Deaf 3 year old's name in sign language not 'appropriate' for school.

[Evil Smurf]

.........Escapist you are making me sad. Why is every story rage worthy today?

 

[Something Amyss]

If we're really going to be politically correct here we shouldn't refer to them as deaf either, but this is not the topic in this thread.

"Deaf" is the preferred term of the Deaf community. So why wouldn't we call them Deaf?

I am saying that it's bullshit to change either a name or a way of communication simply because it can be misunderstood,

And I think it's funny that as you're being mad about people being dicks to the Deaf, you kinda aren't doing any better.

you could probably point out some faulty grammar in my post too and quote me out of context and make it look like I think we should kill all black people.

This isn't about grammar. You were talking about Deaf culture, at least as it relates to the Deaf community. You were given information and instead of learning from it you have decided to justify yourself by indicating that I could nitpick the above, absurd example.

But while we're on the subject of black people, your post sounded very "white man's burden." Google it if you don't get the reference.

I'm not intentionally insulting deaf people and if you had looked at the full post rather than a small bit that would be clear.

I did look at the full post. However, the last part was full of inaccuracies. Nobody has accused you of intentionally insulting Deaf people. You're just getting hostile because you've inferred such a thing.

I don't want to discuss political correctness,

You keep using those words. I don't think they mean what you think they mean.

if you actually have a problem with me thinking they have the right to communicate with the official signs come back to me.

I see. Shame on me for trying to inform you about the people you're commenting on. Knowledge is political correctness.

Though it's still especially funny that as you're raging at someone for disregarding the Deaf, you are doing the same and defending it. I'm not sure how you're missing out on this here, but whatever. Sadly, someone who's actually had experience with the Deaf/HoH cultures is being shouted at as "politically correct" for simply, you know, relaying facts.

Finally, if it's politically correct to look upon your condescending view as appalling, I'm not sure why I'd want to not be politically correct.

 

[Lilani]

-snip-

This is Nebraska, statistically speaking it's very unlikely a "left winger" brought it up.

Meanwhile, who cares? It's stupid. If you truly felt both sides were broken, you'd spend less time going on about who's to blame and more time pointing out it's stupid and it needs to be fixed. Sitting around trying to decide blame is pointless, and doesn't solve the broken system any faster. Either you think they're both broken, or you don't. Just don't sit here saying you feel both are wrong then write five paragraphs about how the libruls are out to get us. Stupid is as stupid does, and banging on about whose stupid is more stupid is exactly what has broken the system in the first place.

 

[Loonyyy]

This kind of thing is exactly why I've spent so many times fighting against the left wing. While both major positions in the US are borked, the left wing has an undeserved reputation for being some kind of champion of rights and freedoms, when in reality it's basically in pursuit of a kind of insane facism that denies any kind of common sense. At least with the right wing, even with the bible thumpers, you can see some underlying logic, especially when you consider the origins of the country. Things like this though are just insane, and honestly I kind of saw it coming a long ways off, but nobody really wanted to listen.

It's a school board. Not the left wing. In fact, I see no way in which this can be interpreted as this. A rule against children bringing things which appear to be guns (Like replicas or cap guns), has been abused by stupid people. Also, your definition of facism is wrong. Also, the Bible thumpers aren't using logic, they're using their bible, and it's contrary to the origins of the country.

The basic story behind this comes down to the simple fact that the left wing holds a very solid "we believe in free speech, as long as it's the free speech to say what we agree with"

Name one time they've legislated against free speech in this manner.

, in the name of "freedom" it's also been trying to shut down avenues of resistance against the authorities and the abillity to speak against social trends they support (hate speech, which can apply to so many things it's insane), and of course dedicated efforts to try and prevent the same kinds of civil disobedience and efforts that acted as a springboard for the left in the 1960s and 70s from being used against them.

Whut.

When it comes to specifics, what happened was this little thing called the "Columbine Massacre" which while not the only school shooting in history, happens to be the most famous. Like most tradgedies, rather than the actual causes being examined, and the system properly reformed, it became a springboard for politics. The basic agenda the left wing pushed through was to pretty much try and ban all violence and violent expression from school, and demonize the bearing of arms (guns or otherwise) which has been a long standing position from the left. Passing these school policies lets them get the kids while they are young.

Yeah, it's true, the left used the massacre to justify a crackdown on guns and weaponry in schools. That's got nothing to do with this case, they clearly did not legislate against SIGN LANGUAGE.

