.ili. Devil Shat Fifty Two .ili. ------------------------------------ I'm a Teacher: Shooting People is Bad .............. by Morbus What We Call Equality ......................... by John Treacy This is Devil Shat Fifty Two released on 06/17/99. Devil Shat is published by Disobey and is protected under all copyright laws. All of the issues are archived at the Disobey website: http://www.disobey.com/ Submissions, email, and news should be sent to morbus@disobey.com. Your comments are welcome. What do you want us to write about? Send an email and let us know. I hate .htaccess. ------------------------------------------------- .ili. I'm a Teacher: Shooting People is Bad .ili. ------------------------------------------------- by Morbus Is it just me or do a lot of students dislike the novels they must read while slothing through the English curriculum? I'm not saying all the choices are bad (or even if students still hate the books - I left the school system many years ago), I, myself, am a fan of Shakespeare and Dickens. In my schooling years though, I discovered that more and more English class novels are those that have that shiny gold star or 30 or so newspapers have "critically acclaimed". Some of them, I'll grant, are quite good. But the question remains, does a gold star mean a book is enjoyable to read or just "grammatically and morally correct?" A lot of students fall into two categories: they like to read (but not the books force fed onto them by their teacher), or they hate to read, probably because all the books they've been exposed to have "sucked ass". Generally, people like to read novels that "hold" them, not those that tell them how to solve or go about resolving a moral problem. Didn't A SEPARATE PEACE teach us how to be trustworthy and not to participate in stupid dares? And RAISIN IN THE SUN taught us that African-American's have feelings and views too? Wait, didn't we already know this? Why aren't we reading THE CAT IN THE HAT, where the kids try to maintain some semblance of normalcy as the bad cat goes around screwing things up? Or HORTON HEARS A WHO, which tells us that no matter how small (or how differently colored), there is always someone else beside us. It seems to me that every novel force fed to students has some sort of special message to make us all better people. Well, if we take this Littleton crap into perspective, then they ain't working, bub. (Side note: please, please, please do not respond saying that Littleton was due to lack of gun control. Hell, it has nothing to do with book control either, but it was an example most could relate to.) As much as teachers and professors mean well (well, except for those that smoke in the lounge and then attend rally's to stop teenage smoking - that shit is whack), all of their methods will fail unless there is interest. No one cares about the rodeo from A YELLOW RAFT ON BLUE WATER if they hated the first person perspective, page one. Teachers, being forced into a curriculum as much as students are, need to be a bit crafty. Grab books which are damn good, yet which prove something. Some recommendations: BRAVE NEW WORLD (already in some schools and should stay), FRANKENSTEIN (you ain't god, motherfool, quickie: who can tell me the alternative title?), SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE (things could get worse, stop complaining, and so it goes), STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND (need I?), BATTLEFIELD EARTH (well, this is probably too long for most students, but damn, talk about going from day one to day one thousand), PLAYER PIANO (yeah, I have a hard-on for Vonnegut, shut up, rebuke the system and your destiny-ish) and more. I'm not the most well read, mind you, but these are just novels currently on my shelf. If school is about expanding your horizons, then novels which stretch the imagination should, theoretically, be more appropiate. As well, if teachers are so hyped up about creative writing, shouldn't they at least give us pieces of work that illustrate some of the more creative factions of fiction? The hardest part though, is convincing the schooled youths that the books I've mentioned are actually good, enjoyable reading. Most have, as group stereotype number two, already shut their eyes in sleepy derision. --------------------------------- .ili. What We Call Equality .ili. --------------------------------- by John Treacy The passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act states that to discriminate in private is legal, but anything regarding business or public discrimination is illegal. In a roundabout way, this created what we now call "affirmative action". Many have come to blame all disturbances in the work place on the combination of these two words. While job exportation, dwindling benefits and stationary pay rates existed before affirmative action, much of the white male work force has characteristically elected to blame these trends on affirmative action. White male's discriminating and blaming their downfalls on minorities... I guess this generation didn't want to rock the boat too much by making any steps towards equality. I constantly hear the argument of "the right man for the job", wherein a person regardless of race or gender is placed in an open position. We all know that "the right man for the job" really means the white man for the job. This was the way it was. In the hundred and fifty some odd years after the "freeing" of slaves in America, public discrimination was as wide spread as patriotism and usually mingled into one juggernaut of Eurocentric nationalist pride. When affirmative action was introduced, the federal government basically said "those in positions of job placement can't handle their responsibility". That is exactly right. Equality didn't exist in the work place so it had to be forced upon white America. After almost three decades, this hasn't changed. If the laws keeping affirmative action in place were to be rolled back, we would plummet into the same hole we were in. While many say that affirmative action is special treatment and that the majority of people in this country are open-minded and willing to work with people without considering their sex or color, they're missing the big picture. The problem isn't co-worker relations... it's the hiring process. If somebody doesn't like working with other human beings they feel are somehow different, then they can exit stage left. The problem is the hiring official for a company discriminating against certain groups of people. This would prevent those groups from a fair shot at that job. And I'd really like to know when being eligible for a job was deemed "special treatment". The feeling that affirmative action simply changes who is discriminated against, making it legal for the new discriminators, is simply appalling. The truth is that racial, religious, and sexual discrimination will never cease and thus the need for affirmative action will always be there. The social ideals of equality were set into motion but we just couldn't handle it. And the argument against affirmative action is proof. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The website edition includes images, a nice design, and all of the email we have received about this issue. Go there and um, er, have fun: http://www.disobey.com/devilshat/ Copyright 1997-1999 Disobey. All rights reserved. You may not steal, maim, hold for ransom, kill, or rape any part of this issue. http://www.disobey.com/ TO SUBSCRIBE: majordomo@disobey.com BODY: Subscribe DevilShat TO UNSUBSCRIBE: majordomo@disobey.com BODY: Unsubscribe DevilShat ------------------------------------------------------------------------