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NYC Bans Mention of Dinosaurs, Dancing, Birthdays On Student Tests
New submitter SchroedingersCat writes "New York educators banned references to 'dinosaurs,' 'birthdays,' 'Halloween' and dozens of other topics on city-issued tests. That is because they fear such topics 'could evoke unpleasant emotions in the students.' Dinosaurs, for example, call to mind evolution, which might upset fundamentalists; birthdays are not celebrated by Jehovah's Witnesses; and Halloween suggests paganism. Homes with swimming pools and home computers are also unmentionables — because of economic sensitivities. The city asks test companies to exclude 'creatures from outer space' as well — for unspecified reasons."
April 1st is a few days away still yet...
You know something is wrong when real life seems like a South Park episode.
Shouldn't they just ban the tests, since tests make many students feel uncomfortable?
Question: A man walks into his house and flips the switch to his 60-watt lightbulb for 8 hours. How many kWh does the lightbulb use?
Answer: None, because his electricity was disconnected several months ago due to the economic downturn.
"Test", because it evokes unpleasant emotions.
"New York", because it could be associated with stupidity.
"Student", because that could be mistaken for somebody that wants to learn and has an open mind.
Seriously, there is a limit. Modern human beings should have a reasonable level of tolerance for ideas that are not their own, and only reject them after they have looked at them carefully. (Yes, that includes actually looking at creationism and concluding for yourself that it is stupid.) They absolutely must have an open mind for all things scientific.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
MATHS TEST FOR STATE SCHOOLS
Name:
Nickname:
Gang Name:
1. Simon has 0.5 kilos of cocaine. If he sells an 8 ball to Matt for 300 quid and 90 grams to Ollie
for 90 quid, what is the street value of the rest of his hold?
2. Damon pimps 3 bitches. If the price is GBP40 a ride, how many jobs per day must each bitch
perform to support Damon's GBP500 a day coke habit?
3. Crackster wants to cut the kilo of cocaine he bought for 7,000 quid to make a 20% profit. How
many grams of Strychnine will he need?
4. Trev got 6 years for murder. He also got GBP350,000 for the hit. If his common law wife
spends GBP33,100 per month, how much money will be left when he gets out?
Extra Credit Bonus: How much more time will Trev get for killing the slapper that spent his
money?
5. If an average can of spray paint covers 22 square metres and the average letter is 1 square metre,
how many letters can be sprayed with eight fluid ounce cans of spray paint with 20% extra paint
free ?
6. Liam steals Jordan's skateboard. As Liam skates away at a speed of 35mph, Jordan loads his
brother's Armalite. If it takes Jordan 20 seconds to load the gun, how far will Liam have travelled
when he gets whacked?
MATHS TEST FOR PRIVATE SCHOOLS
Name:
(If longer please continue on a separate sheet)
School:
Daddy's/Mummy's Company:
1. Harry smashes up the old man's car, causing x amount of damage and killing 3 people. The old
man asks his local Chief Constable to intervene in the court system, then forges his insurance claim
and receives a payment of y. The difference between x and y is three times the life insurance
settlement for the three dead people. What kind of car is Harry driving now?
2. Fiona's personal shopper decides to substitute generic and own-brand products for the designer
goods favoured by her employer. In the course of a month she saves the price of a return ticket to
Fiji and Fiona doesn't even notice the difference. Is she thick or what?
3. Tristram fancies the arse off a certain number of debutants, but he only has enough Rohypnol left
to render 33.3% unconscious. If he has 14 tablets of Rohypnol, how is he ever going to shag the
other two thirds?
4. If Verity throws up 4 times a day for a week she can fit into a size 8 Versace. If she only throws
up 3 times a day for two weeks, she has to make do with a size 10 Dolce & Gabbana. How much
does liposuction cost?
5. Henry is unsure about his sexuality. Three days a week he fancies women. On the other days he
fancies men, ducks and vacuum cleaners. However he only has access to the Hoover every third
week. When will he stand for parliament?
There's a reason JWs don't celebrate birthdays. Both mentions of birthdays in the Bible, one in the Hebrew Scriptures and one in the Greek Scriptures, ended up with the birthday boy ordering someone's execution. See Genesis 40:20-22 and Mark 6:21-27.
