Hide the 'niggers!'

[Kulindahr]

Exactly. That's probably the only excuse why they're still allowing Romeo and Juliet to be read in classrooms. Just think about how fucked up that whole premise to that story is. Two horny, mentally deficient teenagers defy their parents rule, have sex, get married only to kill themselves out of fear that one of them would have found someone cuter to speak stilted English to.

Yeah, that is a nice message to teach a classroom filled with hormonal, defiant teenagers.

I've both taught and watched it taught to teenagers.

They ate it up, because it sounded like their lives.


Of course, with your phrase about "speak stilted English" you banish yourself to the realm of not smarter than a fifth grader, so you aren't relevant to this conversation anyway -- except that you need to study both Shakespeare and Twain to get a grasp about... well, about getting a grasp.

 

[Kulindahr]

I can accept the argument that it once was a neutral term used to refer to the colour of someone's skin, rather than their social standing. But once you knew the colour of their skin, their social standing was taken for granted.

That depended where you lived, among other things. And that's part of the reason the word shouldn't be changed: there is no other word that has anything even close to its meaning. "Slave" ruins any actual possibility about discussing the situation of "N" people back then, because it loses the fact that their number also included successful businessmen, wealthy, and slaveowners.

This is ridiculous.

Huck Finn is set in an environment where slavery was accepted and racism was universal. You can't portray such an environment without using the language it used.

Huck comes to see Jim's humanity despite being steeped in that environment, and even using the racist language himself. He overcomes his environment, his training, and his own abusive family to get to that realization.

Leaving out the N word completely undermines the point of a deeply anti-slavery (and to a lesser extent, anti-racist) novel. It's just stupid.

This thread, however, should not use the word. This is the 21st Century, and in this time the use of the N word on a website draws the wrong kind of attention.

Though I see no problem with using it in quotes, when referring to a source which used it.

 

[ShihTzuTylenol]

POINT?

People back then (Mark Twain died in 1910 btw) were smart enough to know what Twain was trying to shead light on and "say!"
That's WHY it's a fucking classic! It's a brilliant masterpiece! Are we gonna put some underpants on Adam in the Sistine Chapel next?
IT'S A GODAMN TRAVESTY!

Mark Twain's application of the "N" word in the vernacular is absolutely essential to the accuracy of his historic depiction. He wrote what he knew! As hard as that is for us to imagine, racism was in full bloom and Huck Finn shows us that! A RARE LOOK!
Erase that, and we will be doomed to repeat that shit in the future!
Maybe we should erase the whole Hitler thing too? And the Irish famine that killed countless millions? Erase history and we'll be signing more death certificates.

It's that godamn simple!

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

no forget da establish ways institutions etc so on get headcahe ma balls this so basic shit OF DA TIME as taday ans 1000 years ago ans tommorow mornings

hisotrys books ans HISTORY STILL TADAY and tons of BOOKS full of shit what world idolize in it washed ways so on
nons this new it old shit mannnnnnnn

but da public of so fuckin rich educate countrys IMPOTENT BALLS RIPP OFF no can fuckin figure simple ans 2000 ta 2010 what da countrys DOOOOOO?

SCHOOLS be screamin LOUDDDDDD ta TEACH REAL WORLD AS ISSSSSSSSS ans make da little folks of toons learn TOONS BLEEDDDDDDD

when of educate balls make KOOL go read it but can ya wind forward a bit please

thankyou

go study porn homework now what easyyyyyyyyyyyy cause it no figurinsssss

 

[Spiff]

This is so sad and teaches kids a bad lesson about literature and culture and history. This will set a horrible precedence; what will be next? They should leave history alteration to the republicans.

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

You can't hide a word, or whitewash it out of existence. In the time and place that Huck Finn was written the use of the word was not out of place. Was it a compliment, no it wasn't but it was a word that was used.

Instead of trying to hide the word, children should be taught it, taught it's context and educated to understand that racism has no place in a modern society.

Do teachers and academics truly believe children are stupid? They're not. They need to know the past in order to create a better future. I'm not a huge fan of the novel myself. I've read it, I think it's clunky and boring but that's not the point. If academics start to rewrite our cultural history then they condem future generations to making the same mistakes.