Over the years we've watched these policies go from people talking about violence in school, to talking about violence at all, to drawing pictures of weapons, to even wearing T-shirts and such which might have violent material on them.

Could you cite these, by any chance? I'm unaware of them.

A movie T-shirt for "Clash Of The Titans"? Go home immediatly, the guy is holding a sword!. Over the years I've read a lot of things about this, and truthfully the violence ban has probably done more to keep people from reading comics (violent) on their lunch breaks than the arguement that comics were bad for kids to read ever did. I even remember a case a couple years back where a high schooler was expelled for reading Harry Potter (with one of those concealable book covers), due to violent content, and having the audacity to oppose this stupidity (I don't remember if it was overturned or not).

And this relates to the legislation of the left how, and more importantly, could we have more details on this case?

At any rate, trying to ban deaf kids from making "violent" signs under any circumstances is pretty much par for the course

This is a lie.

, and really it's because we've let things get this far politically.

Another lie.

The kid's name is "Hunter" which implies you know hunting things (which traditionally means killing them) so it's not surprising the name involves an aggressive seeming hand sign... the next step is probably going to be to effectively ban kids from being named things like that, or forcing them to adopt a "school name" if their name is too inherantly aggressive. Give it another couple of years without some opposition to this, and we'll probably have politicians with books of baby names turning "what does your name mean?" from a fun fact to a way of making your life miserable. "Your name is Cassandra? That means Prophet Of Doom, change it or you can't go to school, if you won't go to school your parents go to jail...."

Nice slippery slope.

My extreme sentiments on certain subjects aside, I tend to stay in the political middle, swinging a bit towards the right, for a reason, it stays away from this kind of insanity. The Right wing taken to it's extreme is just as bad, but right now it's been the rise of the left that we're dealing with. This kind of crap is pretty much the left wing anti-gun equivilent of an insane right winger trying to pass religious policies, it's just people are blind to the left wing right now and the needs for balance.

What. The Right just had a candidate who was against homosexuals and openly trying to use religion to be elected. The party has been lobbying for creationism and the oppression of people based on sexual orientation. How is the right at all a better option?

An objection to this is your justification for accepting the right wing. Now I see the problem with the American political system.

 

[anthony87]

I guess I can't name my future son Richard anymore... 'Cause you can't say 'dick' in school!

What the hell is wrong with people?

Why is "Dick" a nickname associated with "Richard" though? I've always wondered that.

 

[chimeracreator]

This kind of thing is exactly why I've spent so many times fighting against the left wing. While both major positions in the US are borked, the left wing has an undeserved reputation for being some kind of champion of rights and freedoms, when in reality it's basically in pursuit of a kind of insane facism that denies any kind of common sense. At least with the right wing, even with the bible thumpers, you can see some underlying logic, especially when you consider the origins of the country. Things like this though are just insane, and honestly I kind of saw it coming a long ways off, but nobody really wanted to listen.

The basic story behind this comes down to the simple fact that the left wing holds a very solid "we believe in free speech, as long as it's the free speech to say what we agree with", in the name of "freedom" it's also been trying to shut down avenues of resistance against the authorities and the abillity to speak against social trends they support (hate speech, which can apply to so many things it's insane), and of course dedicated efforts to try and prevent the same kinds of civil disobedience and efforts that acted as a springboard for the left in the 1960s and 70s from being used against them.

When it comes to specifics, what happened was this little thing called the "Columbine Massacre" which while not the only school shooting in history, happens to be the most famous. Like most tradgedies, rather than the actual causes being examined, and the system properly reformed, it became a springboard for politics. The basic agenda the left wing pushed through was to pretty much try and ban all violence and violent expression from school, and demonize the bearing of arms (guns or otherwise) which has been a long standing position from the left. Passing these school policies lets them get the kids while they are young.

Over the years we've watched these policies go from people talking about violence in school, to talking about violence at all, to drawing pictures of weapons, to even wearing T-shirts and such which might have violent material on them. A movie T-shirt for "Clash Of The Titans"? Go home immediatly, the guy is holding a sword!. Over the years I've read a lot of things about this, and truthfully the violence ban has probably done more to keep people from reading comics (violent) on their lunch breaks than the arguement that comics were bad for kids to read ever did. I even remember a case a couple years back where a high schooler was expelled for reading Harry Potter (with one of those concealable book covers), due to violent content, and having the audacity to oppose this stupidity (I don't remember if it was overturned or not).

