Of Mice and Men'. The DfE guidelines are clear, linked were provided and the actually relevant text copied to this thread. Nowhere were American authors unapproved of, nowhere were they banned or discouraged.
You still jumped on the 'Gove is an idiot for withdrawing American authors' bandwagon without reading or thinking, and then critique the facts presented after someone does.
Sorry the blinkers are definitely there, none so blind as those who refuse to see.

Albatross wrote:There are, in my opinion, a number of books that are more relevant to modern British life, that are by British authors, that should be included in the Secondary syllabus. I'd like to see:

'Trainspotting' by Irvine Welsh

'A Clockwork Orange' by Anthony Burgess.

and maybe ' From Hell' by Alan Moore.

Yeah good luck with that, anything with even the smallest amount of graphic sex/violence/substance abuse etc is considered 'inappropriate' to be read by schoolchildren by those-that-think-they-know-best, in case the unsavoury content doth corrupt their teenage children's innocent a pure minds.

Those books would never get a look in simply because the f-word occurs in amounts > 0

Despite the fact that I remember my teenage years essentially being a blur of watching other people indulge in graphic sex, violence and substance
abuse (not so much for me, I am was an abject coward and not very good with the ladies...)

 Orlanth wrote:

You could still tell if French culture or US culture were not being taught or accessed in their respective schools though.

How? If you want something taught you need to define what it is you are teaching. In this particular case the teaching of specific books is to develop a students understanding of the English language, to give an insight into creative writing and other such things. it is not to teach students how to be 'British', aside from anything else there is no such thing as 'British' culture.

Why do you need to teach a particular culture in schools anyway, surely it is simply picked up from those around you?

 Palindrome wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

You could still tell if French culture or US culture were not being taught or accessed in their respective schools though.

How? If you want something taught you need to define what it is you are teaching. In this particular case the teaching of specific books is to develop a students understanding of the English language, to give an insight into creative writing and other such things. it is not to teach students how to be 'British', aside from anything else there is no such thing as 'British' culture.

Why do you need to teach a particular culture in schools anyway, surely it is simply picked up from those around you?

Of his whole post, you choose to respond only to that one line?

My evidence is not dubious, what is dubious is blaming the Education Secretary for not teaching 'Of Mice and Men'. The DfE guidelines are clear, linked were provided and the actually relevant text copied to this thread. Nowhere were American authors unapproved of, nowhere were they banned or discouraged.
You still jumped on the 'Gove is an idiot for withdrawing American authors' bandwagon without reading or thinking, and then critique the facts presented after someone does.
Sorry the blinkers are definitely there, none so blind as those who refuse to see.

Instead of responding to this, you choose to change the subject...

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

Of his whole post, you choose to respond only to that one line?

We have already had this exact same discussion in another thread(s?), I can't be arsed repeating myself (too much).

Of Mice And Men and To Kill A Mockingbird are not that great. It's a pity they are foisted on American children but we have a need for low-hanging fruit like these and The [not so] Great Gatsby. There certainly is no good reason that children outside of the US should be made to read them.

I quite liked To Kill a Mockingbird, I only read it a couple of years ago as well

 Manchu wrote:
Of Mice And Men and To Kill A Mockingbird are not that great. It's a pity they are foisted on American children but we have a need for low-hanging fruit like these and The [not so] Great Gatsby. There certainly is no good reason that children outside of the US should be made to read them.

I will second you on Of Mice And Men. Predictable and shallow in my opinion (studied it two years ago for my GCSEs).

Texts should just be chosen on their merit, regardless of where they come from. Also would it kill educators to study more upbeat texts? We had to study poetry on the theme of conflict, which was monstrously boring, and not as emotive to me as the authors had hoped. Of course, YMMV. That, Of Mice And Men (the original title for that is so much better) meant that English was really boring. An Inspector Calls made up for it a bit though.

Haven't read To Kill A Mockingbird, I've been recommended it occasionally.

Mockingbird does deal with some pretty darned big stuff and I certainly don't know any book that quite matches the same 'big stuff' it deals with in a similar way.

As for, 'Of Mice and Men' aside from the Burns connection, the most important thing for it is so that you can be suitably horrified about Season 3 of The Walking Dead....

"Look at the flowers..."

 4oursword wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Of Mice And Men and To Kill A Mockingbird are not that great. It's a pity they are foisted on American children but we have a need for low-hanging fruit like these and The [not so] Great Gatsby. There certainly is no good reason that children outside of the US should be made to read them.

I will second you on Of Mice And Men. Predictable and shallow in my opinion (studied it two years ago for my GCSEs).

