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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2022 8:58:11 GMT
Good Morning Colin finally something we can agree upon, avoidance of limitation of the types of literature available to students is a cornerstone of a liberal education. However you would, presumably agree that the long ignored works or Robert Tressell, Walter Greenwood, Jack Jones, Gwyn Thomas and Sean O'Casey should be placed on the reading lists. And a much better morning for that wb61 I agree absolutely. Your reading list puts me to shame as I have little or no knowledge of those authors. If you say they are worthy of study by British students then I am sure they are. What I think is that students of literature should be challenged by its rich diversity, not deprived of it. Tutors and Universities which impose censorship on their reading are limiting, not enabling their life chances. Warnings about content aren't censorship.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Aug 10, 2022 9:03:02 GMT
"Martin Lewis, the money-saving expert, said the frontrunner to become prime minister must set out detailed plans this month and offered to help draw them up as he warned that the energy crisis risked civil unrest and deaths from hypothermia this winter." Pity Martin Lewis isn't PM - I expect he'd deal with the current crisis more competently than any of the current options. Probably so. But a PM is not chosen for ability to govern wisely in the interests of the nation. Top of the list probably ability to lie credibly, and seamlessly avoid answering awkward questions. Total lack of conscience or morals probably also useful. Has to be an MP drawn from the majority party, which no doubt rules out everyone really suitable. Needs to be someone the majority of the the majority party (so in reality maybe about 150 people) believe will act in their personal best interest.
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Post by lefthanging on Aug 10, 2022 9:06:16 GMT
I agree that outright 'cancelling' certain types of book is problematic, although I don't think that is necessarily what is going on in the examples provided: Trigger warnings
The core reason these are used is to help students with PTSD and related conditions. This is not supposed to stop them reading the book in question - it's just a "foreknown is forearmed" principle. Naturally, some people who are the descendants of slaves or victims of rape, for example, may benefit from being so forewarned
Students of course don't need to read the trigger warning - let alone pay it any attention - and usually don't. That's because warnings about content are not the same thing as censorship.
Withdrawing certain books *because* they contain X type of depiction
This sounds bad, doesn't it? However it is often not the case that all books of a certain type are banned. Usually it is just a selective withdrawal of one example of that type.
For example, in an 18th century English literature class, the syllabus will naturally focus on white authors and white characters. But let's say it includes three books with detailed portrayals of black characters - but they are all slaves. The university may decide to replace one with an alternative that includes black characters but who are not slaves, on the grounds that this would be a better depiction of the literature available and that people who are black might want to read something (outside the 20th century) where they are not described as slaves
In such a situation the book would be officially withdrawn because of 'depictions of slavery' yet it would hardly be a ban on students reading about slavery - instead it would just be a small attempt to secure a more balanced syllabus and ensuring that students are exposed to the rich diversity that is literature.
I agree that outright banning all books which include brutal depictions of slavery or some other difficult topic is wrong. Thankfully - according to a Cambridge literature PhD friend of mine (who is actually mostly against trigger warnings) - this is almost never the case.
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Post by wb61 on Aug 10, 2022 9:08:58 GMT
colin yes! Gwyn Thomas style exemplified here : “My father always said patience dampened the ground at your feet so that your feet trod on it without a sound, and people never heard you as you passed on your way to the grave, and you weren't bothered as much by people then as you would be if you went stamping on the hard ground like a self-important horse, drawing attention to yourself.” "I wanted a play that would paint the full face of sensuality, rebellion and revivalism. In South Wales these three phenomena have played second fiddle only to Rugby Union which is a distillation of all three." "There are still parts of Wales where the only concession to gaiety is a striped shroud." And from the novel the "Dark Philosophers: "Nobody liked him in the valley. The elements who went to chapel thought he was on a par with the god Pan, who was half a goat. The elements who did not go to chapel thought he was all Pan or all goat, or they were red revolutionary elements who thought that all such subjects as Oscar, who got fat out of stolen land, should have a layer of this land fixed over them in such a way as to stop their breathing."
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Aug 10, 2022 9:24:50 GMT
Alec, I forgot to add-if you are correct and what I had in 2019 was an ordinary corona virus and not covid, then I am again at a loss to understand what the fuss is about covid. Because I have had no covid vaccinations and definitely did have covid this spring as confirmed by test. My illness this time was much milder than whatever I had in 2019. So if you are right, what's the fuss about covid?
My Covid this spring was still anyway milder than whatever other disease uou argue Hastings had which then faded out all by itself. Which despite your claims it was a serious illness in its own right never managed to spread beyond Hastings.
