Urban myths

[mortinuk]

There are sometimes news items about teachers being told not to say 'blackboard' or sing 'ba ba black sheep' I think theyare urban myths. Has anyone been giveninstructions about these things. If so where etc?

[Diskobox]

apparently u hav 2 say baa baa rainbow sheep now. jus plain silly

[foxydivano1]

I heard its PC to say ba ba Bad sheep

[THECORBYLOON]

If you say "Ba ba bad sheep," folk might think you have a stutter.......

[electricblue]

Oh for goodness sake don't listen to any of it,Baa Baa has always been black and always will be until he dies so s*d the PC brigade.

[noxlumos]

yeah but all that's anecdotal, who exactly told anyone to say this? most things like this are made up by ridiculous right wing newspapers to cause racial disharmony. no-one cares if you say baa baa black sheep except the Daily Mail who doubtless made the (rainbow sheep/ bad sheep) up in the first place, so just carry on doing it and don't play their games.

[PhilBy]

I have been online for 8yrs and hardly read a newspaper for at least 7! I find it rather frightening the influence anonymous journalists have on this Nation ....

[littleoldme]

I want to write a complaint to this 'PC Brigade' I keep hearing about. Where are they based? Do they have proper offices or a Portakabin in a car park somewhere? The public needs to know!

As "black" is not actually an insulting word, I would strongly expect that such incidences as the Baa Baa Black Sheep one are extremely rare, if not non-existent. I suspect that these are just non-stories, invented on a slow news day, that have been blown up out of all proportion by the right-wing tabloids to feed the prejudices of the more compliantly 'Angry of Tunbridge Wells' types among their readership.

Coming soon to a Daily Mail near you - local authorities ban children from singing Oranges and Lemons for fear it may upset David Dickinson, Judith Chalmers and Des O'Connor.

[brionon]

Another one, If a thief breaks into your house you must stop smoking -as it is now his place of work.

[WaldoMcFroog]

Check

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/News/Question20 9587.html

It's completely made up, as are 99% of similar stories.

[brionon]

Yet another, This lot blank the word ****, sometimes;so you can't sing 'Who killed **** Robin'' or mention ''Never mind the *********''.

[Greedyfly]

When my sister was at infant school about 6 years ago she was told to sing baa baa white sheep

[Lonnie]

I don't know how much of it is made up, but here's a true one, from about 1980, we were sitting a neighbours daughter, seven years old, and she started singing Baa Baa White Sheep, apparently thats what was taught at her school.

[princessfifi]

I work in a nursery and when singing this nursery rhyme we have to go around the circle of children and let them take it in turns to the name the colour of sheep,we are not allowed to just sing black sheep,totally ridiculous i know!!

[Grunty]

Baa baa black sheep was banned at a nursery school in Birmingham. On 12 January 2000, BBC News reported that the ban had been lifted. There was a similar story several years earlier involving a London borough, but I only have that one from a newspaper that I do not entirely trust.

[Grunty]

Just spotted brionon's answer. In one of yesterday's papers, Adam Hart-Davis said that he tends to testiculate, meaning that he waves his arms about when he is talking bo11o**s.

[helliebobs]

My husband is training to be a teacher and apparently they can't mark in red pen anymore as it's deemed too 'aggressive' - they have to mark in green! I couldn't believe it when he told me!

[Buenchico]

Back in the late 1980s, when I was teaching, I attended a course on 'racial awareness', organised by Sheffield L.E.A.. One of the things we were told was that we should refer to all 'non-caucasian' people as 'black'. This, we were told, included everyone with family roots in Asia, including members of the Chinese community.

The following day I mentioned this to one of my pupils, who was the daughter of the proprietors of our local Chinese takeaway. What she said in reply is unfit to be repeated on AB. It would also normally have been totally inappropriate in my classrooom but, since it expressed my own feelings precisely, I was hardly in a position to complain!

About the same time, I knew a probation officer. He told me that there were both old and modern parts to the building in which he worked. The older part had training rooms equipped with blackboards which had been renamed 'chalkboards'. The newer part had whiteboards which had been renamed 'drywipe boards'. Strangely, though, we never received these instructions in schools.

Helliebob's husband shouldn't be surprised to be told to mark in green. This has been standard practice in most teacher training establishments for over 30 years and there are sound psychological reasons for it. Unfortunately, by the time that anyone gets to be head of a department (and therefore responsible for ordering stationery), they've forgotten all the theory and they continue to order supplies of red pens because that's what their predecessors did!

Chris

[Greedyfly]

The world has gone BARKING

[saffronpink]

I have never been given these instructions and we sing baa baa black sheep in nursery quite often.

However we have been "officially" told to use proper anatomical words for parts of the body... and are supposed to use the proper word after they have used a common word.... its supposed to stop any embarassment and giggling when the proper words are used later in school for sex education purposes!

The next generation may well grow up calling each other penisheads!

;)

[Gef]

Chris, I would love to hear the sound psychological aguments for marking in green. In Scotland, all SQA papers (national exams) are marked in red.