Blog

Language Police – Sensitizing Away All The Juice

“In ‘The Language Police’, Diane Ravitch — a historian of education at New York University and the author of “Left Back,” a 2000 book about failed school reform — provides an impassioned examination of how right-wing and left-wing pressure groups have succeeded in sanitizing textbooks and tests, how educational publishers have conspired in this censorship, and how this development over the last three decades is eviscerating the teaching of literature and history. The ‘bias and sensitivity reviewers’ employed by educational publishers, she argues, ‘work with assumptions that have the inevitable effect of stripping away everything that is potentially thought-provoking and colorful from the texts that children encounter,’ and as a result, school curriculums are being reduced to ‘bland pabulum’.”

Archaeologists Find Gilgamesh Tomb?

A German team of archaeologists believe they have discovered the 2,500-year-old ancient tomb of Gilgamesh. The “expedition has discovered what is thought to be the entire city of Uruk – including, where the Euphrates once flowed, the last resting place of its famous King. ‘I don’t want to say definitely it was the grave of King Gilgamesh, but it looks very similar to that described in the epic’.”

The Disaster That Is The Digital Millennium Copyright Act

“Five years after it was enacted, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is living up to critics’ worst fears. The antipiracy law has become a broad legal cudgel that’s wielded against legitimate reapplications of intellectual property, from mix CDs to off-brand toner cartridges. Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) has written the Digital Media Consumer Rights Act (HR 107), which would make it legal to, among other things, create an archival copy of a CD or DVD. Good fix for a bad law – but why not just blow up the DMCA instead?”

Why Has Music Dropped Off The Intellectuals’ Map?

Why are people who pride themselves on being educated and up on the latest books, movies, and even art, so uninterested and uneducated in serious music? “There is a startling ignorance about music among contemporary intellectuals who value the latest literary and philosophical thinking. It was not always like this. Gradually music has become more and more marginal to intellectual endeavour, and this separation may be traced to the first half of the 20th century. Until this time, writers and thinkers saw reflection on music as a culturally central consideration, a view that can be traced right back through the works of Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, St Augustine, Galileo, Newton, Goethe and Nietzsche…”

Talk Amongst Yourselves (Not The Audience)

What’s going on with playwrights who feel they have to have a character talk directly to an audience to explain some plot point? It’s just plain lazy. “Many playwrights have forgotten the art of exposition, of revealing the story through dialogue, of letting us find our own way. It feels like spoon-feeding to me when an actor enters, steps into a follow-spot and tells me, ‘Hi. I’m Mary. This is my house. I’m a flight attendant. I just found out my boyfriend’s cheating on me.’ I always think, Is this a play or an AA meeting?”

Florida’s New Dark Age?

“Florida’s age of enlightenment comes to an end this week. The Legislature is still working out the final figures of a $53 billion state budget, but for arts groups the message is all too clear: This is the beginning of a new dark age. The Legislature seems to think that a fair level of sacrifice for the state’s cultural groups is something near 100 percent. The Florida House of Representatives has proposed an arts budget of $6 million, or 78 percent below last year’s level. The Senate’s budget eliminates arts funding altogether.”

Failure To (Teach) Writing

A new report says that writing is not being well-taught in American schools. “The commission’s report asserts that writing is among the most important skills students can learn, that it is the mechanism through which they learn to connect the dots in their knowledge — and that it is now woefully ignored in most American schools. Writing, always time-consuming for student and teacher, is today hard-pressed in the American classroom. Of the three R’s, writing is clearly the most neglected.”