Australia removes references to AD and BC from school curriculum

Newaglish

Interesting news from Australia (link)

thejournal.ie wrote:

CATHOLICS IN AUSTRALIA have criticised a new government initiative replacing the country’s school curricula, dropping the terms ‘BC’ and ‘AD’ to refer to the time before and after the birth of Jesus.

The new curriculum will scrap the references in favour of an alternate system with secular terminology which does not explicitly use Christ’s birth as a reference point for numbering years before and afterward.

Instead of ‘BC’ (Before Christ) and ‘AD’ (Anno Domini, meaning ‘the year of our Lord’), the curriculum will instead refer to ‘BCE’ (Before Common Era) and ‘CE’ (Common Era), two equivalent systems.

A third term, ‘BP’ (or ‘before present’), is also being introduced, where it is standard practice to refer to the year 1950 as the beginning of the ‘present’. Under this system, for example, the year 1930 would be referred to as 20 BP.

Adelaide Now quoted the Anglican archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, who described the new practice as an “intellectually absurd attempt to write Christ out of human history”.

The new system merely scrapped the terminology of BC and AD but not their actual logic, he argued, which meant that “the coming of Christ remains the centre point of dating”.

The changes – backed by the increasingly unpopular prime minister Julia Gillard – have also been ridiculed by the opposition Liberal National Party, who described them as having “the fundamental flaw of trying to deny who we are as a people”.

“Australia is what it is today because of the foundations of our nation in the Judeo-Christian heritage that we inherited from Western civilisation”, education spokesman Christopher Pyne told the Australian Daily Telegraph.

Australia’s Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority insisted that the new terms were becoming increasingly common and were slowly supplanting ‘BC’ and ‘AD’ anyway.

I had a big debate with some of my friends yesterday about this, which ended in a 2v2 stalemate. While I'm all over secularism in education, I think that as a historical convention, I'm fine with people referring to 2011 as 2011 AD. I think that referring to it as "AD" (which, less face it, is rarely written down outside of a history book) has lost any sort of religious meaning and is now just a naming convention.

Doesn't that strike a parallel with the days of the week - Friday is named after the (Norse?) God Freya for example - should we change this to Fifthday to prevent upsetting people also? I find it a little bit 1984 to start worrying about the etymology of words where is may be religious in origin. That would be doubleplusungood in my opinion.

ShooterSF

I've used CE for a while now, I thought it was common usage. Oh and damn liberals fighting aga for religion?

kylith

I think th BP is a step too confusing, but otherwise I applaud the scheme.

Undergod

Counting from the supposed date of Jesus' birth, but calling it by another name? Triumph for secularism alright.

Zombrex

While I think using AD/BC is no less absurd than using Thursday (Thors day), equally I don't care using CE and BCE.

It is funny seeing religious people get their knickers in a twist over these things when they actually happen, since the most common argument before it happens is that this is not a big deal so why bother changing it. Of course when it gets changed anyway it becomes a HUGE f**king deal :P

Turtwig

I always use BCE and ACE. Not 100% sure why but "Before Christ" just doesn't sound precise. Nobody knows when exactly Christ was born. Christianity which is basically just another mythology has since become influenced heavily by other cultures and traditions. So I think it's fair to regard it is a common era.

With regard to the analogy of days of the week, I disagree. If we started counting hours on a vague description of some organism life cycle then hours would be inexact and messy. Likewise for 'Before Christ' it implies that Christ's birth was a precise fact when in fact we don't even know the month He was born. I don't like the idea of counting my years on that vague description of something being a fact that clearly isn't. Calling it "Common Era" acknowledges that it is a commonly held belief that Christ was born at this time but it states rather nicely that it's just a commonality between people's beliefs nothing more.:)

Galvasean

IMHO BC/AD are OK TBH.

kylith

Undergod wrote: »

Counting from the supposed date of Jesus' birth, but calling it by another name? Triumph for secularism alright.

Short of campaigning for the entire calendar to be reset, and I can only imagine the uproar that'd cause from all sides, there's nothing can be done about that.

