........ id also go on to say that future generations might well dispose and despise our 'pc' culture gone ott of today. yes OUR contemporary attitudes may well be seen as archaic, stupid, and riddiculous.

Maybe you'll make ridiculous claims that his 1892 poem Gunga Din with the last line "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!" is not a rhyming narrative from the point of view of a British soldier, about a native water-bearer who saves the soldier's life but dies himself.

 

At the end of the day though Gunga Din is a servant giving his life for the white 'master', as opposed to giving it for his own people.. Gunga Din doesn't fight for his own, he fights for the colonialists... He aint exactly Ghandi mate, he aint exactly fighting for the civil rights or independence of his own people, and neither is Kipling by any fukkin' stretch of the imagination.... Kipling, to my knowledge, was never openly critical of the ideology of Colonialism and frankly, I object thoroughly to some of the stereotypes in much of his work, especially "The White Man's Burden" which I find highly suspect to say the least.... I'm not calling for a ban on Kipling's works or anything (on the contrary, I think they should be read, but read critically for what they are and with a good dose of salt), but I would be very wary of placing him on some kind of pedestal....

but yet again you are imposing todays standards on history.... wether the victorians were right or not doesnt matter because it was contemporary attitudes. kipling by all accounts seemed to be way progressive for the time he lived in, you cant push the boundaries further then the times allow.

 

Yes, "seemed to be", but they weren't mate, which is the whole point I'm making, the illusion of progressiveness.. One close reading of the works does actually throw this up... And we should, in this day and age, be able to see through them for what they are, and NOT place them on a pedestal, there were far more radical writers than Kipling around at the time who dont get the tenth of the credit he does, which is totally erroneous as far as I'm concerned.. There are Caribbean and Indian authors who were around at the time of Kipling and after his death who get ignored because their message is, well, a bit too progressive if you get my meaning..... So for us in 2007, to lionise someone like Kipling at the expense of these more radical, contemporary voices is wholly wrong IMO....

you cant push the boundaries further then the times allow.

 

Nonsense.. If people didn't "push the boundaries" then nothing would bloody change... :lol: :lol: Martin Luther King pushed boundaries, Ghandi pushed boundaries, Nelson Mandela pushed boundaries, Malcolm X pushed boundaries, William Wilberforce and William Pitt pushed boundaries, Abraham Lincoln pushed boundaries... They changed their respective WORLDS mate, by pushing the boundaries that the times allowed......

 

I find it bizarre that the Victorians found it acceptable to subjugate and dominate entire fukkin' CONTINENTS when in Wilberforce and Pitt's time (which was a full century BEFORE...) they managed to make it unacceptable to enslave people and put them in chains. Is it not essentially the same goddam thing????? Both involve exploitation and oppression.....

I wasn't talking about Nursery School...

 

 

At the risk of slipping into an hours lecture of the organisation of learning from birth in this country - nursery schools and schools are technically one and the same.

I am not talking about child care but nursery classes - I in fact (just because I was in the mood) read the 3 little pigs to my nursery class this morning - that would be the 3 year old children who attend the primary school I teach at.

I wasn't talking about Nursery School...

i was.

 

hence the inclusion of the word nursery in my post.

 

Nursery rhymes are taught while you are at Nursery not as a primary school child.

Nonsense.. If people didn't "push the boundaries" then nothing would bloody change... :lol: :lol: Martin Luther King pushed boundaries, Ghandi pushed boundaries, Nelson Mandela pushed boundaries, Malcolm X pushed boundaries, William Wilberforce and William Pitt pushed boundaries, Abraham Lincoln pushed boundaries... They changed their respective WORLDS mate, by pushing the boundaries that the times allowed......

 

I find it bizarre that the Victorians found it acceptable to subjugate and dominate entire fukkin' CONTINENTS when in Wilberforce and Pitt's time (which was a full century BEFORE...) they managed to make it unacceptable to enslave people and put them in chains. Is it not essentially the same goddam thing????? Both involve exploitation and oppression.....

 

dont agree. you can only push boundaries so far within the society you live in at the time.

 

example.... gay marriage, 40 years ago it was ILLEGAL to be gay never mind having a gay marriage. progression, boundary pushing is a gradual event, one step at a time.

At the end of the day, will a bunch of 4 year olds know about black slaves? :mellow: The song isn't even related to that, you';re just one of these nitwits looking to pick a PC hole in everything.

Edited January 30, 200817 yr by JamesP

At the end of the day, will a bunch of 4 year olds know about black slaves?

 

Nothing. Which is the whole problem if you ask me... Having this stuff forced-fed upon them when they're actually too young to process the underlying messages..... Some stuff I had read to me when I was a kid, when I look back at it and really take a second look at it, it makes me go "what the fukk!!!???"... Try reading Vladimir Propp's "The Morphology of the Folk Tale" (a book which analyzes and breaks down the structures of ancient folk tales and Fairy Tales) at some point, quite a bloody eye opener I can tell you..... There's no such thing as an "innocent kid's story", perhaps if these things were written by kids themselves, for other kids then you could say they're without any kind of agenda, and that they truly are innocent. But they're not, they're written by, or told by (in the ancient oral tradition..) ADULTS, which is the whole problem... Adults ALWAYS have some sort of agenda or other beneath the surface.....

dont agree. you can only push boundaries so far within the society you live in at the time.