Texts should just be chosen on their merit, regardless of where they come from. Also would it kill educators to study more upbeat texts? We had to study poetry on the theme of conflict, which was monstrously boring, and not as emotive to me as the authors had hoped. Of course, YMMV. That, Of Mice And Men (the original title for that is so much better) meant that English was really boring. An Inspector Calls made up for it a bit though.

Haven't read To Kill A Mockingbird, I've been recommended it occasionally.

That is the real challenge- what novel deals with those issues while being upbeat? Those themes usually don't occur in happy, cheerful novels.

Well, this is true. The poetry was the worst, and didn't really deal with much.

 4oursword wrote:
Well, this is true. The poetry was the worst, and didn't really deal with much.

I liked my higher English teacher (For a variety fo reasons) but one was she avoided poetry for our class at all costs, all it does it take revision time away from your folio/exam prep

Would that we could have avoided poetry to the same degree. There were 7 other topics in the anthology, and we got conflict :l

As an aside, Albatross, A Clockwork Orange can be studied at A-Level English, along with a lot of other books on the theme of dystopia. Good luck getting GCSE students to read them and understand them, though.

 Palindrome wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

Of his whole post, you choose to respond only to that one line?

We have already had this exact same discussion in another thread(s?), I can't be arsed repeating myself (too much).

Have we?
There hasn't been a thread on this particular topic before.

 Palindrome wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

You could still tell if French culture or US culture were not being taught or accessed in their respective schools though.

How? If you want something taught you need to define what it is you are teaching. In this particular case the teaching of specific books is to develop a students understanding of the English language, to give an insight into creative writing and other such things.....

You can study syntax, prose and writing styles from a vast range of books, however while studying this you also end up studying the content of the book.

 Palindrome wrote:

it is not to teach students how to be 'British',

Its also not intended to teach students to ignore that they are British or to grow up ignorant of our culture.
instilling a sense of national identity in the schools system via the education process is quite normal, most (all that I have heard of) nations see the benefit in doing so. However some types howl when we try it here, it doesn't fit their political comfort zone.

 Palindrome wrote:

aside from anything else there is no such thing as 'British' culture.

I need say little more to prove the need for a balanced education. Seeing as you come from the UK, and deny there is any British culture. Sadly I do hear this a lot, and it shows the brainwashing is really sinking in. You wouldn't get a Frenchman saying there is no French culture, and no one could get away with saying the French have no culture. Even though the same pointers are visible in France and in the UK highlighting our respective cultures.


British culure, examples from the top of my head:
OK for a start British culture is the mix of the variant constituent cultures of the UK brought together by a common society and language. As the UK has had an enormous cultural influence on the world, particularly from English culture but also from the British culture as an offshoot of the Union. English culture developing into British culture includes several of the most popular sports played in the world today including rugby, rounders (baseball), football and cricket. The English cultural tradition of trial by jury became a part of British culture through the Union and then globalised.
National culture can also often be defined by diet and culinary choices, the UK has a largely unified culinary palette which can be considered British rather than from the constituent nation states.
When looking at architecture as cultural iconograpghy there is a lot which is distinctly British also. In particular the ironworks of the early Industrial Revolution, which happened first in the UK. While originally technically English there was heavy Scottish influence in that many of the prominent engineers were Scottish and many of the great works were built in Scotland. One can argue that the works of Brunel could symbolise an aspect of British culture.
I will stop there, but the list does not.

Seeing a Britiash culture has shaped the world as it is today, probably more so than any other. It is ignorant in the extreme to assume it doesnt exist. For starters there would be no US culture without British culture, its a direct descendent culture. Are you going to try and claim the Americans have no culture either?

 Palindrome wrote:

Why do you need to teach a particular culture in schools anyway, surely it is simply picked up from those around you?

Possibly including dogmatised teachers or others who tell you there is no British culture; also 'those around you' may not been taught anything about their nationality because its politically expedient to re-envision the nation for party benefit. The effect is accumulative.

 welshhoppo wrote:

 poppa G wrote:
I hate the way you guys spell things.

You mean like doughnut?

perhaps he refers to the ubiquitous unnecessary 'u' in words like armor, color, etc.
i know that always bugs me, just a little bit.

morpheuschild wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:

 poppa G wrote:
I hate the way you guys spell things.

You mean like doughnut?

perhaps he refers to the ubiquitous unnecessary 'u' in words like armor, color, etc.
i know that always bugs me, just a little bit.

I think that would be some latent French influence in spelling. Given traditional british cultural hostility towards them you think they'd gladly purge the language of unnecessary U's.

For reference, in French, colo(u)r is couleur, armo(u)r is armure.

 4oursword wrote:
Would that we could have avoided poetry to the same degree. There were 7 other topics in the anthology, and we got conflict :l

As an aside, Albatross, A Clockwork Orange can be studied at A-Level English, along with a lot of other books on the theme of dystopia. Good luck getting GCSE students to read them and understand them, though.

