China Punishes 27 People Over 'Tragically Ugly' Illustrations In Maths Textbook (theguardian.com) 81
Chinese authorities have punished 27 people over the publication of a maths textbook that went viral over its "tragically ugly" illustrations. The Guardian reports: A months-long investigation by a ministry of education working group found the books were "not beautiful," and some illustrations were "quite ugly" and did not "properly reflect the sunny image of China's children." The mathematics books were published by the People's Education Press almost 10 years ago, and were reportedly used in elementary schools across the country. But they went viral in May after a teacher published photos of the illustrations inside, including people with distorted faces and bulging pants, boys pictures grabbing girls' skirts and at least one child with an apparent leg tattoo.
Social media users were largely amused by the illustrations, but many also criticized them as bringing disrepute and "cultural annihilation" to China, speculating they were the deliberate work of western infiltrators in the education sector. Related hashtags were viewed billions of times, embarrassing the Communist party and education authorities who announced a review of all textbooks "to ensure that the textbooks adhere to the correct political direction and value orientation."
In a lengthy statement released on Monday, the education authorities said 27 individuals were found to have "neglected their duties and responsibilities" and were punished, including the president of the publishing house, who was given formal demerits, which can affect a party member's standing and future employment. The editor-in-chief and the head of the maths department editing office were also given demerits and dismissed from their roles. The statement said the illustrators and designers were "dealt with accordingly" but did not give details. They and their studios would no longer be engaged to work on textbook design or related work, it said. The highly critical statement found a litany of issues with the books, including critiquing the size, quantity and quality of illustrations, some of which had "scientific and normative problems."
Social media users were largely amused by the illustrations, but many also criticized them as bringing disrepute and "cultural annihilation" to China, speculating they were the deliberate work of western infiltrators in the education sector. Related hashtags were viewed billions of times, embarrassing the Communist party and education authorities who announced a review of all textbooks "to ensure that the textbooks adhere to the correct political direction and value orientation."
In a lengthy statement released on Monday, the education authorities said 27 individuals were found to have "neglected their duties and responsibilities" and were punished, including the president of the publishing house, who was given formal demerits, which can affect a party member's standing and future employment. The editor-in-chief and the head of the maths department editing office were also given demerits and dismissed from their roles. The statement said the illustrators and designers were "dealt with accordingly" but did not give details. They and their studios would no longer be engaged to work on textbook design or related work, it said. The highly critical statement found a litany of issues with the books, including critiquing the size, quantity and quality of illustrations, some of which had "scientific and normative problems."
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Like how Trump tried to cancel the election? Cancel culture has gone too far!
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They probably think you're a twit.
Re: Mobbing (Score:2)
Probably?
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Well I'm not a mind reader but you seem like a twit so I thought I'd throw that at there.
Re: Mobbing (Score:2)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
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That's what American TikTok is for.
Re: Mobbing (Score:2)
And generally you can try again later at some point. In this case it seems that the Chinese government has placed some kind of official and public permanent indicator against them. That more resembles a criminal conviction than a product that failed in the marketplace and basically just cost you money and time.
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Hmm you do have a point. Basically they invent the rules as they go along, and retroactively punish people for things that were considered acceptable at the time but are no longer acceptable just because somebody in the present day felt that they were offensive.
I can't believe those images were ever acceptable.
It took ten years to spot them though??? The real fault is in the people who approved them at the time.
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https://www.vanityfair.com/new... [vanityfair.com]
There are also people that was sent death threats to a reporter who just wrote about Melania's life. Not a criticism of her. Just things like where she came from, who she's related to, etc. when Trump was just a candidate for the primary.
Pretty one-sided there buddy. And this is coming from someone who wouldn't even have been born if his grandfather didn't li
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Just another absurd allegation from the left that someone else is going to do the horrible thing they are already doing.
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h [cnn.com]
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Maybe nobody picked up on the little details but I'm still surprised they passed it because all those kids/teachers are definitely occidental. They don't look Chinese at all.
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Many Asians don't portray themselves in artwork the way you would think.
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And how would you draw them to "look Chinese"?