I'd also repeat that both times me and partner were both ill with same thing. If the first one wasn't covid, well he was more ill both times than me and his three covid vaccinations to my none did no good at all when we got covid this year.
However if you assume we had covud in 2019, it makes perfect sense it would be relatively mild second time around, and that his vaccinations wouldn't make any difference. Many perhaps most people would have already had covid before getting any vaccinations, which was therefore a waste of money and could not in any way justify locking them down to await said vaccine.
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Post by laszlo4new on Aug 10, 2022 9:28:28 GMT
Just how complicated things are.
Ukraine closed the South Friendship oil pipeline (serving Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia) because Russia didn't pay the transit fee. The Hungarian National Oil Company paid the fee instead of the Russians, and the oil transport will restart this week.
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Post by shevii on Aug 10, 2022 9:35:59 GMT
For English students at the University of Essex, ....Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad...has since been permanently removed from the reading list. After discussions within the university’s literature department, the decision was taken that Whitehead’s novel should be withdrawn because of its “graphic description of violence and abuse of slavery”.The novel won the Pulitzer Prize and the US National Book Award and was praised by Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey. These things usually unravel a bit. /photo/1
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pjw1961
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Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
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Post by pjw1961 on Aug 10, 2022 9:43:21 GMT
Not so much fake news as 'no news'. The comment quoted "While the world slowly burns, the rightwingers cheerily pursue their self-concocted culture war” about sums it up. When I was 18-21 if someone had told me that something on the reading list was graphic and disturbing it would have probably been immediately moved to the top of the reading pile!
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Post by barbara on Aug 10, 2022 9:50:42 GMT
For English students at the University of Essex, ....Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad...has since been permanently removed from the reading list. After discussions within the university’s literature department, the decision was taken that Whitehead’s novel should be withdrawn because of its “graphic description of violence and abuse of slavery”.The novel won the Pulitzer Prize and the US National Book Award and was praised by Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey. These things usually unravel a bit. /photo/1 Thank you for this context. The ROC media use some of the worst examples of cancel culture. They do this by slanted, biased, partial accounts of stuff in order to wind up those who don't do their own research and are easily fooled. I read the Mail Online every day and there are lots of stories that appear in other newspapers that the DM simply doesn't cover. It censors and cancels by omission. Even when a negative story about the Tories is all over other media you will often find no mention of it in the DM. It's been running 9 or 10 positive stories about Liz Truss lately and a similar number trashing Sunak. The idea that this represents balanced reporting is laughable. Look at the legislation the Tory government has brought in to stifle (cancel) alternative views including effective protest, judicial review, legal aid etc. all aimed at cancelling their opponents. Look at the fuss currently being promoted by the DM and other outlets designed to discredit the Standards Committee investigation into Johnson's alleged lying to parliament and get it cancelled. As it tried to do with Owen Paterson. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. And last night the gaslit Tory membership were blaming the media for Johnson having to resign. And Truss vociferously supporting that view for her own purposes.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2022 10:04:33 GMT
Not so much fake news as 'no news'. The comment quoted "While the world slowly burns, the rightwingers cheerily pursue their self-concocted culture war” about sums it up. When I was 18-21 if someone had told me that something on the reading list was graphic and disturbing it would have probably been immediately moved to the top of the reading pile! Yes, the T report says that a number of the Unis responding said there had been no response by students in their reading ,to a trigger warning !:- "Elizabeth McGregor, 22, is among those at the University of Essex who studied the Beginning the Novel module this year. She had not been informed that it previously included The Underground Railroad. “We have been told a few times that we can choose whether or not to read texts, often when the themes are about race, slavery or gender,” she said. “They think we are children and are coddling us.”
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Aug 10, 2022 10:19:37 GMT
Interesting discussion about censorship/cancel culture.
Do people remember the furore by some ROC commentators and politicians over the National Trust giving a more rounded history of its properties and their owners.
The so called “Common Sense Group” of 26 MPs were particularly vocal. They claimed that the National Trust’s leadership has been captured by “elitist bourgeois liberals … coloured by cultural Marxist dogma, colloquially known as the ‘woke agenda’”.
What caused this tirade and worse from others, was information given about the links of some of its properties to the slave trade...really.
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Post by robbiealive on Aug 10, 2022 10:25:36 GMT
colin perhaps Jack Jones and Gwyn Thomas are a little niche, but well Known in Wales I daresay. You may know the film the Corn is Green, it is said to be a romanticised biography of Gwyn Thomas' early life. Isn't the Corn is Green based on the life of Emlyn Willams; he wrote the play, based on his life in a mining village, first produced in the 30s, filmed in the 40s, with B Davis as the teacher who "rescued" him from illiteracy. Nigel Bruce, Dr Watson, plays the old-buffer squire who helps get Williams to Oxford,. Gywn Thomas is too young too have been the model? Oddly, Williams was mentioned yesterday by Moby as having visited a relative's house in his Rolls Royce. Williams was v versatile actor & writer. He imitated C Dickens by giving profitable theatrical readings of works by Dickens & others.