I think it's slang for a thought locked inside a necklace.
My guess is you can't mention that 2 + 2 = 4 either because there might be some offended dilholes that believe 2 + 2 = 5. Honestly, we have all kinds of people out there. Some of them believe some pretty outrageous stuff. While you can try to be polite to people of all beliefs, you really can't try to tailor reality to them. If some religious dude doesn't want to hear about dinosaurs, have him go to a religious school or be home schooled. The rest of us can't pretend there weren't any such things. We would be creating a society of people who lacked basic science information and couldn't compete with people from places where education teaches you reality. If some other person's family doesn't believe in celebrating holidays, that's fine - the family has the responsibility to teach the child why they don't agree with having birthday parties and why it "seems" to the kid like they are the only "mean" family on the block. If someone is upset that they don't have a pool (hell, I don't have one), teach them about the value of hard work combined with a smidgeon of luck.
Reality folks - that's where we live. Believe what you want. My beliefs shouldn't affect you, your beliefs shouldn't affect me. And I sure as hell don't mind having my kids see yachts on a test even though we can't afford one. They can show churches on a test too - even though I don't go to one.
and Halloween suggests paganism.
You mean the religions that most of the christian holidays are based on in the first place?
That's a problem with everything. The position as you state it is a conservative claim, and an extension of similar claims about such things as the National Endowment for the Arts, which inevitably picks some artists viewpoints (and 'art as a form of speech') to favor over others. it sounds pretty logical to many libertarian types.
BUT, it applies to everything! (which is what the people who came up with this argument can't stand to see addressed): The Amish don't want their tax dollars spent on grading high speed curves by the Dept of Transportation. The people who seriously believe the Moon landings were fake don't want a NASA budget just to 'do more fake moonshots'. The Pacifists oppose spending anything at all for the Dept of Defense. The anti-vaccine persons oppose the Center for Disease Control, at least as it stands today. Just ask the nation's 50 million Pot smokers if they want a single dime of their taxes to go to the DEA, or even the BATF, FBI, and others. Many people would claim to oppose a tax on moral grounds if it got them a bigger refund (or whatever) regardless of whether they had an actual moral opinion. If every person has a right to not pay taxes if they run counter to his or her beliefs or alleged beliefs, then there will be next to no taxes at all, and government itself becomes unaffordable. Ultimately, you are demanding absolute Anarchy..
That's fine if you are really an Anarchist. The problem is, are you? Most of the people advancing your argument want it to apply to the parts of government they don't see a need for, and not the rest. Are you willing to apply your argument to Police, Courts, National Defense and such, or just to the things you want "justice tested"
Do you want all taxes to be voluntary, or do you want some of yourrs to be avoidable while mine continue to be manditory?
Who is John Cabal?
This makes perfect sense to me, you see this Dinosaur from outer-space decided to have a pool party for his birthday but no one came. He didn't relize that it was Halloween and all his friends where out trick or treating. Well he was so upset he made a map of his school in and practiced his assault using doom3. Latter that week he followed his plan a put peanuts all over the school and all the students died of allergic reactions. Of course that evil Dinosaur was a Fox news watching Muslim member of the the tea-party. It did happen but the media covered it all up a friend of mine was there and told me. You see real problem was that he was sensitive to EM radiation and the wifi drove him crazy. I blame it on his getting vaccinated as a child Dinosaur from outer space.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
They banned mention of Halloween becZause it suggests paganism. How do they suppose that makes the Pagan kids feel? They have just been told (indirectly) by the state that the mere mention of their religion is offensive.
None of these things are banned from curriculum, nor are they banned from being spoken of our taught.
The purpose of avoiding emotionally-laden terms on standardized tests is prevent biasing the test against any students. It is amply proven that emotional influences interfere with what the test is supposed to be measuring - knowledge and ability. Since this impact would be different on kids with different cultural backgrounds, those questions would be biased one way or another. This is simply a matter of good test design by eliminating unwanted variables.
But whatever. Everybody go back to your ignorant whinging. No need to know anything about what you're commenting on when you've got "common sense" on your side.
