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Devil Shat 1999 06 17
.ili. Devil Shat Fifty Two .ili.
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I'm a Teacher: Shooting People is Bad .............. by Morbus
What We Call Equality ......................... by John Treacy
This is Devil Shat Fifty Two released on 06/17/99. Devil Shat is
published by Disobey and is protected under all copyright laws. All of
the issues are archived at the Disobey website: http://www.disobey.com/
Submissions, email, and news should be sent to morbus@disobey.com. Your
comments are welcome. What do you want us to write about? Send an email
and let us know.
I hate .htaccess.
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.ili. I'm a Teacher: Shooting People is Bad .ili.
------------------------------------------------- by Morbus
Is it just me or do a lot of students dislike the novels they must read
while slothing through the English curriculum? I'm not saying all the
choices are bad (or even if students still hate the books - I left the
school system many years ago), I, myself, am a fan of Shakespeare and
Dickens. In my schooling years though, I discovered that more and more
English class novels are those that have that shiny gold star or 30 or
so newspapers have "critically acclaimed". Some of them, I'll grant, are
quite good. But the question remains, does a gold star mean a book is
enjoyable to read or just "grammatically and morally correct?"
A lot of students fall into two categories: they like to read (but not
the books force fed onto them by their teacher), or they hate to read,
probably because all the books they've been exposed to have "sucked
ass". Generally, people like to read novels that "hold" them, not those
that tell them how to solve or go about resolving a moral problem.
Didn't A SEPARATE PEACE teach us how to be trustworthy and not to
participate in stupid dares? And RAISIN IN THE SUN taught us that
African-American's have feelings and views too? Wait, didn't we already
know this?
Why aren't we reading THE CAT IN THE HAT, where the kids try to maintain
some semblance of normalcy as the bad cat goes around screwing things
up? Or HORTON HEARS A WHO, which tells us that no matter how small (or
how differently colored), there is always someone else beside us.
It seems to me that every novel force fed to students has some sort of
special message to make us all better people. Well, if we take this
Littleton crap into perspective, then they ain't working, bub. (Side
note: please, please, please do not respond saying that Littleton was
due to lack of gun control. Hell, it has nothing to do with book control
either, but it was an example most could relate to.)
As much as teachers and professors mean well (well, except for those
that smoke in the lounge and then attend rally's to stop teenage smoking
- that shit is whack), all of their methods will fail unless there is
interest. No one cares about the rodeo from A YELLOW RAFT ON BLUE WATER
if they hated the first person perspective, page one.
Teachers, being forced into a curriculum as much as students are, need
to be a bit crafty. Grab books which are damn good, yet which prove
something. Some recommendations: BRAVE NEW WORLD (already in some
schools and should stay), FRANKENSTEIN (you ain't god, motherfool,
quickie: who can tell me the alternative title?), SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE
(things could get worse, stop complaining, and so it goes), STRANGER IN
A STRANGE LAND (need I?), BATTLEFIELD EARTH (well, this is probably too
long for most students, but damn, talk about going from day one to day
one thousand), PLAYER PIANO (yeah, I have a hard-on for Vonnegut, shut
up, rebuke the system and your destiny-ish) and more. I'm not the most
well read, mind you, but these are just novels currently on my shelf.
If school is about expanding your horizons, then novels which stretch
the imagination should, theoretically, be more appropiate. As well, if
teachers are so hyped up about creative writing, shouldn't they at least
give us pieces of work that illustrate some of the more creative
factions of fiction?
The hardest part though, is convincing the schooled youths that the
books I've mentioned are actually good, enjoyable reading. Most have, as
group stereotype number two, already shut their eyes in sleepy derision.
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.ili. What We Call Equality .ili.
--------------------------------- by John Treacy
The passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act states that to discriminate in
private is legal, but anything regarding business or public
discrimination is illegal. In a roundabout way, this created what we now
call "affirmative action". Many have come to blame all disturbances in
the work place on the combination of these two words. While job
exportation, dwindling benefits and stationary pay rates existed before
affirmative action, much of the white male work force has
characteristically elected to blame these trends on affirmative action.
White male's discriminating and blaming their downfalls on minorities...
I guess this generation didn't want to rock the boat too much by making
any steps towards equality.
I constantly hear the argument of "the right man for the job", wherein a
person regardless of race or gender is placed in an open position. We
all know that "the right man for the job" really means the white man for
the job. This was the way it was. In the hundred and fifty some odd
years after the "freeing" of slaves in America, public discrimination
was as wide spread as patriotism and usually mingled into one juggernaut
of Eurocentric nationalist pride. When affirmative action was
introduced, the federal government basically said "those in positions of
job placement can't handle their responsibility". That is exactly right.
Equality didn't exist in the work place so it had to be forced upon
white America. After almost three decades, this hasn't changed. If the
laws keeping affirmative action in place were to be rolled back, we
would plummet into the same hole we were in.
While many say that affirmative action is special treatment and that the
majority of people in this country are open-minded and willing to work
with people without considering their sex or color, they're missing the
big picture. The problem isn't co-worker relations... it's the hiring
process. If somebody doesn't like working with other human beings they
feel are somehow different, then they can exit stage left. The problem
is the hiring official for a company discriminating against certain
groups of people. This would prevent those groups from a fair shot at
that job. And I'd really like to know when being eligible for a job was
deemed "special treatment".
The feeling that affirmative action simply changes who is discriminated
against, making it legal for the new discriminators, is simply
appalling. The truth is that racial, religious, and sexual
discrimination will never cease and thus the need for affirmative action
will always be there. The social ideals of equality were set into motion
but we just couldn't handle it. And the argument against affirmative
action is proof.
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