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Post by hireton on Aug 10, 2022 10:28:35 GMT
colin"What I think is that students of literature should be challenged by its rich diversity, not deprived of it. Tutors and Universities which impose censorship on their reading are limiting, not enabling their life chances." As far as I can see from the Times report you posted 2 works have been removed from a reading list and warnings given about a few others. This hardly amounts to censorship by any definition nor deprivation. The answer to your question as to who is waging this war is the Times and those credulous Times readers who get breathless about it.
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Post by robbiealive on Aug 10, 2022 10:32:18 GMT
Gosh oldnat didn't take you as someone who believed in the immaculate conception. An Ex-Altar Boy (5th Reserve) Speaks (Again) Clearly my theological posting is not not having the impact it deserves. This is the usual confusion between the immaculate conception, the conception of Mary, the only person to be born without original sin, an immaculate soul, & the virgin birth, i.e., Jesus's conception. The I. conception is a fairly late piece of papal dogma.
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Post by robbiealive on Aug 10, 2022 10:38:48 GMT
Warnings about content aren't censorship. Quite right. One has to keep a sharp eye on these anti-wokists; these fearless warriors are slippery bu---rs who will pervert language to achieve their political ends. They are in fact guilty of the v thing they are supposedly criticising. And it's not cancel culture: if it's anything at all, it's mental health & saftey, carried to exaggertaed lengths. And as PWJ implied: if you want someone to read a book, then ban it, not that they are.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2022 10:54:49 GMT
So the Times story is basically that academic freedom is a good thing provided academics don't actually exercise that freedom in which case it becomes a bad thing .
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Post by davwel on Aug 10, 2022 11:00:28 GMT
Instead of trying to stir up woke warring, the London media should be writing about Trump`s UK visit later this month.
Where is he going? How long is he holidaying here? Why is he coming now? Perhaps the answer to this last is that he fears he may not be allowed into the UK again as soon to be a convicted criminal. Or maybe he is discussing with his UK staff selling off his two Scotland golf courses and associated hotels, properties and building permissions.
A different aspect to Trump`s holiday here is who will have to pay for his protection: the Trump organisation or the UK government, or Scotland`s hard-pressed people? And how much?
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Post by wb61 on Aug 10, 2022 11:14:55 GMT
colin perhaps Jack Jones and Gwyn Thomas are a little niche, but well Known in Wales I daresay. You may know the film the Corn is Green, it is said to be a romanticised biography of Gwyn Thomas' early life. Isn't the Corn is Green based on the life of Emlyn Willams; he wrote the play, based on his life in a mining village, first produced in the 30s, filmed in the 40s, with B Davis as the teacher who "rescued" him from illiteracy. Nigel Bruce, Dr Watson, plays the old-buffer squire who helps get Williams to Oxford,. Gywn Thomas is too young too have been the model? Oddly, Williams was mentioned yesterday by Moby as having visited a relative's house in his Rolls Royce. Williams was v versatile actor & writer. He imitated C Dickens by giving profitable theatrical readings of works by Dickens & others. You may be right, I was always told Gwyn Thomas but have never researched it, they came from very similar backgrounds.
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Post by robbiealive on Aug 10, 2022 11:35:40 GMT
Isn't the Corn is Green based on the life of Emlyn Willams; he wrote the play, based on his life in a mining village, first produced in the 30s, filmed in the 40s, with B Davis as the teacher who "rescued" him from illiteracy. Nigel Bruce, Dr Watson, plays the old-buffer squire who helps get Williams to Oxford,. Gywn Thomas is too young too have been the model? Oddly, Williams was mentioned yesterday by Moby as having visited a relative's house in his Rolls Royce. Williams was v versatile actor & writer. He imitated C Dickens by giving profitable theatrical readings of works by Dickens & others. You may be right, I was always told Gwyn Thomas but have never researched it, they came from very similar backgrounds. PS The Corn is Green film is a bit corny. The film of Greenwood's Love on the Dole ('41) is much better. Watching it at 10 or 11, I loved the scene where the broke young Manchester working-class couple win a large sum from a back street bookie with a 6d bet & blow it on a holiday to Blackpool? I didn't get that the boy's sister, D Kerr, later becomes the mistress of the bookie, a dastardly villain, to keep her family in food. I love the way you could really enjoy those old movies as a kid, while the sex passed over yr head. I just accepted that a couple kissing was followed by a wave crashing on a beach & then the couple having a smoke. Ah innocence. A really corny film about Welsh miners was Ford's How Green Was My Valley. It won numerous oscars in '41, including best film. The other nominees for best pic that year were Citizen Kane! and the lesser-known but excellent The Little Foxes
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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2022 11:47:58 GMT
Sky reporting that airbase attack in Crimea was a Special Forces job-not missiles.
