zero tolerance: Top exam board asks schools to destroy book containing knife poem

[The Straight Story]

Top exam board asks schools to destroy book containing knife poem


Britain's biggest exam board has been accused of censorship after it removed a poem containing references to knife crime from the GCSE syllabus.

Officials at the AQA board said their request that schools destroy the anthology containing the Carol Ann Duffy poem Education for Leisure had been triggered by concerns in two schools about references to knives. A spokeswoman confirmed the decision had been made in the context of the current spate of knife-related murders.

But poets yesterday condemned the move, saying such "censorship" fundamentally missed the point of the poem, which they said could help children debate the causes of street violence.

The poem starts: "Today I am going to kill something. Anything./I have had enough of being ignored and today/I am going to play God." It describes a youth's yearning for attention and a journey to sign on for the dole, and makes references to the killing of a goldfish. It ends ominously with the youth walking the streets armed with a bread knife.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/sep/04/gcses.english

[uppityperson]

1. words fail me. k&r

[The Straight Story]

2. It just never seems to stop

bit by bit....

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[LeftishBrit]

4. It's a great poem. I love Carol Ann Duffy!

As for the exam board - well, I just knew this was going to be about the UK before I opened it; because there are some idiotic bureaucrats in education here, especially since Chris Woodhead or 'Woodenhead' as he's often called, was head of the inspectorate. For Harry Potter fans, Dolores Umbridge is clearly based on the more tyrannical sort of education bureaucrat. Fortunately, teachers and pupils here are pretty good at going their own way and ignoring the nuts.

You could just as well say that 'Hamlet' is encouraging knife-crime; after all, Hamlet does stab Polonius behind the arras! As well as the numerous other killings in that and other Shakesepeare plays.

[krispos42]

5. Not surprised

They're villanized and outlawed guns, so now people aren't being killed by guns anymore.

Progress... :eyes:


Somebody actually got the bright idea to push for a ban on pointy kitchen knives in the UK.

[LeftishBrit]

8. We never did have a gun culture here the way there is in America

It's very misleading to think of Britain as though we had guns like you do and then suddenly outlawed them. We're culturally very different in that respect.

Knives are not outlawed here (this would be impossible!); it is carrying them in public that is the issue. The government have been setting ever-tougher penalties, but it doesn't really have an effect, as might have been expected given their ready availability, and that there has always been knife crime - certainly it was already an issue in my schooldays.

The episode in the report is more a question of the exam boards and education bureaucrats getting ridiculous from time to time. This time it was about knives in school literature; another time it will probably be about sex or drugs or alcohol or any number of 'tut tut' topics.

[krispos42]

16. I'm aware of that

My point is that the British ban and confiscation of what we would now call "assault weapons" in 1989 and the ban and confiscation of handguns in 1998 was not done as a crime-control measure; it was a "moral panic" response to the tragic mass shootings at Hungerford and Dunblane.

However, according to the general train of logic from American gun-control advocates, the mere fact that fewer guns were in the hands of citizena should reduce crime and murder even if that was not the stated intent of the laws. After all, there will be less heat-of-passion murders (where it is assummed that the ease of shooting somebody makes them more common,) and there would be fewer guns for criminals to steal and use in crimes.

The truth is, though, that despite the disarmament of UK citizens, especially of criminal-preferred handguns, and some 4.4 million police-monitored public-area surveillence cameras, crime is up and murder is up.

Anti-gun people here in America harumph about how many guns we have, and how we need to ban assault weapons and have registration, etc., to control crime.

Hoever, since is seems that most crime stems from socio-economic problems, attempting to ban the hardware is doomed to failure.

[depakid]

17. The Australian experience proves your pro-gun theories absolutely wrong

though I don't expect you or any apologist for firearms proliferation to ever admit that.

[krispos42]

18. {sigh}

[depakid]

19. Here we go again wih the NRA sophistry

How about reading some SCIENCE.

And recognizing REALITY- namely, that America has mass shootings every several weeks, and Australians haven't expeienced A SINGLE ONE since instituting their gun buyback and ownership and wepaons restrictions in 1996.

