My school
 

article and Julie Burchill opinion piece.

I can't tell you how utterly hilarious this is.

Re: My school
 

My suggestion would be not to include this peom in a book called 'Great Minds' and to be distributed through schools around Britain? Fire the editor of the book? WTF?

Re: My school
 

Is that the kids real name (I only glanced at the article)? If so then obviously "haha he's called Gideon!", but is it really proper journalism to go round printing a child's name in the press in such a fashion?

Re: My school
 

shut it, darian.


anyway, yes it is his name, and no, it isn't proper journalism.


but it's ****ing hilarious because i hate everyone involved in the school, notably the headteacher, and the media attention has hit her oh so very hard that i am revelling in the schadenfreunde of it all.

Re: My school
 

so what proff do we have that Phang isn't part of this NAZI PLOT! then ?

Re: My school
 

du hast only mein word.

Re: My school
 

Oh, sehr gut then.

Re: My school
 

I'll be picking up bits of my brain from all over the room for a week now :(





PS Considering what she says in the article the last paragraph is just hilarity in a basket with ribbons on it.

Re: My school
 

this was the first thing that concerned me.

the rest of it is just sensationalist nonsense

Re: My school
 

That kid keeps leaving his bibles in hotels :(

Re: My school
 

excellent

Re: My school
 

I admit that I am not a tremendous fan of poetry in general. However, it seems these people have badly missed the point of the poem (though I would like to see the entire piece to be sure).

I remember when, some 40 years ago, a friend of mine who was teaching drama at a high school in southern California (a bastion of right wing thought at the time), decided to have the kids do a stage version of George Orwell's "Animal Farm."

Although "Animal Farm" was overtly anti-communist, the parents in the area went into spasams and screamed that he was trying to teach communism in the school and he was ordered to pick another play.

Idiocy abounds around the world and through all times.

Re: My school
 

To be fair, I dont think that encouraging a 12 year old child to 'get into the mind' of Hitler and write about why jews should be murdered is a particularly good idea. Similarly, it might not be a good idea to give them a book of poems about murdering jews, since you wouldnt really expect a 12 year old to get the point of the poem and understand its true meaning or whatever. Children seem easily malleable when it comes to picking up negative attitudes towards other groups - look how many people grow up thinking that Indians were murderous/evil/whatever because of watching Westerns. Or how many people are distrustful of aliens because all the sci-fi movies they watched as kids featured martians trying to take over the world.

Re: My school
 

The poem doesn't sound very good, needless to say. :(

Re: My school
 

You just described my dad.

Re: My school
 

How many 12-year olds do you know that are likely to sit down and read poetry unless forced to at gunpoint.

Besides, if combined with a discussion led by an adult (not a twat like the one who wrote the blog) it is just conceivable that the child could learn something.

People like her are running around in the US wanting to pull anything on a library shelf that they don't consider politically correct. I get very tired of it.

No "Huckleberry Finn" for you it has the word ****** in it. This despite that it was a temedously anti-bigotry novel where a young white boy figures out that black people have the same feelings and should have the same rights as he does.

Re: My school
 

Shoot her but keep her alive using one of those machines that go beep.

While she still lives (in a vegetative state) no-one will take her place.

Re: My school
 

meh. i may have written a thing or two in my time that would not have gone over well if put in a book that was distributed to schoolchildren. so i have trouble criticizing that.

the actual poetry appears to be bad, but given that the student is pretending to be hitler, good writing would have been better grounds for criticism. the kid probably should have written it in german, but that's kind of a stretch. it's wasn't a particularly good or original idea, but still about as much as you can expect from someone that age.

obviously that poem should not have gone into that book, but i don't see that as being the student's fault.

Re: My school
 

That entire story is so incredibly inane it leaves me spechless.