Report says Ukrainian social media awash with positivity about it.
Politico reports :-
"Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared Tuesday that the war with Moscow “began with Crimea and must end with Crimea,” after explosions rocked a Russian air base on the peninsula, killing one and injuring others. “Today, there is a lot of attention on the topic of Crimea. And rightly so. Because Crimea is Ukrainian, and we will never give it up,”
So this is a change in his end game position.
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Post by moby on Aug 10, 2022 11:48:20 GMT
colin perhaps Jack Jones and Gwyn Thomas are a little niche, but well Known in Wales I daresay. You may know the film the Corn is Green, it is said to be a romanticised biography of Gwyn Thomas' early life. Isn't the Corn is Green based on the life of Emlyn Willams; he wrote the play, based on his life in a mining village, first produced in the 30s, filmed in the 40s, with B Davis as the teacher who "rescued" him from illiteracy. Nigel Bruce, Dr Watson, plays the old-buffer squire who helps get Williams to Oxford,. Gywn Thomas is too young too have been the model? Oddly, Williams was mentioned yesterday by Moby as having visited a relative's house in his Rolls Royce. Williams was v versatile actor & writer. He imitated C Dickens by giving profitable theatrical readings of works by Dickens & others. Yes I went to see him do his Dickens readings in The Gateway theatre in Chester and was then invited to meet him backstage. My grandmother wasn't too enamoured with his two volume biographies (Emlyn and George), in which he wrote about his 'bisexual' awakening at Oxford. She was worried the neighbours would find out. 🤣
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Post by wb61 on Aug 10, 2022 11:50:57 GMT
PS The Corn is Green film is a bit corny. The film of Greenwood's Love on the Dole ('41) is much better. Watching it at 10 or 11, I loved the scene where the broke young Manchester working-class couple win a large sum from a back street bookie with a 6d bet & blow it on a holiday to Blackpool? I didn't get that the boy's sister, D Kerr, later becomes the mistress of the bookie, a dastardly villain, to keep her family in food. I love the way you could really enjoy those old movies as a kid, while the sex passed over yr head. I just accepted that a couple kissing was followed by a wave crashing on a beach & then the couple having a smoke. Ah innocence. A really corny film about Welsh miners was Ford's How Green Was My Valley. It won numerous Oscars in '41, including best film. The other nominees for best pic that year were Citizen Kane! and the lesser-known but excellent The Little FoxesI love some of those old films, Love on the Dole is a fantastic book, I have not seen the film. I tend to like corny films from the 1950's The Titfield Thunderbolt, Genevive and The Ladykillers come to mind. You can watch some crackers on Talking Pictures the tv channel, but for real nostalgia they show Richard Greene as Robin Hood in the 50's 60's TV series along with Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans and William Tell all of which takes me back to my 5/6 year old self with waves of nostalgia.
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Post by crossbat11 on Aug 10, 2022 12:05:41 GMT
colin
You shared with us, amongst those of many other luminaries, the thoughts on wokery of Trevor Phillips once again. Despite his past academic and professional credentials on racism and racial equality, has he got much credibility on these sorts of issues these days?
Not only has been disciplined by Labour for his ambivalent comments about Islamophobia, he seems to specialise in attacking people who are trying to make progress on racial equality, a cause he purports to champion too. Not occasionally, but nearly all the time. His public utterances, and you've quoted another recent one, seem solely dedicated to such attacks. They're not even friendly fire reprimands, more quite personal and derisory broadsides, often delivered via right wing media outlets.
I mean, why would a man with his alleged objectives on racial equality take money to write pieces in the Daily Mail, a newspaper that often attacks that very cause? Why would a former head of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) remain virtually silent on the Islamophobia found within the Tory Party and instead be preoccupied with wokeism and cancel culture instead? The former Chairman of the Tory Party, Baroness Warsi, rightly called him out on this. And has he said anything at all publicly on the recent highly publicised cases of racism uncovered in Yorkshire and Scottish cricket? Where is he on things like this when he isn't attacking people trying to combat such shameful occurrences? They may do so in sometimes misconceived and cack-handed ways, but they're the good guys in all this, aren't they? Why direct your fire at them?