NOT ONE.

From the British Medical Journal:

Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms: faster falls in firearm deaths, firearm suicides, and a decade without mass shootings

Background: After a 1996 firearm massacre in Tasmania in which 35 people died, Australian governments united to remove semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns and rifles from civilian possession, as a key component of gun law reforms.

Objective: To determine whether Australia’s 1996 major gun law reforms were associated with changes in rates of mass firearm homicides, total firearm deaths, firearm homicides and firearm suicides, and whether there were any apparent method substitution effects for total homicides and suicides.

Results: In the 18 years before the gun law reforms, there were 13 mass shootings in Australia, and none in the 10.5 years afterwards. Declines in firearm-related deaths before the law reforms accelerated after the reforms for total firearm deaths (p = 0.04), firearm suicides (p = 0.007) and firearm homicides (p = 0.15), but not for the smallest category of unintentional firearm deaths, which increased. No evidence of substitution effect for suicides or homicides was observed. The rates per 100 000 of total firearm deaths, firearm homicides and firearm suicides all at least doubled their existing rates of decline after the revised gun laws.

[]Conclusions: Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms were followed by more than a decade free of fatal mass shootings, and accelerated declines in firearm deaths, particularly suicides. Total homicide rates followed the same pattern. Removing large numbers of rapid-firing firearms from civilians may be an effective way of reducing mass shootings, firearm homicides and firearm suicides.

http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/6/365

Not that Americans would ever support such sensile policy- or even whther, given the proliferation of firearms and Americans' obsessions with them- such comprehensive reform would even work.

But let's at least PLACE THE BLAME WHERE IT LIES and accept responsibility (and be honest about) the senseless violence America current policies encourage and perpetuate.

[krispos42]

20. And yet, the homicide rate in Australia remains relatively constant.

Despite not having any mass shootings.


So... where's the progress?






Incidently:



95% of US homicides have one (1) victim. How many Australian homicides have one (1) victim?

[NeedleCast]

6. Ban Brigade Strikes Again

[EFerrari]

7. What would these @ssholes do with "The Lotus Eaters" or with

"My Last Duchess" or "The Wasteland"?

It's enough to make you want to squirrel books away against the knock at the door. :grr:

[LeftishBrit]

9. The positive side of it...

is that you might find teenagers getting more interested in books, because they're being treated as Naughty.

Forbidden fruit is always exciting!

[EFerrari]

11. Yes! Maybe we can get a new audience for "Paradise Lost".

Psst, kid. I got nudity, free food, a crash pad and a cool war between Titans right here.

lol

[ZombieHorde]

10. Dumb.

[ddeclue]

12. Then they ought not to bring up Henry V !!!

So much for Shakespeare!!

Hostess: Good Corporal Nym, show thy valour, and put up your sword.

NYM: Will you shog off? I would have you solus.

PISTOL: 'Solus,' egregious dog? O viper vile!
The 'solus' in thy most mervailous face;
The 'solus' in thy teeth, and in thy throat,
And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy,
And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth!
I do retort the 'solus' in thy bowels;
For I can take, and Pistol's cock is up,
And flashing fire will follow.

NYM: I am not Barbason; you cannot conjure me. I have an
humour to knock you indifferently well. If you grow
foul with me, Pistol, I will scour you with my
rapier, as I may, in fair terms: if you would walk
off, I would prick your guts a little, in good
terms, as I may: and that's the humour of it.

PISTOL: O braggart vile and damned furious wight!
The grave doth gape, and doting death is near;
Therefore exhale.

BARDOLPH: Hear me, hear me what I say: he that strikes the
first stroke, I'll run him up to the hilts, as I am a soldier.

[shadowknows69]

13. I guess most of "The Bard's" stuff is off limits

people getting stabbed all over the place in Shakespeare.

[LostInAnomie]

14. The same mentality...

... that makes it so I can't say "Oh, shoot." in front of my class strikes again.

It's like they want to deny part of the human experience even exists.

[benEzra]

15. Book-burning is a long-cherished tradition...

of closed-minded bigots.