How long before the civil rights movement of the 60's is rewritten, how long before the gay rights movement is rewritten? The point isn't "by changing a word we modernise the text into a more politically correct version thereby making it more relevant".

Personally I think the people behind this are underselling the intelligence of the children they are teaching. The past will not always smell like roses, mans inhumanity to man abounds through thousands of years of history. Judgements, insecurities, racism, hatred, they are in the very stones beneath our feet. To ignore that in any context is to perpetuate it.

countrys fuckin kill it ans produce bigger versions ins nappys with thumb up their assholllllllleeeeeee ans ( they ) know it

but with let a say 1800s ans 21stcentury what a jump populations so where da brains goooooooooooooooo? folk not got suck BIG DADDYS COCK NO MORE CAUSE

is agrees a you by way add ma bits

KOOL!

mark twain every country fa eons ans so on whateva yabba etc

yeah



back ta porn forget ma butt

 

[Kulindahr]

You can blame the economy for this thread. Too much time and too little to actually worry oneself with.

No, it's just that some people appreciate literature, scholarship, and responsibility.

Children are not children anymore. They sext. They play graphically violent games. They catch porn online, or make it themselves and send it to friends. Their music often contains words like those found in the list above. We do them a disservice if we treat them like breakable little dolls while they're having very adult thoughts and emotions. I think students should be given the choice on whether or not they wish to read something that could be very offensive to them. And they should definitely be trusted to make that choice themselves.

And right there is why the novel should be taught untouched: it deals with the sorts of adult concepts and emotions they're dealing with.

My niece read Huck Finn in seventh grade. She and her classmates didn't want to put it down.

To ridicule Shakespeare or any other great writer as boring or irrelevant is to demonstrate disinterest in cultural diversity. These authors aren't taught in absence or place of minority writers, but alongside. They are ALL our linguistic and cultural heritage. To be unwilling to spend the effort to understand, to translate, to look for the common human experience in their works is simply avoiding the work involved. Sour grapes is the relevant metaphor, and not because they are unattainable, but because they require work to achieve.

Sadly, we live among a generation that likely cannot even tell you the meaning of the allusion "sour grapes." THAT is telling.

When one can explain what is irrelevant and boring about great literature with an informed and articulate argument, I'll believe that it is intellectually valid versus just an aversion to hard academic work.

This is why private schools teaching "The Great Books" have been growing steadily: those books are out heritage, and provide a common foundation for communication. If all we ever read are things where words are used the way we know them, where the world is understood in a way with which we're comfortable, we will never learn to think.

Yeah, because only encyclopedic knowledge of everything is an acceptable outcome of the educational system . Sure, I know it's an allusion to the Aesop's fable, but I'd bet that few adults in general know that. That knowledge just isn't important, and thus is forgotten. It happens. Deal.

It provides what I once heard as a "common river of discourse".
Besides that, learning the origins of some of those phrases serves as a window into examining our own ways of thinking -- it can lead to asking, "Why do we say something is 'cool'? How did that meaning arise from the original meaning?"

Easy: James Joyce's Ullyses. A novel that is irrelevant on almost every level, takes a master's in English lit to appreciate, and makes everyone scared of reading. And when you look at the other Major Books of Lit, you see a lot of the same silliness....

Ivanhoe. I've read it twice and never did figure out what reason there might be to read it. Though the fact that I read it because it would impress someone the first time, and because I'd already read all the other choices on the reading list the other time, might have something to do with it.

Oh, Lord. Belamy and Sloppy having a conversation. This should be good.

A demonstration that syllables and punctuation do not meaning make.

 

[Kulindahr]

Orthography (Time, one hour)
[Do we even know what this is??]

9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane , vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Time's up! put your pencils down....
Gives the saying 'he only had an 8th grade education' a whole new meaning, doesn't it?!

Also shows you how poor our education system has become and, NO, I don't have the answers! I'm still stumped on that orthography shit! WTF?
[/LEFT]
[/CENTER]

I could pass it. Let me check on some of the vocab involved, I could pass it without feeling embarrassed.

I once saw an eighth grade test from about fifty years earlier. One of the sections was on "foundational languages" -- they had to do stuff with Latin and Greek!

