Jump to content

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

smltwnrckr

Another Dr. Seuss FAIL

Recommended Posts

3 minutes ago, CV147 said:

But the illustration shows the white guy inventing the thing and the black slaves doing the labor. Doesn't that introduce at least imply a ramification?

"It made slaves' lives easier? Oh, okay, that's great!" lol

That's clearly the message. I feel like 20 years ago, even white conservatives in the south would agree that is... uh ... problematic. 

Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, CV147 said:

But the illustration shows the white guy inventing the thing and the black slaves doing the labor. Doesn't that introduce at least imply a ramification?

"It made slaves' lives easier? Oh, okay, that's great!" lol

It's not a book about slavery.  The book doesn't excuse anything. 

Would you feel better about it if the illustration had white people working the machine?

"Don't underestimate Joe Biden's ability to F@*k things up."

Barack Obama

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, halfmanhalfbronco said:

 

Agreed with your point in this thread.  Should have left the cotton gin out of a fun rhyming kids book.  That said, what do you have against Oppenheimer?!?!  You could argue he and his team saved hundreds of million of lives the past 80 years.  

 

Nothing! I just think that Dr. Sues doesn't do mushroom clouds. 

Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, smltwnrckr said:

The "things" that the cotton gin "changed" were social. And even the explanation you posted about the point of the book suggests social ramifications - "made a major impact on our lives today."

I personally think that reifying inventors and hyperbolizing about the unquestioned positive progress of modernity is stupid, and I don't like to teach that way in general. But the rest of the book is not overtly objectionable to me. Just the part where they decide to just skip over slavery. 

Replace Eli Whitney with Edward Jenner. Problem solved. 

Maybe they included Whitney because they weren't addressing anything other than twelve inventions that changed the world. 

I just don't see a problem here.  I would have no problem or objection reading that book to a 7 y/o in a home setting. 

 

"Don't underestimate Joe Biden's ability to F@*k things up."

Barack Obama

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, CV147 said:

But the illustration shows the white guy inventing the thing and the black slaves doing the labor. Doesn't that introduce or at least imply a ramification?

"It made slaves' lives easier? Oh, okay, that's great!" lol

Yes. Cotton wasn't solely picked by Black slaves; a lot of it was picked by poor whites. Granted, they probably didn't work in tandem with slaves but the second drawing there could have shown two white people instead of two Blacks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, smltwnrckr said:

I mean, this was written in 2015. So why would you need a foreword to explain why you were literally ignoring that slavery existed?

A foreword can give context to an issue that was not directly to the topic.  

Quote

Like I said, the atom bomb was probably the most significant invention of the 20th Century. Not in there. Why? Nuclear holocaust is not a great topic for children.

The Cotton Gin cannot be understood as historically significant in American history without slavery. That's it. Slavery is not mentioned in the page about the Cotton Gin. I understand why - not a great topic for young children. But by putting it in there, but not mentioning slavery, you are literally erasing slavery from history. 

 

You are not literally erasing slavery from history by not mentioning it in one children's book about inventions.  A cotton gin is much easier to explain than the intricacies of a nuclear bomb and the positive externalities from the research of such a deadly tool.  

Quote

Put Louis Pasteur in there instead. Problem solved. 

So erase the invention of the cotton gin instead?  And any tangential conversation from said invention?  Also, is the book about American inventors?  I quick look only showed American inventors, so perhaps a French inventor wasn't going to make the cut.

 

In the end, this seems more of really going hard to search for offensive material, when instead, you can stress to use it as a launching point as a parent or teacher to discuss topics like slavery when they are old enough to register what that is.  I know you are going to defend your position.  I am going to respectfully disagree with you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, 818SUDSFan said:

Yes. Cotton wasn't solely picked by Black slaves; a lot of it was picked by poor whites. Granted, they probably didn't work in tandem with slaves but the second drawing there could have shown two white people instead of two Blacks.

The cotton gin isn't relavent to American history because of some poor whites picking cotton. It is important to American history because of its impact on the demand for field slaves, and thus the ramifications moving forward. 

Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Aslowhiteguy said:

Maybe they included Whitney because they weren't addressing anything other than twelve inventions that changed the world. 

I just don't see a problem here.  I would have no problem or objection reading that book to a 7 y/o in a home setting. 

 

I understand that you don't see a problem. I am saying that is a problem. 

Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, East Coast Aztec said:

So erase the invention of the cotton gin instead?  And any tangential conversation from said invention?  Also, is the book about American inventors?  I quick look only showed American inventors, so perhaps a French inventor wasn't going to make the cut.

No, it had Gutenberg (printing press), Watt (steam engine), Daimler (internal combustion engine). Also threw in a token woman Anderson (windshield wipers) and token black inventor Morgan (stoplight).

 

image.png

image.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, smltwnrckr said:

I just care about history. 

No you don't!! I don't know how old your kid/kids are, but obviously not old enough to grasp what you are spewing. Then you spin a children's book by adding this-

"I think in a children's book about how inventions made the world a better place, if we don't want to get into the brutality of slavery, I'm OK with it. (No You're Not) I mean, we don't have the name of the guy who invented the chain gang. We don't have the name of the guy who invented the iron maiden, or the guy who invented the machine gun. Why isn't there a page for Oppenheimer?"

Smltwnrckr.

You know exactly what you are doing here by creating this thread. Just more division from people who claim they are not woke. And your kids are f****ed!! Go sit in the corner with your game console, your phone and think about what you did. Am I right? Go burn some books!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, East Coast Aztec said:

A foreword can give context to an issue that was not directly to the topic.  

Find me a book where the foreword is written at the same time as the book (not in a later addition, many years after it was published) that addresses historical inaccuracies. Show me that, and I'll show you a book that failed at its goal.

6 minutes ago, East Coast Aztec said:

You are not literally erasing slavery from history by not mentioning it in one children's book about inventions.  A cotton gin is much easier to explain than the intricacies of a nuclear bomb and the positive externalities from the research of such a deadly tool.  

Dude, there are black people pulling the cotton out of the boll by hand on one page, and then dumping it into the machine on the other. And the line says that it turned a "slow, dirty job" into a "quick and clean" one. The book says that the cotton gin made cotton production easier. Which is literally the opposite of the truth when you consider that slavery existed. Saying the opposite of the truth is erasing history. Sorry. 

6 minutes ago, East Coast Aztec said:

So erase the invention of the cotton gin instead?  And any tangential conversation from said invention?  Also, is the book about American inventors?  I quick look only showed American inventors, so perhaps a French inventor wasn't going to make the cut.

Again, I think we should learn about how the industrial revolution lead to the civil war in school. And I'm fine with books trying to do it. But there are a million inventors who invented a million things. If I had to choose between including another inventor and erasing slavery, I'll pick another inventor. I don't think that's crazy. 

6 minutes ago, East Coast Aztec said:

In the end, this seems more of really going hard to search for offensive material, when instead, you can stress to use it as a launching point as a parent or teacher to discuss topics like slavery when they are old enough to register what that is.  I know you are going to defend your position.  I am going to respectfully disagree with you.

No, it's not me searching for something to be offended about. I'm not actually offended as much as I am perplexed. And I thought this would be a good example to post in support of the idea that we don't teach accurate history when it comes to these issues in many cases. Since there are people posting on here, and passing laws elsewhere, suggesting that there are all these examples of "indoctrination" but are very rarely able to post real examples of it. Is there too much awareness of race in history, or too little. Well, this page made it through the publishing process in 2015, and either no one said anything or whomever did say something was told to shut up... or people thought this was the best way to deal with the content. Which suggests to me that maybe I am wrong about the fact that I think that these discussions should wait til kids are older. Maybe we need to work this out earlier. I dunno.

Fun fact - did you know a LOT of school kids in America are taught that Eli Whitney was black?

Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, halfmanhalfbronco said:

Huh @smltwnrckr I guess Suess actually did write about the cold war and the uncertainty of nuclear standoff in The Butter Battle Book.  

I'll have to look this up. Thanks for this.

Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, smltwnrckr said:

The cotton gin isn't relavent to American history because of some poor whites picking cotton. It is important to American history because of its impact on the demand for field slaves, and thus the ramifications moving forward. 

No and I never said it was. The cotton gin is mostly relevant to American history because of how additionally profitable it made the growing and harvesting of cotton and it is that which accelerated the slave trade.

I don't disagree with your concern about the two pages of that book and was simply suggesting a means of easily addressing your concern without completely deleting those pages.

Link to comment
Share on other sites



  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



×
×
  • Create New...