They're cartoon characters - they don't look *anything* except pale-skinned, which is accurate enough.
Western artists tend to make a point of portraying Asians as slanty-eyed to exaggerate the differences in how their epicanthic folds affect the overall appearance of their eyes. But their eyes are still round, and to them that's completely normal, it's us who have cartoonishly wide-open "surprised" looking eyes.
In a cartoon where eyes are stylized to black dots
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You wanted the illustrator to put epicanthal folds on them? How weird.
Pretty funny (Score:1)
I have nothing to say about the politics of the situation, but I liked some of the images. Especially the kid with male pattern baldness. And I suspect the groping was too realistic for their taste, though I never saw boys mobbing girls like that when I was a kid--maybe because we were taught not do gender-based bullying.
More images here (linked in the article): https://www.whatsonweibo.com/f... [whatsonweibo.com]
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eh... most of them are bad. some of them are definitely deliberately provactive, others could just be accidently bad. Stuff like the flag being wrong, or the american outfits on a couple (its not just red/white/blue.. its full on stars and strips, which I can't think is pretty out of place... even on Americans.
This one though has me confused.
https://www.whatsonweibo.com/w... [whatsonweibo.com]
I can see what the complaint is with the boy on the left, but what is the issue with the girl on the right exactly?
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If you see a penis in that tie then you have problems.
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That is some pretty weird shit. Just imagine if that had been published in the US. It wouldn't be off Fox for weeks, the pedophile conspiracy now has books for grooming our kids in schools! There'd be an army of soccer moms and Christian moralists with flaming torches outside the publisher's HQ, and several shootings and possibly bombings.
Come to think of it, the authors are pretty lucky to only have the CCP to deal with.
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Tragically Ugly Republicans (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly like Republicans screaming that "woke" culture is a Satanic Plot to eliminate Christian America and replace white people with some sort of inferior humans.
Totalitarians all whistle the same tune no matter where they are from.
Re:Tragically Ugly Republicans (Score:5, Insightful)
wokeism isn't considered a problem in the UK despite desperate attempts by the Murdoch press to stir it up into a problem. Most people just aren't that bothered by the idea if not being racist and giving transgender people a fair shot are life. Also it seems that the population at large takes a pretty dim view of the right wing's attempt to push their views legally with a rather unusual spate of jury nullifications recently.
Maybe you need to spend less time on Twitter and less time listening to the bleating of the perpetually offended on fox news.
Re: Tragically Ugly Republicans (Score:2)
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Cancel culture: the expression of free speech combined with the free market.
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Why would profit seeking companies care about those 8% unless it materially affected their bottom line.
What you call "canceling" is a simple financial decision being made to maximize profits.
And how can those 8% have enough influence on the wider population that it can affect profits? Well by using their free speech to convince the wider population that they should care about whatever issues they are tweeting about.
Don't like it? Well nothing about either free speech or the free market compels it to always
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I don't know about that, at least one of the candidates for PM seems to be pushing culture war bullshit to appeal to her base. She will probably win too.
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That's true, she is. She needs to appeal to the tiny number of people who are stupid or narcissistic enough to be members of the Tory party. She's not trying to appeal to the voting public (if she was she'd have given up in favour of Sunak who's definitely considered to be the least bad of the pair).
Anyway she is trying to appeal to a self selecting bunch of loonies. Back when the pool was wider and they were trying to appeal to MPs who do represent constituents somewhat, they were much much more careful a
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wokeism isn't considered a problem in the UK despite desperate attempts by the Murdoch press to stir it up into a problem. Most people just aren't that bothered by the idea if not being racist and giving transgender people a fair shot are life. Also it seems that the population at large takes a pretty dim view of the right wing's attempt to push their views legally with a rather unusual spate of jury nullifications recently.
Maybe you need to spend less time on Twitter and less time listening to the bleating of the perpetually offended on fox news.
The Brits I listen to say the exact opposite of this. That wokeism is as destructive in the UK as it is in the US and Canada.