At any rate, trying to ban deaf kids from making "violent" signs under any circumstances is pretty much par for the course, and really it's because we've let things get this far politically. The kid's name is "Hunter" which implies you know hunting things (which traditionally means killing them) so it's not surprising the name involves an aggressive seeming hand sign... the next step is probably going to be to effectively ban kids from being named things like that, or forcing them to adopt a "school name" if their name is too inherantly aggressive. Give it another couple of years without some opposition to this, and we'll probably have politicians with books of baby names turning "what does your name mean?" from a fun fact to a way of making your life miserable. "Your name is Cassandra? That means Prophet Of Doom, change it or you can't go to school, if you won't go to school your parents go to jail...."

My extreme sentiments on certain subjects aside, I tend to stay in the political middle, swinging a bit towards the right, for a reason, it stays away from this kind of insanity. The Right wing taken to it's extreme is just as bad, but right now it's been the rise of the left that we're dealing with. This kind of crap is pretty much the left wing anti-gun equivilent of an insane right winger trying to pass religious policies, it's just people are blind to the left wing right now and the needs for balance.

There are so many mistakes in this post. Let's begin:

1. The ACLU, one of the iconic "left wing" organizations in the US has defended the right of neo-Nazis to march. While it is true that other "leftist" organizations have fought against this sort of thing their actions tend to be less overt than attempts to say, ban profanity and pornography, which is a popular pass time among many "right wing" organizations like the Family Research Council.

2. This is happening in Nebraska in a district with a Republican representative (all three of Nebraska's congressional districts are), a republican governor and a republican senator, the other being a democrat. This isn't a California, the "left" isn't in control there.

3. Please stop pretending that political positions exist along a single spectrum. There are blue dog democrats, libertarian republicans (both fiscally and socially), anti-gay marriage democrats, California republicans and a whole host of other tiny niches and beliefs. The United States has a population of over 300 million, with 435 representatives in the House, 100 senators and 50 governors as well as a whole host of state senators, mayors, city councils and the like.

 

[Lieju]

What's with all the 'This is PC gone mad' comments?

At worst this is school being silly, but for me it looks more like they have a certain policy for signing names and this has nothing to do with it looking like guns.

It's just that 'School bans fingerguns lol' makes for a better headline than 'Boring sign-language stuff', and judging from the responses in this thread, it's working.

I don't know, because maybe if they try harder they'll be less deaf? I don't know, it never made sense to me.

I think the reasoning generally is that they want the native language of the dead kids to be the English. (Or in the case of my uncle, Finnish who as a child was punished in school for doing any sign language)
The reasoning being that if they learn a very different language first, it's more difficult to learn their 'native' language.
Which is BS, kids can learn more than one language, and for deaf people, becoming bilingual is pretty much a necessity.

 

[-|-]

You. Are. All. Being. Trolled. By. News. Media.

They. Don't. Care.

Really, they don't; people like shit to pointlessly rage over. Although Therumancer seems to get this with his clever parody of a self righteous reactionary fruit loop.

 

[Fijiman]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you another excellent example of what has become of the American school system.

 

[DracoSuave]

Is this a joke?
Please tell me this story isn't serious.

Edit: Oh it's serious.

Well it IS the United States... And Nebraska IS a Republican state... So I wouldn't be so surprised they're actually serious.

PC movement is all liberal Democrats though... We Republicans have a conservative interpretation of the Constitution, and since it says we have freedom of speech, we feel we should be able to say whatever the hell we want.

It's not a political correctness issue, it's a 'security' issue, which is right wing, not left wing.

 

[LovelyStrife]

Yes, let's make a big political shit storm out of this for no reason. Besides, Nebraska has more Republicans than Democrats last time I checked, and the story makes NO mention of either, so if anything, you should be blaming the right-wing for this. Or at least, it would be slightly less stupid to blame the right-wing rather than the left for this.

Better yet: don't blame the left or right. This isn't a political issue; it's stupid people being stupid. Don't read into it any more than that.

To this guy and all the others who share his point, I couldn't agree more. I read so many opinions on this issue and people blame Nebraska being a 'Red State' or that it's another way that Republicans are out to get them. This isn't political. This is a stupid action made by a school, and I don't see how politics, on either side, relate to it. :// I admit that I may be biased because I live in Nebraska, but most of us are not the stereotypes that others like to project on us.