Newaglish

Malty_T wrote: »

With regard to the analogy of days of the week, I disagree. If we started counting hours on a vague description of some organism life cycle then hours would be inexact and messy. Likewise for 'Before Christ' it implies that Christ's birth was a precise fact when in fact we don't even know the month He was born. I don't like the idea of counting my years on that vague description of something being a fact that clearly isn't. Calling it "Common Era" acknowledges that it is a commonly held belief that Christ was born at this time but it states rather nicely that it's just a commonality between people's beliefs nothing more.:)

Sorry I don't quite follow your point. I wasn't suggesting changing the measurement of time or the names of hours (which don't have names). My point was that plenty of words and names in the modern day are derived from religious references. Days of the week (my example) come mainly from Norse mythology as far as I'm aware. If we're going to count dates from a specific point in time, I find it quite jarring to just delete the reference to why that point was chosen. If you're going to stick with the same starting point, it should reflect how that was arrived at.

In a similar vein - should "St. Stephen's Green" be changed to Dublin Square? The word "wine" is derived through Greek from the Goddess Dionysus - should that be changed to Fermented Grape Juice? Should we do away with the word "Hello" which was recently criticsed by some fundies in the US because in has "Hell" in it - do you agree we should remove the religious reference there too?

SugarHigh

Pointless. It's just making a stance for the sake of making a stance.

Turtwig

Newaglish wrote: »

Sorry I don't quite follow your point.

No worries. A day of the week is an extremely complicated thing, whether we call them Friday, Monday or first day I couldn't really care less. What I care about though is how we define an actual day, which on the whole is a rather complicated definition. Likewise, when you write a date as XXX BC. you are essentially saying "x years before Christ was born." I don't like such statements not because I'm not a Christian but more so to do with the fact that nobody has a clue when Christ was actually born. Yes, it's pernickety pedantic but units of measure need to be so. Before common era acknowledges that it's just a commonly held assumption that Christ was born at this particular time in Christmas in this particular year and we start counting from there. We all know when the era is believed to begin and that's enough. I just find it a little deceptive saying "2011 years in the year of our Lord." as cueball would say "WITHOUT ANY ERROR BARS!!?".

As for St Stephen's Green call it ARW 357 for all I care. Just don't go changing the measure of a metre on the Green for no good reason.

Undergod

kylith wrote: »

Short of campaigning for the entire calendar to be reset, and I can only imagine the uproar that'd cause from all sides, there's nothing can be done about that.

That was kinda my point; we're still counting from the supposed birth of Jesus, so making this change for secular reasons is a bit pointless.

However, Malty's point about it not being a precise measure, because we don't know Jesus' actual birthdate, is an interesting one, and it would make a lot more sense to me if it was for that reason.

Dades

Undergod wrote: »

That was kinda my point; we're still counting from the supposed birth of Jesus, so making this change for secular reasons is a bit pointless.

Agreed. Bit of a pointless move, imo.

kylith

Undergod wrote: »

That was kinda my point; we're still counting from the supposed birth of Jesus, so making this change for secular reasons is a bit pointless.

However, Malty's point about it not being a precise measure, because we don't know Jesus' actual birthdate, is an interesting one, and it would make a lot more sense to me if it was for that reason.

The supposed birth of Jesus is simply the point at which some people, from whom we are descended, decided to keep count and keep records from that point. I'd prefer if we went from AD to RE (recorded era) and from BC to BRE (before recorded era).

Lots of things happened 2000 years ago that we could take as the starting point of the Common Era: The Romans invaded britain, so we could go with Before Romans and After Romans. Native Americans started domesticating turkeys about 2000 years ago so we could go with Before Turkeys and After Turkeys. The Damascans figured out how to make very sharp swords around then too, so we could call it Before Really Sharp Swords and After Really Sharp Swords.

To say that we shouldn't bother changing BC and AD because some people decided to start counting from that arbitrary point is meaningless. The supposed birth of Jesus is only one of many things that happened 2000 years ago. We can pick any one of the things that happened then that we want and today's date would be just the same.

Beruthiel

kylith wrote: »

Before Turkeys and After Turkeys.