Don't you think he should ask himself, in a moment of quiet reflection, why he has become the Right's go-to man on racism? He can't think that a good thing, can he?
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Post by mandolinist on Aug 10, 2022 12:13:22 GMT
Who is waging this "war" ? "Ten universities, including three from the Russell Group, have withdrawn books from course study lists, or made them optional, in case they cause students harm.Academics have previously been criticised for providing trigger warnings for students reading mainstream literature. The Times investigation found 1,081 examples across undergraduate courses. " From The Times Good Morning Colin finally something we can agree upon, avoidance of limitation of the types of literature available to students is a cornerstone of a liberal education. However you would, presumably agree that the long ignored works or Robert Tressell, Walter Greenwood, Jack Jones, Gwyn Thomas and Sean O'Casey should be placed on the reading lists. Hi wb61 Robert Tressell's the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist is an amazing book. I fear we may see the return of some of the precariousness described over the coming winter, although I question how many people would be able to obtain or know what to do with a bloater!
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steve
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Post by steve on Aug 10, 2022 12:24:06 GMT
Attachment DeletedNote to Liz If you take money in the form of nic from a millionaire or corporation tax from a Billion turnover business and give it to someone on universal credit or the state pension it isn't " taking people's money in taxes and then handing it back to them in benefits " Sometimes you wonder how these people function without an assistance animal for the terminally moronic.
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Post by mercian on Aug 10, 2022 12:35:41 GMT
I had this thought about the subject of polling the other day. I'm signed up to a number of polling companies in order to make a tiny amount of money and to while away the time before death.😄 I get email notifications of polls that are available and have noticed that they come in at different times of day. I haven't kept a detailed record, but Opinium seem to arrive earliest and the others are more variable. I wonder if this could explain some of the differences between pollsters and also the greater variability of Yougov for instance that has been commented on. In other words, sending out emails at different times of day might hit different targets. A proportion of recipients will reply quite quickly. So morning emails might hit pensioners and people in slack working environments, whereas evening ones might get fewer responses from the young because they're all out on the town for instance. Please don't quibble about the examples as I'm sure there are other scenarios, but I do think that there could be something in the general idea.
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Post by bardin1 on Aug 10, 2022 12:37:48 GMT
Hi wb61 Robert Tressell's the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist is an amazing book. I fear we may see the return of some of the precariousness described over the coming winter, although I question how many people would be able to obtain or know what to do with a bloater! It is indeed, though by academic standards the prose is pretty turgid. It made a huge impact on me (as did Orwell's Down and Out, and also Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment) If you are poor (and we were) then it strikes a real emotional chord when you read a book which puts it into the context of the class system
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Post by mandolinist on Aug 10, 2022 12:40:49 GMT
Is it just me, or are lots of other people having the "angry bear" message today?
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Post by bardin1 on Aug 10, 2022 12:43:32 GMT
I had this thought about the subject of polling the other day. I'm signed up to a number of polling companies in order to make a tiny amount of money and to while away the time before death.😄 I get email notifications of polls that are available and have noticed that they come in at different times of day. I haven't kept a detailed record, but Opinium seem to arrive earliest and the others are more variable. I wonder if this could explain some of the differences between pollsters and also the greater variability of Yougov for instance that has been commented on. In other words, sending out emails at different times of day might hit different targets. A proportion of recipients will reply quite quickly. So morning emails might hit pensioners and people in slack working environments, whereas evening ones might get fewer responses from the young because they're all out on the town for instance. Please don't quibble about the examples as I'm sure there are other scenarios, but I do think that there could be something in the general idea. So presumably morning e mails catch those who are 'whiling away the time before death' I think I might start going out more in the mornings!
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Post by Mark on Aug 10, 2022 12:48:25 GMT
Re-the debate on so-called 'cancel culture'.
A personal anecdote.
I was doing a resit of my English GCSE, which at the time, was 50% coursework, 50% exam.
Half way through the year, I lost my grandfather to a heart attack. We had been very close and I was in bits.
It was about a week after this that, for the coursework, the class was to write an essay on euthanasia. The class would first watch a video on the subject.
The teacher, knowing that I was far from firing on all cylendes - and knowing why, told me that, due to my circumstances, if I didn't want to do this one piece, I didn't have to and that she would set me alternative work that I could do for the same credit.
I gladly, took her up on the offer.
The stories that I've read on here today of students who could, of their own free will, choose not to to read selective pieces of literature - but still could read them if they wanted to so not censorship - seem to me to be coming from a similar place to the intervention made by my college English teacher.
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