The one good thing is that the media pressure caused by this story going national will help the family win the fight with the school district. I know that they won't want the terrible publicity that will come if they don't allow him to continue using his name. I can't wait to see how this plays out.

 

[Yopaz]

...

Wow, here I told you that I did not want to discuss political correctness and here you ramble on. Did it ever occur to you that I might not be from the same country as you or that what is OK to say might not be the same? Here we're not supposed to call them deaf at all, we're not supposed t say sign language either. You seem to be ignoring it when I say I did not want to discuss this so I guess you can ignore that there are different cultures or norms in other countries too.

 

[Unsilenced]

I thought it was going to be the bird. I remember learning how to count binary on my fingers. 4 is my favorite number.

Anyways, I'm going to hope that A) There's something missing from this story or B) It's just one insane person saying it and the school will quickly make an apology.

 

[Bolwing]

America, you never fail to dissapoint when it comes to general foolishness.
Remind me how you haven't yet devolved into violent and primitive tribes?

EDIT: Oh. You have devolved into primitive tribes. They're called political parties. I forgot.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

My last name is already Kerr. All I would have to do is name my child Wan.

Anyway this is silly. He wasn't making a gun and even if he was it would still by silly. Lots of kids make guns with their hands, doesn't mean they are crazy or anything.

 

[madster11]

Kid needs to sign his name by *****-slapping his teacher and yelling 'WHERE'S MY MONEY *****' in that deaf person voice.
I would pay good, good money to see that.

 

[Therumancer]

Nebraska has a GOP Governor,House Representative,and a senator
last election the state's votes split 4R/1D(Nebraska dose not have a winner take all electoral collage)
so you can't exactly blame the "left" as the state has been very right wing

I'll simply respond here because a lot of people are saying the same thing. I'm trying to prevent a simple statement to turn into an ongoing political debate so I'm not going to respond to some things that were said even though I could. My initial comments stand pretty well on their own and people can take them or leave them.

Nebraska's state goverment doesn't really matter in cases like this, due to the increasing trivialization of state rights and power (which is an entirely differant issue). One way that this has been undermined is federal dollars being put into education, and how much money the fed puts into educational programs and school systems is one of the big issues brought up come election time and why cantidates like to hem and haw about how much they plan to support education while running for things like the presidency, despite the schools being generally run by states and towns.

The thing is that federal money comes with strings attached to it, when the fed donates to things like schools and hospitals it comes with the stipulation that they will follow certain policies, and this carries with it increasing numbers of policies on things like violence, along with the older issues of affirmitive action in schol with requirements for so many students of a given type to attend certain schools, etc...

It gets quite complicated, but one of the big issues with getting positions on boards of education (state, and even local) and the like is federal contacts for helping to ensure funding. This has also created a situation where increasingly towns and the state goverment have increasingly less power over the educational system, this is how you see battles between towns, and states and such over school policies (which go beyond this), and even see schools doing things like banning the display of the American flag on foreign holidays and getting away with it.

In the end it's stupid people being stupid, BUT it's stupid people who don't think they are stupid and are pushing a political agenda. Understand that for the left wing, which is very much in favor of federal power, being able to slap around a largely right wing state is it's own reward. Half the point of things like this is to force policies that nobody can do anything about, the left wing anti-gun lobby (which can also be considered anti-violence) that is ultimatly behind crap like this by definition wants to make it irrelevent what specific states or communities want, and getting kids while they are young to agree with them is part of that agenda, which leads to this kind of "insanity" in pursuit of what they consider the greater good.

Now don't get me wrong, many people will disagree with what I'm saying, this is what I think based on what I've run into and my observations on how things are actually working. This is not the first time we've seen battles like this, they keep happening for a reason.

 

[SlaveNumber23]

When I read the title I thought it was going to be that in signing his name he would be flipping the other kids off which would be almost understandable but this...this just jumps over the fence of ridiculousness and dives head first into the grand canyon of 'people in charge of the school need to man the fuck up'. What 3 year olds are going to think "that looks like a gun" without already being exposed to weapons outside of school? I'm pretty damn sure that someones hands do not qualify as "any instrument ... that looks like a weapon", a persons hands do not even qualify as an instrument, therefore this is not even breaching their policy. The people in charge of the school are just scared witless of being sued.

My last name is already Kerr. All I would have to do is name my child Wan.

Wang would work better I think With Wan people have the scapegoat of pronouncing it 'Won', you gotta think these things through if you want to ruin your child's social life.