I'm picking this one!

kylith

Beruthiel wrote: »

I'm picking this one!

I like the really sharp swords one, simply because now would be 2011ARSS (arse)

Turtwig

I wish we based it on some astronomical event that occurred 2011 years ago. Preferably an extraordinarily pretty one.

magicbastarder

pointless without renumbering the years too. which i'm certainly not advocating.

though if there was to be a secular 'year zero', what could be chosen?

Turtwig

magicbastarder wrote: »

pointless without renumbering the years too. which i'm certainly not advocating.

though if there was to be a secular 'year zero', what could be chosen?

In the current system there is actually no year zero. So should we really piss everyone off by declaring one? I suggest Democritus's birth or something.

kylith

Malty_T wrote: »

I wish we based it on some astronomical event that occurred 2011 years ago. Preferably an extraordinarily pretty one.

How about this:
http://www.space.com/2937-astronomers-find-supernova-spotted-2-000-years.html

BSN and ASN will do me fine.

Turtwig

kylith wrote: »

How about this:
http://www.space.com/2937-astronomers-find-supernova-spotted-2-000-years.html

BSN and ASN will do me fine.

It's perfect : the death of a star leads to the creation of elements necessary for life.:D

magicbastarder

kylith wrote: »

How about this:
http://www.space.com/2937-astronomers-find-supernova-spotted-2-000-years.html

i haven't read it, but arthur c. clarke has a short story about an expedition to a dead civilisation on a burned out planet beside a supernova, and a catholic priest on the expedition realises that the supernova (and mass extinction) was what the three wise men saw...

kylith

magicbastarder wrote: »

i haven't read it, but arthur c. clarke has a short story about an expedition to a dead civilisation on a burned out planet beside a supernova, and a catholic priest on the expedition realises that the supernova (and mass extinction) was what the three wise men saw...

Interesting. I remember that at the time Comet Hale-Bopp was cited as a possible explanation for the light the magii saw.

mikhail

BCE and ACE are standard in scientific literature. As such, they're an established standard, and if Australia wants to use it in their schools, more power to them. On the other hand, I've never heard of BP and AP. If they've just made that up, it seems remarkably pointless.

Turtwig

kylith wrote: »

Interesting. I remember that at the time Comet Hale-Bopp was cited as a possible explanation for the light the magii saw.

I believe there is a very good indication that the bright light was actually the planet Jupiter.

magicbastarder

magicbastarder wrote: »

i haven't read it, but arthur c. clarke has a short story about an expedition to a dead civilisation on a burned out planet beside a supernova, and a catholic priest on the expedition realises that the supernova (and mass extinction) was what the three wise men saw...

this is it (as in, this is the wikipedia entry for it):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_%28short_story%29

kylith

Malty_T wrote: »

I believe there is a very good indication that the bright light was actually the planet Jupiter.

What it was, right, is some marsh gas, in conjunction with the planet Venus, reflected through a weather balloon tent.

number10a

As a staunch secularist I love to see steps taken to have less and less religion in schools. But what is the point of this?? What's an Australian teacher going to say when a child asks what happened 2,011 years ago to start the calendar?

Say that God created the world then just to shut them up.

Explain the whole religion vs. secularism thing to the ten-year old and have it go in one ear and out the other.

Tell them ignore it and just accept it, thus contributing to the formation of yet another unquestioning individual.

Or go with the easiest and truthful option of telling them that Jesus was born then. This then makes this step towards secularism completely pointless as the child still comes away thinking that Jesus is the centrepoint of all human history because something so important as our calendar was changed just for him.

Short of restarting the calendar again, this is just one thing that unfortunately cannot ever have religion taken out of it.

Mr. Boo

Surely there are other arbitrary conventions that are explained away as simply that?

im invisible

Dont get me started on SEPTEMber, OCTOber, NOVEMber and DECEMber...

kylith

im invisible wrote: »

Dont get me started on SEPTEMber, OCTOber, NOVEMber and DECEMber...

Do you have a prolem with numbers in general, or is it just that those ones are wrong?