Cabbage every day
The schoolbook publisher, The Educational Company of Ireland (Edco), has apologised for some content in one of its Junior Cycle curriculum books, adding that upon “closer inspection”, it will remove it.
In a section entitled “All Different, All Equal”, an Aran-jumper wearing Irish family is described as eating bacon, cabbage and potatoes every day and not liking change or difference, while a mixed-race family is depicted as eating more varied foods and travelling internationally.
In other words the Irish family are boring bigoted hicks while the “mixed-race” family are fascinating and cosmopolitan. No doubt there are plenty of families who fit both descriptions, but didactic tales about them can…shall we say, go wrong.
The publisher issued a statement to RTÉ News in response to queries around the book’s depictions, which had led to widespread calls for the book to be pulled.
In the statement, Edco said: “Firstly, we would like to say that we welcome the public’s interest in this issue and the whole area of SPHE.
“By means of background and context, the main function of this activity (‘Looking at Difference’) is designed to help students understand the importance of diversity in our lives, to introduce students to the Equal Status Acts and to highlight the types of discrimination they cover.
“Following the students’ introduction to the Equal Status Acts, the activity uses exaggeration and hyperbole to convey the nature and effects of inclusion and bias.” However, it said that “on closer inspection, we now appreciate that our approach should have been different”.
Well, yeah. Assigning kids in Irish schools a book that portrays Irish people as boring bigoted hicks is probably not the best way to go.
As a child, I always hated books that had a design on me, and simply refused to read them – and there were far fewer of those books around in my time. They don’t help anything, and certainly do not have the intended effect of making everyone a ‘a better person’ as the writers & publishers, and the schools that use them, fondly believe.
One could do it in a far less fatuous way – for instance by writing books in which kids from different backgrounds are friends. There’s no need to make one set of parents the patsies and the other set the fabulous strangers from Diversityville. Just let them all have different backgrounds, which after all is likely anyway.
Cabbages every day?
Luxury.
It’s the kindergarten version of the stupid spice meme…
It’s not the best way to go if your goal is anything like what a normal, rational, reasonable person would have, like fostering open-mindedness toward people of different backgrounds, appearances, and preferences.
It’s perfectly logical and sensible if your goal is fostering disharmony, so that you can come in with a ready-made solution to the problem you yourself have caused, an eternal excuse for seizing and maintaining power as described in Nineteen Eighty-Four. (A solution that also doesn’t work, of course, because your power can only be eternal if the problem is as well.) Anything short of the Woke view of perfection is something to be interrogated, problematized, and dismantled in service of the cause. Woke shit is supposed to fail and cause despair, because people who have no hopes, are easy to control.
I take issue with your last assertion; it assumes motives not in evidence, or at least not in the sinister way you suggest. There’s not that level of intentionality.
As an evil monster who actually *does* want to dominate other human beings in such a fashion I’m pretty sure I’d recognize it.
Fair’s fair though, someone like Kendi definitely wants that kind of power, but he truly believes everything is as hopeless as he portrays, not that different from the sincere populists. Horseshoe theory and all that…
Agreed on the sinister motive bit. It is more likely in my view that this comes from a sincere belief that this messaging will help combat prejudices against e.g. immigrants, other religions, homosexuality and so on. The authors are extremely attentive to bias against the out-group, and so err on the side of generosity towards those groups. The result often ends up being an overreaction, giving rise to a self-deprecating, cringing, apologetic approach to being white native-born and similar.
I believe only a minority are in it for a real control kick, with most viewing themselves as doing their bit to welcome a different group.
Spice meme? Kendo?
The meme is that the Brits conquered the world to exploit the spice trade but somehow have extraordinarily bland food (AKA white people food depending on the iteration); similarly “where’s the seasoning?”. Kendo was just autocorrect for “Kendi”.
Oh THAT spice meme. You do love to make us work for it. At any rate, I can fix the stupid autocorrect.
BKiSA/Holms: I don’t think it actually does require conscious intent, nefarious or otherwise, because knowledge isn’t closed under known entailment. As long as the belief system itself exhibits the proper intentionality [philosophical term of art meaning something like “the quality of aiming toward some thing”], the results are the same.
Consider the way those who support Genderism also profess opposition to misogyny despite carrying water for a patently anti-woman movement. When you take the Genderist claims seriously and diligently follow their entailments, where you end up is somewhere profoundly incompatible with believers’ core ethical commitments. Believers don’t have to be aware that TWAW is a thought-terminating cliche for it to have that purpose and function as such. The thought control functions regardless of believers’ motives, and that thought control exists to keep them from really examining what Genderist claims entail.
I don’t think those who support Genderism do also profess opposition to misogyny. I think they’ve mostly stopped talking about misogyny at all except for “misogyny” as it applies to trans “women.”
Somebody like Sally Hines certainly does. Even the term “transmisogyny” leans on people’s underlying “boo that” towards misogyny.