Can't say "knife" in high school

Everskyward said:
IMHO, another isolated example of "weirdness" that generated social media frenzy.
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I'm looking past the weirdness to try to figure out when and how our society decided that banning innocuous things like sandwiches was some sort of way to solve a non-existent problem, like sandwiches that look like guns.

There's a driving force behind that in someone's mind, or they wouldn't even think a sandwich in the shape of a pistol was anything more than a sandwich. And it's big enough that it got at least one sandwich banned and a kid in trouble with "authorities" who appear to have a personal emotional or mental health problem, more than the kid does.

That one went far beyond social media frenzy, it was reported in the (supposedly objective) real media.

We had an example here, the flag thing. Flags represent only what someone thinks they represent. Many schools have bans on wearing of flag shirts of all sorts. But that one could be explained away with "gang symbols" and "distractions to learning".

But banning words like "knife" in discussion of a war seems to be taking that sentiment to a new and very strange level.

If anything when I was in school, the teachers were the ones who pushed free speech and debate. I still remember a tiny minority of parents being whiny about the English teachers (ahem... sorry, even by then they'd relabeled that class in true PC fashion as "Language Arts" even though they didn't teach a damned thing about other languages or the art of etymology, but I digress...) assigning "Catcher in the Rye" as a reading and report assignment for late high schoolers.

So when I was in school there was already hints of the ultra-PCism to come ("Language Arts") but it was still trapped in the administrative office bureaucracy and the teachers were still open to debate and pushing ideas and words that challenged kid's world views.

I remember an English teacher having a heated debate with a smart student over that book. The teacher wasn't scared of the debate and neither was the student -- the student brought it up at the appropriate discussion time and the teacher ENJOYED that someone challenged the concepts in the book and debated the opposite side as a learning exercise. That particular teacher wouldn't have ever banned a word in a classroom. Heck, he (and his wife who also worked at the school) would say stuff in class all the time that created controversy on all sides of the political and social aisles. Just to get the discussion going.

I think it's weird that there's even a hint of teachers not doing that anymore.

It'd be like pilots avoiding the "airplane on a treadmill" discussion because they're scared someone might get their feelings hurt over physics. Heh.
 
I had a couple students in years past that mentioned that I am not open to their opinions. I said that they would be 100% correct that I have no care in the world for their opinions. They are in college and they should be exploring their opinions and opening up dialogue with themselves why they have these opinions. I could care less if i offend a student with words or a picture. I could care less if they don't like the fact that I think their work they just turned in is crap. They are here to learn and to open up their lives to new ways of thinking.
I will not give them anything, they must earn everything. I don't give bad grades, they earn them.
 
Have people lost the ability to disagree with other and still be civil and still respect each other?
 
denverpilot said:
I'm looking past the weirdness to try to figure out when and how our society decided that banning innocuous things like sandwiches was some sort of way to solve a non-existent problem, like sandwiches that look like guns.

There's a driving force behind that in someone's mind, or they wouldn't even think a sandwich in the shape of a pistol was anything more than a sandwich. And it's big enough that it got at least one sandwich banned and a kid in trouble with "authorities" who appear to have a personal emotional or mental health problem, more than the kid does.

That one went far beyond social media frenzy, it was reported in the (supposedly objective) real media.

We had an example here, the flag thing. Flags represent only what someone thinks they represent. Many schools have bans on wearing of flag shirts of all sorts. But that one could be explained away with "gang symbols" and "distractions to learning".

But banning words like "knife" in discussion of a war seems to be taking that sentiment to a new and very strange level.

If anything when I was in school, the teachers were the ones who pushed free speech and debate. I still remember a tiny minority of parents being whiny about the English teachers (ahem... sorry, even by then they'd relabeled that class in true PC fashion as "Language Arts" even though they didn't teach a damned thing about other languages or the art of etymology, but I digress...) assigning "Catcher in the Rye" as a reading and report assignment for late high schoolers.

So when I was in school there was already hints of the ultra-PCism to come ("Language Arts") but it was still trapped in the administrative office bureaucracy and the teachers were still open to debate and pushing ideas and words that challenged kid's world views.

I remember an English teacher having a heated debate with a smart student over that book. The teacher wasn't scared of the debate and neither was the student -- the student brought it up at the appropriate discussion time and the teacher ENJOYED that someone challenged the concepts in the book and debated the opposite side as a learning exercise. That particular teacher wouldn't have ever banned a word in a classroom. Heck, he (and his wife who also worked at the school) would say stuff in class all the time that created controversy on all sides of the political and social aisles. Just to get the discussion going.

I think it's weird that there's even a hint of teachers not doing that anymore.