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

countrys aint learnin anyway casue so some tit schools usa take out leave in somethin no right up their edcuate butts

so it no just schools be it AtaZ of da fancy words fa plots of land

 

[ShihTzuTylenol]

no forget da establish ways institutions etc so on get headcahe ma balls this so basic shit OF DA TIME as taday ans 1000 years ago ans tommorow mornings

hisotrys books ans HISTORY STILL TADAY and tons of BOOKS full of shit what world idolize in it washed ways so on
nons this new it old shit mannnnnnnn

but da public of so fuckin rich educate countrys IMPOTENT BALLS RIPP OFF no can fuckin figure simple ans 2000 ta 2010 what da countrys DOOOOOO?

SCHOOLS be screamin LOUDDDDDD ta TEACH REAL WORLD AS ISSSSSSSSS ans make da little folks of toons learn TOONS BLEEDDDDDDD

when of educate balls make KOOL go read it but can ya wind forward a bit please

thankyou

go study porn homework now what easyyyyyyyyyyyy cause it no figurinsssss

YES, THAT'S RIGHT!


I think

 

[Kulindahr]

Okay, now that I'm caught up....

If there were justice, the guy who came up with this idea would be tarred, feathered, and confined on a raft to float the Mississippi while copying out the complete book in cursive.


But what amazes me is that they left Jim an adult! I mean, isn't it obvious, if the story kept going, that he'd turn out to be a child molester?


In school, everything you do, teaches.
What are they teaching by allowing a censored book?
(Hint: it isn't intellectual freedom)

 

[ShihTzuTylenol]

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
__________________________________Mark Twain

 

[Lefty]

oh my god

how stupid

i never saw it

2 adolescent racist uneducated faggots

and a pedophillic Nigerian with an exhibitionist streak

For the safety of humanity...burn that fucking book and

anything else that closet deviate may have written.

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
__________________________________Mark Twain

dat very good

no think lot folk of countrys many wear! figure da deep of it or them of da them spin da crap cover up they no part of it

please sign with ya butt here
' what luck no can write '
HA

 

[ShihTzuTylenol]

oh my god

how stupid

i never saw it

2 adolescent racist uneducated faggots

and a pedophillic Nigerian with an exhibitionist streak

For the safety of humanity...burn that fucking book and

anything else that closet deviate may have written.

**making sign of the cross with fingers**
SOMEONE GET MY WOODEN STAKE AND MALLET OUT THE GARAGE, WE GOTS US A DEMONIC PRESENCE! And grab my shop vac too, the dog pooped on my rug...it's my fault, I shoulda let the lil' feller out when he was whining by the door and doing the pee dance. Damned internet -- ain't nothing but grief can come from it!!

Awwww, Floyd is carrying his bowl to me, I forgot to feed him too...brb guys

 

[ShihTzuTylenol]

dat very good

no think lot folk of countrys many wear! figure da deep of it or them of da them spin da crap cover up they no part of it

please sign with ya butt here
' what luck no can write '
HA

Are you kidding? I can pick up a coin off the floor with these butt cheeks.
Doing sixty deep knee bends a day
keeps an ass tight, light and gay!


I just made that up on the spot! Feel free to borrow it if you like...

 

[barnbuddy]

"Censorship is telling a man he cant have a steak just because a baby cant chew it". - Mark Twain

mr clemens hit's it right on the head -

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

Are you kidding? I can pick up a coin off the floor with these butt cheeks.
Doing sixty deep knee bends a day
keeps an ass tight, light and gay!


I just made that up on the spot! Feel free to borrow it if you like...

what clothes make man bit?

me think of stick in folk food so when they shit da shit whack um over face remind um where their brain is haaaaaaa

like folk read ta not read while they figure how ta read HAAAAAAAA

can explain it butt butt

has fun ya BUTT BOOMBOOM ans there floatin away is bubbles with hundreds of dudes tryin catch his ballons HAA
' grab his tailllllllllllll '
OOOH ans bubbles sail higher ans higher until he spot OOOH

 

[bankside]

If there were justice, the guy who came up with this idea would be tarred, feathered, and confined on a raft to float the Mississippi while copying out the complete book in cursive.

No; they certainly wouldn't allow cursive. You can't even say "god damn" on TV these days without them bleeping it, never mind the serious curses.

 

[Kulindahr]

YES, THAT'S RIGHT!


I think

Still not sure.