Common Era?
Posted by Moonage on 15 Jun 2006 | Tagged as: Political Correctness
Here’s the headline:
B.C.E./C.E. decision overturned
Board with 6 new members votes to keep just B.C./A.D.
Now, what happened was the Kentucky Board of Education decided a while back to ditch B.C. and A.D. and go with B.C.E. and C.E. Now, for those unaware, B.C. stands for "Before Christ", A.D. means "Anno Domini", Latin for "the year of the Lord". The Board decided to go with "Before Common Era" and "Common Era". They cite the fact that some college exams MIGHT ask about that since SOME people have decided to use it. I got a whole bunch of issues with this.
First of all, as noted in the article, someone is just creating a problem to meet the issue. I’ve been around a long time. I read science, religion, sports, space, music, and all kinds of issue stuff and I have NEVER seen CE or BCE. Mainly I would assume, because no one who writes a whole lot had ever heard of it either. Just because it’s on some exam doesn’t mean these kids should be illiterate to what the rest of the world already knows. That makes no sense to me at all. Used in the context of education, that’s just dumb.
Second, what is "common" today that was "common" to the year 1? Did they have the internet? Did they drive cars? Did they debate issues about the USA? What did they think about Man landing on the Moon or spending months in space? Did their kids listen to horrible music downloaded to their Ipod? There is nothing "common" today that was "common" in the year 1. The only thing the year 1 signifies is it is the first year after Jesus was born. That’s the only thing that’s "common" with the modern calendar. So, when a kid asks why are considered "common" with civilization 2,000 years ago, the answer will be exactly the same as the same kid asking "what does AD or BC mean". It means we signified the start of our modern calendar with an event. In 5,000 years, will that still be CE or something more common at that point? Just because that event has religious connotations doesn’t demean the logic. It’s a point in time, and that’s all a calendar denotes. In the context of education, teaching something so obviously flawed is just dumb.
Third, this is just another stupid attack on history. Folks, this stuff IS Big Brother. Don’t let them fool you. Re-writing history is what Orwell was all about. Now, some people are flat out uncomfortable with recognizing the impact religion has had on mankind. That impact was as profound 2,000 years ago as it is now. What they are missing is that taking religious references out of our daily lives will not resolve the issues that religion carries with it. Referring to the current year as 2006 AD or 2006 CE makes absolutely no impact whatsoever on my views of religion, or anyone else’s I would imagine. To most people, 2006 AD only means 2006 AD, most people don’t take the time to note that it actually means "2006 in the year of the Lord". So, re-writing history so that kids never knew that the modern calendar was developed by religious scholars serves no purpose other than to remove the fact that the modern calendar was developed by the church. That’s all it does. That’s Big Brother. Whether they like it or not, religion has a HUGE impact on our calendar, removing their reference doesn’t lessen that impact. It only makes future generations ignorant of that fact. And, that’s not what education should be about.
The original Board chose to use BCE and CE. When their terms expired, Governor Fletcher replaced six members. At their first meeting, the "common" Board voted 10-0 to go back to the hugely more "common" usage of BC and AD. There is some political criticism of Fletcher using politics to affect the Board. I think it’s a good thing. The previous six members, based on what I have pointed out with little research or knowledge of, were apparently kind of dumb. And, that’s a bad thing for education.
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