Racism claim over use of Japanese three wise monkeys

Follow the link in the story – you can see the pamphlet there. The monkeys in question are just pencil line drawings, not black caricatures. In fact, the “hear no evil” monkey looks to me like Tony Blair, while the “speak no evil” monkey bears a passing relationship to Dubya.

However, you lampoon a committee by comparing it to monkeys, and one guy on the committee happens to be black… well I guess it is clear and blatant racism then! Sheesh….

From the article: “delegates, many of whom are low-paid workers more familiar with bar room racism”

In other words, rednecks. Their last words will doubtless be “Oy, ‘old me pint an’ wotch this!”

Actually my mother- who is the one who drew the picture, Suzanne Muna- is and always will be a leftist, as are the others.

“Have you been thinking english people sound like that from watching american session actors trying to do accents? ”

1. It is a parody of an American joke: “What are the most common last words of a redneck? ‘Hold my beer and watch this!’”

2. I think some English people talk like that from visiting England and hearing how some of them talk. Not all of them are pommey gits like yourself who apparently speak in r.p. all the time.

No, not in primary school. The kids would be too young to understand it anyway and they have more important things to learn – reading, writing, math and basic science. Trying to teach abstract concepts like “cultural awareness” to primary school kids is pointless.

Secondary school maybe, but where are you going to find the time? US schools have something like 160-170 school days a year, 6 hours of class time a day, but in my experience you can cut that to 5 per day because of study hall. Within that limited time, while competing with math, science, English, PE, health class and mandatory foreign language classes, social studies teachers tried to teach us US and European history as those were the most relevant to our lives. Asian history is fascinating, but it is also pretty much completely irrelevant to understanding American society, and getting kids to understand their own society is what jr. high and high school social studies classes are all about. I mean, as a test question “Explain the importance of the Magna Carta to modern US democracy” makes sense. “Explain the importance of Shotoku Taishi’s Seventeen Article Constitution” – it would make no sense to teach that even at the high school level, where the goal is to get the students basically aware of what is going on around them and give them a basic, rounded education so they can function as adults and don’t fall flat on their faces after graduation.

University level, yes, as university education is supposed to provide specific skill sets to enable adults to succeed in a given area of expertise. There is a whole different set of goals at work.