They did what?

[kyrielle]

Okay, that's just dumb. How about the school system "sanitizing" (editing to be politically correct) literary exerpts on an English exam? To the point of destroying the original meaning? Without any indication the passage was edited?

Our school system is nuts.

Comments

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

Ooooo, this makes me SICK.

[kyrielle]

Me too. I'd've written more on the matter but I couldn't figure out exactly how to convey the pure RAGE I felt at that.

[tibicina.livejournal.com]

Just stares for a while. Actually, I'm pretty sure that altering the passages without noting it is a violation of copyright law, though I could be wrong about that. These people need to be stopped. If they want passages that don't offend anyone, they should go find passages that suit the pablum they want and then suffer the mocking they deserve for never testing anyone on any book someone might actually want to read. They especially shouldn't be asking questions based on the bits they took out. Morons.

[kyrielle]

Definitely. And yeah, I think they're beyond the bounds of fair use (unless they use standard editing marks, which they haven't been).

And it's NUTS to test on the basis of things that aren't even left in. Ugh.

[camwyn]

Man, stuff like this makes me just want to run out and buy the most screamingly offensive reading material I can RIGHT NOW and read it aloud at the top of my lungs in Times Square. Who do these morons think they are, anyway? If they had more than two brain cells to rub together they'd at least have used dead authors, but nooo...

I hope they choke on their own tide of stupid.

[kyrielle]

And I just hope that somehow the kids don't....

Gah. Stupid, stupid.

[n5iln.livejournal.com]

This is absolute idiocy. Not to mention, as someone already pointed out, a violation of copyright law. And an excellent example of extremely poor scholarship, since citing sources accurately is a "make-or-break" item on every paper I've ever turned in. Hrmph...to think, there are people wondering why the US ranks 36th in high-school student performance worldwide. (I forget where I saw that, but it wasn't long ago.) It makes me embarrassed to be a taxpayer in New York State.

Makes me wonder if someone up there in the Regents office is trying to figure out a way to replace the entire Declaration of Independence with one word: "Crimethink." (Hmm, maybe I did read too much Orwell in my formative years...but it was assigned reading, so they've no one to blame but themselves!)

A final cogitation on the matter: Politically-correct people are differently-brained.

[kyrielle]

Definitely. And, actually, I'm still wondering why we rank 36th...but that's mostly now because I'm wondering why it's so high.... </sarcasm>

[pheon.livejournal.com]

The "...New York State education commissioner said yesterday that literary passages in state-administered tests would no longer be altered to delete unwanted words or phrases." Apparently the firestorm of protest influenced them.... See (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/05/education/05REGE.html) --- NY Times free but annoying registration required, yadda yadda yadda.