We touched on a few passages from it at GCSE level as I recall.

I really, really enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird.

On a similar subject... we also read and watched A Time to Kill...

 MrDwhitey wrote:
I really, really enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird.

On a similar subject... we also read and watched A Time to Kill...

uhm...
a time to kill a mockingbird...?

sorry, couldn't resist. i'll just show myself the door now.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

By "this exact same discussion", I think he means "admitting I was wrong, and rude".

Pot, meet kettle. By this 'discussion' I mean Orlanth attempting to claim that the UK education system has been deliberately engineered with the aim of making the population either ignorant or disdainful of British history by Labour while I maintain that it is bollocks. Feel free to trawl through my posting history to find it if you really, really want to.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Orlanth wrote:

I need say little more to prove the need for a balanced education. Seeing as you come from the UK, and deny there is any British culture. Sadly I do hear this a lot, and it shows the brainwashing is really sinking in.

There is no 'British' culture for the simple reason that the UK is so diverse its a gross oversimplification to claim that there is a single culture, you would be almost as well claiming that there is a European culture. The culture that I was brought up in is very different to that of the south of England which is itself different to the North East of England etc etc etc. If anyone has been brainwashed its yourself.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27586376

Gove rebuts claims of American author ban

Education Secretary Michael Gove has hit back at "culture warriors" who he says have wrongly accused him of banning American novels at GCSE level.

Exam board OCR said it had left texts such as Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird Bird off its English GCSE because of new guidelines from Mr Gove.

Responding in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Gove denied he had banned American authors in general or John Steinbeck.

"I have not banned anything. Nor has anyone else," he wrote.

"All we are doing is asking exam boards to broaden - not narrow - the books young people study for GCSE."

Newspaper reports on Sunday said Paul Dodd, OCR's head of GCSE and A-Level reform, had suggested Mr Gove "had a particular dislike for Of Mice and Men and was disappointed that more than 90% of candidates were studying it".

OCR said the decision to drop the works by American authors was because of the Department for Educations's desire for the exam to be more "more focused on tradition" and there were fewer opportunities to include them in the new syllabus.

'I read and loved them as a child'
In a Telegraph article on Tuesday, Mr Gove responded: "Do I think Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird are bad books? Of course not.

"I read and loved them as a child. And I want children in the future to be able to read them all. But sometimes a rogue meme can be halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.

"Just because one chap at one exam board claimed I didn't like Of Mice and Men, the myth took hold that it - and every other pesky American author - has been banned."

The education secretary criticised those who used social media to hit out at his supposed ban.

"And without waiting to do anything as mundane as checking the facts, a host of culture warriors have taken to Twitter to denounce this literary isolationism.

"As an English literature graduate - and indeed unabashed Americanophile - I am rather pleased on one level that so many rhetorical swords should have leapt from their scabbards to defend both literature and the unity of the Anglosphere.

"But sadly I can't take too much delight in these protestations of literary affection. Because they are - in more than just one sense - rooted in fiction."

So in other words, the whole story was a load of rubbish.

William Golding was English anyway.

 Palindrome wrote:


Pot, meet kettle. By this 'discussion' I mean Orlanth attempting to claim that the UK education system has been deliberately engineered with the aim of making the population either ignorant or disdainful of British history by Labour while I maintain that it is bollocks. Feel free to trawl through my posting history to find it if you really, really want to.

Yet Labour appointees still in the system are doing anything, by fair means or foul to scupper the education reforms to counter a detectable dissaossiation from British history..
They don't like the literature reforms that are there solely to include Uk content to the extent that they will deliberately misrepresent what the Minister is doing, and they hate the history reforms.
Do yourself a favour, ask why.

 Palindrome wrote:

There is no 'British' culture for the simple reason that .....<snip>

He's at it again.
I even showed you examples of what is categorically British culture.




Thats to Ketara for linking Goves reply to this unfair story, I hope it puts the issue to bed. Vindicated.

4oursword wrote:Would that we could have avoided poetry to the same degree. There were 7 other topics in the anthology, and we got conflict :l

As an aside, Albatross, A Clockwork Orange can be studied at A-Level English, along with a lot of other books on the theme of dystopia. Good luck getting GCSE students to read them and understand them, though.

The way our education system is laid out, you don't need to understand them

You just need to memorise word-for-word how the exam board understands them.

Seriously, every time you see a question in an exam that contains the words 'your opinion' they actually mean 'our opinion', anything that deviates from the marking sheet is seen as incorrect, so if you actually form your own understanding of the messages and themes in a text, you will suffer as a result, but blindly regurgitate what's on the syllabus and your golden.