 

Then you'll never change anything mate... Someone has to have the guts to stand against the tide. As far as Gay Rights go, do you honestly believe had it NOT been for the likes of Peter Tatchell and Stonewall making themselves total bloody nuisances to the establishment and defying accepted public opinion throughout the 80s and 90s that Gay People would now have the right to marry...? Of course they wouldn't, it was the likes of Tatchell campaigning and saying things which were, at the time, unpopular that led to where we are now... The examples of these people I gave in my previous post also stood against the tide and defied established views... You have to stir up sh!t to change things, nothing ever came from people being meek and accepting the status quo.... You think the likes of you or I got the vote by people just sitting on their arses hoping things might change...? No, it came out of YEARS of protests, riots, violence, and yes, people actually willing to DIE to give us all the right to vote.... Nobody got given their rights, they had to take them, and if that means upsetting a few established views and boundaries along the way, fukk it, The Chartists, The Labour Movement, The ANC, The Civil Rights Movement, Stonewall and the Suffragettes did just that, and they won.... End of story....

Then you'll never change anything mate... Someone has to have the guts to stand against the tide. As far as Gay Rights go, do you honestly believe had it NOT been for the likes of Peter Tatchell and Stonewall making themselves total bloody nuisances to the establishment and defying accepted public opinion throughout the 80s and 90s that Gay People would now have the right to marry...? Of course they wouldn't, it was the likes of Tatchell campaigning and saying things which were, at the time, unpopular that led to where we are now... The examples of these people I gave in my previous post also stood against the tide and defied established views... You have to stir up sh!t to change things, nothing ever came from people being meek and accepting the status quo.... You think the likes of you or I got the vote by people just sitting on their arses hoping things might change...? No, it came out of YEARS of protests, riots, violence, and yes, people actually willing to DIE to give us all the right to vote.... Nobody got given their rights, they had to take them, and if that means upsetting a few established views and boundaries along the way, fukk it, The Chartists, The Labour Movement, The ANC, The Civil Rights Movement, Stonewall and the Suffragettes did just that, and they won.... End of story....

 

 

are you being deliberately obtuse?

 

the example i gave was perfectly valied, 40 years ago you would never have gay marriages considered at all... it would never happen. did illegal gay people campaign for it then?... NO.

 

because until homosexuality became accepted in society the boundaries COULDNT be pushed THAT far in those times, period.

 

the first boundary was the acceptance of homosexuality, only then could the new boundary that was gay marriage be sought.

 

same with the suffragettes, as if ms pankhurst was expecting total equality! equal rights, equal pay! :lol: .... those boundaries were way beyond their capeability.

 

i see it as a seriese of hurdles, or steps, but you can only take 1 at a time, you cant jump 2 hurdles at once, you have to do it one at a time, thus pushing boundaries .

[quote name='MUSHYMANROB' date='Jan 31 2008, 11:19 AM' post='1734056'

same with the suffragettes, as if ms pankhurst was expecting total equality!

 

That wasn't actually what she was fighting for though, she fought for a VOTE, which plenty of people at the time were opposed to, including the Govt.. She DID challenge the accepted views of society that a woman wasn't worthy of a vote because it was assumed she would just vote for the same candidate her husband did.... The Suffragettes took pretty extreme actions to get their voices heard, one girl throwing herself in front of the King's horse at the Grand National, a martyr to the cause.

 

the first boundary was the acceptance of homosexuality, only then could the new boundary that was gay marriage be sought.

 

Then the Tories came along with Clause 28, a step backwards which Tatchell and Stonewall vehemently opposed..... Similarly the African Americans in the Southern US.. They came back from WW2 after serving their country to the same old beatings, the same old racism, the same old lynchings, the same bullsh!t Jim Crow Laws.. They certainly did NOT wait for "whitey" in Washington to come along and wave a fukkin magic wand and say "There you are Mr Black Person, you are now emancipated because the times now allow it...". Bugger that, they took matters into their OWN hands and formed the NAACP and Civil Rights Movement.... They challenged their society's fukked-up "values".....

Then the Tories came along with Clause 28, a step backwards which Tatchell and Stonewall vehemently opposed..... Similarly the African Americans in the Southern US.. They came back from WW2 after serving their country to the same old beatings, the same old racism, the same old lynchings, the same bullsh!t Jim Crow Laws.. They certainly did NOT wait for "whitey" in Washington to come along and wave a fukkin magic wand and say "There you are Mr Black Person, you are now emancipated because the times now allow it...". Bugger that, they took matters into their OWN hands and formed the NAACP and Civil Rights Movement.... They challenged their society's fukked-up "values".....

 

........ but both examples there support exactly what im saying! pankhurst didnt go for full equality, she couldnt!! one step at a time,

 

 

god i bet your c**p in bed..... :lol: