On Sat, 11 Jun 2011 09:49:51 -0700, Michael Sylvester wrote: >I was entertaining a visitor from Spain and I was told that students in >Britain are discouraged from using the term "blackboard" and should >preferably use the term" white board" or just "board". Apparently the >term "blackboard" has evoked an implication of racism to some. >Will someone come in on this?
First, tell your visitors that if they treat "hearsay" as though it was God's own truth or the lesser empirical supported statement, they should not be surprised if Shenanigans (or some more offensive term) is called on them. So, hearsay, gossip, and intellectual laziness that results in the uncritical acceptance of any statement presented somewhere, and so on is bad, m'kay? Only thing worse than that is spreading such info that one hears from someone. ;-) Second, Wikipedia's entry on Political Correctness (yadda-yadda) has this to say about the situation that Prof. Sylvester seems to refer to: |False accusations of political correctness | |In the United Kingdom, some newspapers reported that a school |had altered the nursery rhyme “Baa Baa Black Sheep” to read |“Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep”.[37] But it is also reported that a better |description is that the Parents and Children Together (PACT) nursery |had the children “turn the song into an action rhyme. . . . They sing |happy, sad, bouncing, hopping, pink, blue, black and white sheep etc.” [38] |That nursery rhyme story was circulated and later extended to |suggest that like language bans applied to the terms “black coffee” |and “blackboard”.[39] The Private Eye magazine reported that like |stories, all baseless, ran in the British press since The Sun first published |them in 1986.[40] See also Loony Left#Baa Baa White Sheep. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness#False_accusations_of_political_correctness Third, if one finds that they cannot control themselves from uncritically accepting hearsay and cannot do the relevant research to show that there is evidence for the hearsay or no evidence at all, please alert them to a wonderful business opportunity I have for them which will allow them to spectacular amounts of money involving transport between the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=10951 or send a blank email to leave-10951-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