It'd be like pilots avoiding the "airplane on a treadmill" discussion because they're scared someone might get their feelings hurt over physics. Heh.
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I disagree that "society" agrees with banning sandwiches with bites taken out to look like guns. That is just weird. I contend that it was reported in the real media because it was weird enough to grab attention. Banning the word "knife" is also weird, and I doubt that more than a small fraction of society would think it's anything other than weird. Note that no one in this thread has defended it and we are all about argument here.

As far as what school is like now, I don't know. I went to school 40+ years ago and opposing views were not silenced. In fact, I was pretty much a contrarian, and often argued the opposite side of the majority, or what people might have guessed I would argue. I never got in trouble for that.
 
cowman said:
Have people lost the ability to disagree with other and still be civil and still respect each other?
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I don't think so. They want to disrespect others. Real deep down they think that gets them somewhere, so that means someone is teaching them that. People generally do stuff selfishly, even if it's not PC to say that.

Mari has mentioned the "cooperate to graduate" mentality before. It's one thing to say that when the teacher isn't operating from some weird delusion that words like "knife" are bad.

Applied in full in that bizarro classroom, it would lead to problems down the road for the kids who didn't even notice how weird that was, and weren't just putting up with the weirdo teacher to pass. They later think hiding words is somehow a good idea. The teacher did it. Must be good, right?
 
Everskyward said:
Most of the words, ideas, and symbols that people fear are directed against other groups of people, not inanimate objects like knives.
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HAH! Tell some people you are carrying a gun and watch how fast they disappear. Guns are inanimate objects as far as I know. Never seen one jump out of a holster.
 
Everskyward said:
I disagree that "society" agrees with banning sandwiches with bites taken out to look like guns. That is just weird. I contend that it was reported in the real media because it was weird enough to grab attention. Banning the word "knife" is also weird, and I doubt that more than a small fraction of society would think it's anything other than weird. Note that no one in this thread has defended it and we are all about argument here.

As far as what school is like now, I don't know. I went to school 40+ years ago and opposing views were not silenced. In fact, I was pretty much a contrarian, and often argued the opposite side of the majority, or what people might have guessed I would argue. I never got in trouble for that.
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The problem us the "small fraction" are very vocal and very powerful. The "small fraction" caused the end of the celebration of Christmas in schools and public areas. Now, schools are leftist echo chambers and anyone who doesn't toe the Party line is made a pariah. Conservative speakers are banned or shouted down. How did we come to this?
 
Norman said:
HAH! Tell some people you are carrying a gun and watch how fast they disappear. Guns are inanimate objects as far as I know. Never seen one jump out of a holster.
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We are talking about the word, "knife" not the actual object. That would apply to the word "gun" too. It would be pretty weird to talk about wars fought with "projectile flinging devices".
 
Mason said:
Don't take a bladed hand instrument to a heat-operated projectile-launching hand device fight.
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'Don't take a bladed hand instrument to a heat-operated projectile-launching hand device in a severe physical interaction with another human being.

Fixed that for you.

Cheers
 
i-told-her-guns-make-me-feel-uncomfortable.jpg
 
denverpilot said:
Applied in full in that bizarro classroom, it would lead to problems down the road for the kids who didn't even notice how weird that was, and weren't just putting up with the weirdo teacher to pass. They later think hiding words is somehow a good idea. The teacher did it. Must be good, right?
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I guess that would depend on the kids personality. Most kids' I remember would do things just because they were forbidden by adults.
 
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paflyer said:
The problem us the "small fraction" are very vocal and very powerful. The "small fraction" caused the end of the celebration of Christmas in schools and public areas. Now, schools are leftist echo chambers and anyone who doesn't toe the Party line is made a pariah. Conservative speakers are banned or shouted down. How did we come to this?
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I would say that's a problem with both extreme points of view and that's as far as I'm going with it.
 
RJM62 said:
"Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect."​

--Syme, 1984
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Heh. Yeah yeah. Anyone well read knows Orwell. But in my youth it was fiction that describes something nobody really believed. Now roughly half a century after it was written, we see more signs of it in otherwise normal people's behavior.

And we see it pretty hard in the opposite direction, too. As a weapon not as a way toward "safety" as in the Orwellian quote above.

The creation of "trigger" words or the inane discussion about "dog whistles" where none was intended, comes to mind. People pretend someone wearing a t-shirt or waving a flag or saying a particular word is a threat without any evidence that they're an actual threat to anyone.

That's a piece that Orwell missed, unless I'm too many years past my reading of it, to remember it. Forcibly making words or symbols a larger problem that didn't exist, from the example of one person using it that way.

Assumption of intent from word usage... is the idea I'm trying to get across here. Intuitively that is just flat wrong.