Take the recent case in the news of Noella McMaher. He has two trans parents, one of whom is a loud and vocal advocate for socially transitioning kids and later putting them on puberty blockers and then sterilizing them through surgery at 16. Out of pure chance, the boy began "expressing gender dysphoria" around age 2. Nevermind the astronomically low chances that such a condition tha
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Reduxx.info. Sounds super legit! So I'll Google. Huh... not sure what someone living in Chicago IL has to do with the UK. What on earth point are you trying to make? But on the subject of the UK who exactly are you talking to. Even the Minister for importing US cultural problems (Badenoch) is pretty reserved when addressing a general audience because she knows that shit doesn't have remotely the same traction.
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Re:Tragically Ugly Republicans (Score:4, Insightful)
What do Republicans have to do with any of this? If there were a school textbook with bizarre (and in some cases, sexualized) pictures of children in it, would you not object to that? I can see "edgy" teenagers having a laugh over this stuff, but honestly, the artwork is odd and tasteless. Even if you disagree with the way the CCP dealt with the issue (and yeah they probably dropped the hammer a little too hard there, to say the least), you should at least understand why people would want the textbooks changed.
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If there were a school textbook with bizarre (and in some cases, sexualized) pictures of children in it, would you not object to that?
That assumes the people you write this for have actually seen the pictures. Fat chance. This is slashdot, after all.
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True.
Formal demerits! (Score:1)
See how advanced the Chinese state is?
We don't have formal demerits here. Just downmods and the occasional shadowban. All quite informal.
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And none of it enforced by law. One person says you get a demerit, another person gives you praise, 4 other people say they don't give a fuck one way or the other, and the government with the fewest fucks given at all (but they're happy to hear your opinion, and your shopping list, and about your daily habits...).
There are people who think that spamfiltering and downmodding are censorship. You'd think stories like China's would get out, but these people don't believe any of it, and so their idea of CENSORSH
Same in US (Score:3)
Publish a textbook that show boys grabbing girls, your standing and future employment is going to be significantly affected.
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"Embarrass the Chinese political party on social media, your standing and future employment is going to be significantly affected."
FTFY. These textbooks have been used without issue for a decade and yet it's only suddenly an issue now. No one is being punished for pictures in a textbook.
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Kind of makes you wonder how they flew under the radar this long. I don't think the teacher who raised the issue in May is being punished, though. Is she?
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Wait until you hear about Dr Seuss
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Yeah, my first thought was how is this any different to the West? If you do a bad job, it affects your future job prospects. If you are a civil servant and/or your failure is quite public, like say it was published on thousands of copies of a book and gains attention on social media, this is what happens.
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Yeah, my first thought was how is this any different to the West? If you do a bad job, it affects your future job prospects. If you are a civil servant and/or your failure is quite public, like say it was published on thousands of copies of a book and gains attention on social media, this is what happens.
I'm wondering how bad do you think these grade school math book illustrations might be for what you said to be true. Like little dark skinned boys eating watermelons? Dark curly haired kid with a big crooked nose? This ain't that from the pictures I've seen.
It's like comparing somewhere to Saudi Arabia and saying "they also use capital punishment for crimes"
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That's China and the CCP for you (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes the art quality is poor. But they have been in print for 10 years and only recently gotten notice because social media is like that.
You would think that the CCP if they didn't like it could just have the problem fixed. Hire a few starving artists, update the books and print a new edition.
But no. We have to execute some people to make an example of what the penalties are for violating a law we just made up this minute. What a fricking hell hole.
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The law isn't new or made up. The law has always been: "You embarrass Winnie-the-pooh you're going to have a bad day".
This has fundamentally nothing to do with a textbook.
Weirdly sexual (Score:3)
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Nothing compared to.... (Score:1)
No govermental oversight? (Score:2)
What minister of education let this pass?
China has Karens too. (Score:2)
From the original report:
A teacher from a Qingpu district school in Shanghai posted several photos online and said the images failed to convey "the innocence, self-motivation and sunshine of Chinese children".
6 fingers (Score:1)
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haha that's kind of hilarious.
10 years ago? (Score:2)
I guess "ugly" has no statute of limitations....