While I acknowledge the apparent insanity of the political correctness that seems to be the cause of this case, these sorts of exclusions are there for a reason. Tests should evaluate the topics they're designed to evaluate, not grade people on how "normal" their family background is. As an example, my mom was a nurse for a head start preschool and when she was going through records she noticed one kid had been labeled as having a low IQ. She could see he clearly wasn't dumb, so she looked into where the label came from. One of the main causes was that during an IQ test the kid was shown a picture of a birthday cake and he didn't recognize it and said it was a candle pie. A little research showed that he was a member of a religious group that didn't believe in celebrating birthdays, so he literally had never seen a birthday cake before.
PCness can certainly get out of control, and it sounds like it has in this case, but this is a serious topic. There are consequences for low scores on tests. This kid had been labeled dumb because he had never seen a birthday cake. When low scores are based on some sort of cultural gap, that's punishing kids who come from social groups that are out of the mainstream. Kids from _all_ social groups should be required to learn the same material, and as an example, I strongly object to parents keeping their kids from being taught evolution because of their religious beliefs. At the same time I think it's wrong to test kids on topics related to evolution (including dinosaurs) before the school has taught you about them.
Oh look, if I look at CBS New York, there is a fuller article saying that it is a list of suggested words that may be banned from tests.
And the CBS story has the whole list of words being mulled over.
In other words, the debate over what should on the list is ongoing.
The reason for this is that you want to make tests that are fair to everyone. If you're going to make a math test with word problems, you don't bring up the subject of murder. The obvious drawback is that it makes tests boring. Big fucking deal.
TFS and The Post has taken this to mean they are already banned and that this is just more "educrat nonsense" and it's written in such breathless style (they even use the word bizarre to describe it) merely to be inflammatory. It's journalistic porn.
While I agree the list, as it stands, is sub-optimal, it doesn't mean that the list is final and that it's probably likely that the list is going to get a lot shorter.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/03/26/war-on-words-nyc-dept-of-education-wants-50-forbidden-words-removed-from-standardized-tests/
I told you there was more to this, but hey, let everyone believe the fucking Post. The Post is in the business of selling newspapers, not news.
--
BMO
A large part of me says "FUCK ethics, give that teach a raise."
We're marking that insightful now? Listen, I was one of those kids. I took shit about my beliefs from teachers and students alike, and when it comes from teachers it will fuck you up majorly. Having someone you are supposed to be able to trust ridicule you for your beliefs or for your family's beliefs. THAT is cruel.
It is hard to be a JW and go to public schools. It shouldn't be. I thought this was America.
Christians attacking other Christians..... *sigh*
More important, why are we letting the mouth breathers and knuckle draggers dictate what our children will experience?
Slow down. City-mandated standardized progress tests should not be the only thing that your children experience. You get to dictate what they experience at home. The "professional educators" get to dictate what they experience at school.
That latter statement is why "we" are letting TMB and KD dictate, because we've turned the education of the children over to professionals that get paid to keep studying what the best way to educate children is. "Common sense" would mean an end to almost all education degrees and grants for education research.
I lived through the change from "old math" to "new math". I saw the math that kids were being taught a few years ago and it bore no resemblance to math as far as I could tell. I no longer wonder why high school graduates can't figure out your change when they sell you a burger.
Now, for the people who are insulting the yokels upstate and blaming them for this, if you read the fine article, you'd note that it is New York City officials calling for this, not New York State or Syracuse or Albany or Buffalo or Rochester.
Are we in fact trying to homogenize our young into a consistent state of profound stupidity? Is that now the goal of public education?
We are trying to equalize outcomes because equal outcomes is a measurement proxy for equal opportunity. If all the kids get the same score on tests, then they all obviously had equal opportunity to learn. (If there are 5% of male students playing school-organized softball then "equal opportunity" means that there will be 5% of female students playing school-organized softball. Even if only 1% of the female students want to play softball. This IS how schools are evaluated in Oregon.)
Equalizing outcomes means slowing down the faster learners, thus bringing the average down, further lowering the "average standards", slowing the faster learners down even more. We're seeing the unanticipated consequences of valuing self-esteem over knowledge.