Nobody in a high school classroom intends to harm anyone by saying "knife", to tie it into what I'm trying to figure out. How does a teacher hit a point where they think they're doing something "right" by that word ban, or even participate in it?

Would said teacher be fired if they allowed "knife" to be said in classroom discussion? There has to be a motivation somewhere beneath the willingness to do that... something lower in Maslow's hierarchy. It certainly isn't something driven up top at the self-actualization level of learning and education.

To put it in an aviation perspective, you're trying to teach kids to be PIC of their lives with education -- or at least I thought that's what the goal was when I was in school. They need to be able to determine if words are actually just words. Banning words to make someone threatened by words feel safe, is motivated somewhere very very strange in the human brain.

Making it a rule to ban words goes a bit deeper... it's going to be hard on the kids who think the rules apply outside of that bubble. We see signs of that when comedians stop performing at higher ed places because the kids can't even see the humor in the words.
 
cowman said:
Have people lost the ability to disagree with other and still be civil and still respect each other?
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Yes. I heard the best quote a couple weeks ago and I am going to make it a poster to put on my wall
A guy was asked to describe what a racist is and he said:
"a racist is anyone who is winning an argument with a liberal"

This hasn't been more true than the last 12 months where I have never heard or seen more people using the word to describe anything that doesn't agree with them. All of a sudden meaningful conversation has been replaced with name calling, hatred, intolerance and narrow mindedness. It is tough to have a good talk anymore without someone generalizing the entire thing into a hate filled rant. You cannot even dress up for halloween without being labeled a racist anymore.
 
Everskyward said:
We are talking about the word, "knife" not the actual object. That would apply to the word "gun" too. It would be pretty weird to talk about wars fought with "projectile flinging devices".
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But Mari, The situation I describe doesn't depend on a certain word. I was doing some activity where it's common to carry scanners. A dude asked if the bulge under my jacket was a scanner and I told him it was a "bad boy repellent". His exit would have made the Road Runner look slow. :D:D
 
I'm still kind of interested since I went to that school. There won't be any teachers still there from my days, they'd be retired by now.

Maybe it really is a new school thing? You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater, you can't mention "bomb" while standing in a TSA line, and you can't use the words "knife" and "gun" in school?
 
Norman said:
But Mari, The situation I describe doesn't depend on a certain word. I was doing some activity where it's common to carry scanners. A dude asked if the bulge under my jacket was a scanner and I told him it was a "bad boy repellent". His exit would have made the Road Runner look slow. :D:D
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No doubt there are more than a few who are afraid of what they think might be the real thing, but the word when describing a weapon used in war? That's just nuts.
 
Norman said:
HAH! Tell some people you are carrying a gun and watch how fast they disappear. Guns are inanimate objects as far as I know. Never seen one jump out of a holster.
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Heck, don't even have to go that far. Just show them a pocket knife.

Then they're back three days later...

"Can I borrow your knife?"

I see some of this as a societal aversion to tools in general. It's weird but in a throwaway society, people don't buy tools.

We see it all the time in the office. We are the "IT" guys so we must be the people who have basic hand tools to do things with. LOL. The same person will borrow a screwdriver ten times instead of getting a nearly freebie screwdriver kit over at Harbor Freight for $3. Or free even.

I just started handing out the freebies to people long ago so they quit borrowing my good tools.

"I got that for $3 at Harbor Freight. Bring me some of that green chili you make sometime and we'll call it even."

paflyer said:
The problem us the "small fraction" are very vocal and very powerful. The "small fraction" caused the end of the celebration of Christmas in schools and public areas. Now, schools are leftist echo chambers and anyone who doesn't toe the Party line is made a pariah. Conservative speakers are banned or shouted down. How did we come to this?
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I get that. But how did this small minority become powerful? Vocal and loud is one thing, and generally easy to ignore. I don't think it's just politics. We have a family member who is further right than most folks I know who works as a teacher. He is careful to present things evenly but as recently as last year was "put under investigation" for teaching both sides of a particular topic. (I won't bother saying which topic here, it doesn't matter -- some would agree with him and some would disagree -- but he taught BOTH sides and got in administrative trouble.) m


The mid-level administration folks all made sure to have the outward appearance that what he did would look like it was a "big deal" to the whining parents, while privately telling him that it would all go away over time, just "don't bring that topic up in the classroom again any time soon or while the investigation is going on..."

That's just whacked behavior on the part of a whole bunch of people who are obviously scared to say the truth: He didn't harm anyone or even claim one side was right and the other wrong. He just presented both viewpoints.

Seems immoral to me, too. They didn't defend their teacher teaching both sides of something and instead cowardly pretended to the parents that he did something worth investigating and told him privately it'd all go away when mommy and daddy found something new to whine about.

Seems like that's teaching people that whining gets them what they want.
 
My problem with the original story is the context of "knife" in relation to teaching WWI history. Most school courses about wars involve the geopolitical aspects, not the minutae of the weapons carried by individual soldiers. Even when the course might touch on weapons, it will emphasize the new hardware introduced into the WWI time period (aircraft, machine guns, poison gas, U-boats, etc.). For what reason would a teacher even need to mention knives?

So I don't think it's a real story, or is a tremendous exaggeration of something.

Ron Wanttaja
 
I see made-up news stories every day in my Facebook news feed and other corners of the internet. Often they're repeated by folks who didn't do any fact checking, or worse, didn't even read the article.Heck, there are folks who get outraged over Onion articles.

Nate: do us a favor...allow us to "snopes" this. Tell us the name of the school, the class, whatever details you can get. I'm sure we can get to the bottom of this. Worst thing that could happen is we're all in for a good laugh...perhaps we can shed some light on absurdity. But, as long as it's an apocryphal story without any means of verifying, I'm 99% certain it's a misunderstanding or a tall tale.
 
Brad Z said:
I see made-up news stories every day in my Facebook news feed and other corners of the internet. Often they're repeated by folks who didn't do any fact checking, or worse, didn't even read the article.Heck, there are folks who get outraged over Onion articles.

Nate: do us a favor...allow us to "snopes" this. Tell us the name of the school, the class, whatever details you can get. I'm sure we can get to the bottom of this. Worst thing that could happen is we're all in for a good laugh...perhaps we can shed some light on absurdity. But, as long as it's an apocryphal story without any means of verifying, I'm 99% certain it's a misunderstanding or a tall tale.
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With the insane level of political correctness that we have to live with, why does this seem so implausible?
 
Brad Z said:
Because everyone single mommy uses a knife to remove the crust from their special snowflake's bread slices.
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But they shield their little darlings' eyes first. Wouldn't want them to be traumatized and all.

Rich
 
I'm bored and need to whittle away some time so let me take a stab at this. When you pare down the argument regarding the evisceration of our language by those bent on slashing certain words from our normally well honed vocabulary, you are left with words that barely cut the mustard.

Now excuse me while I listen to Hendrix shred on "Dolly Dagger" and dream of sharp dressed ladies in stilettos.
 
This is not that difficult to understand. Whoever controls the language controls the debate. This is a battle over the ground on which the real fight will take place. Controlling your opponents language immediately establishes the rules and who makes them. Giving in to this nonsense is accepting defeat, but unfortunately most of us do just that. Whining on social media doesn't count as real resistance.
 
RJM62 said:
Political correctness, "safe zones," participation awards, and all that other nonsense are just attempts by a people who have always had a deeply divisive streak to pretend that they no longer do. They're manifestations of what Freud would call "reaction formation" to the binary frame of reference created by the Puritans as a result of their rather extreme interpretations of Calvin's doctrines of predestination and foreordination.

I could go on, but we'd wind up in the SZ for sure. And that's unfortunate because it is utterly impossible to understand our history and sociology without examining Puritanism and its lasting effects upon our way of thinking. Most people think of Puritanism in terms of sexual prudishness, but that barely scratches the surface of Puritanism. The binary tendencies in our thinking and values are actually the most unfortunate vestiges of Puritanism that are still operative today. They are so deeply ingrained that most people aren't even aware of them. And yet they motivate most of our politics, policies, and psychology.

Unfortunately, we are forbidden to discuss things even remotely related to religion not only here, but also in schools; which is one of the reasons why these unfortunate vestiges of Puritanism survive and continue to thrive despite our superficial attempts to overcome them.

Rich
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What evidence do you have that supports this idea that the influence of binary reactions are limited to our Puritan heritage? And how does that relate to Calvinistic belief?
 
RJM62 said:
The binary tendencies in our thinking and values are actually the most unfortunate vestiges of Puritanism that are still operative today. They are so deeply ingrained that most people aren't even aware of them. And yet they motivate most of our politics, policies, and psychology.
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This is an extreme statement. I have never seen the Puritans given so much credit. But I'm fascinated. Could you connect those dots for me?
 
denverpilot said:
A friend I've known for a long time posted this, this morning, elsewhere:

-----

"My high school kids are learning about WW1 in history class. They informed me they are not allowed to say the word "knife." It's now known as a "bladed hand instrument."

[TL;DR snip]

So strange all this tiptoeing around words and ideas. It's almost like they want the kids to actually speak in goofy double talk after they graduate? It's history. About a war. And it's a KNIFE. Sheesh.
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I dunno, but this sure does make me miss George Carlin. :(
 
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