Political correctness in Poland

pawianThreads: 90 Posts: 5,415 Joined: May 30, 08 ♂	Jun 23, 11, 15:53 #1
Unfortunately, political correctness is also present in Poland. Case 1: 20 years ago, they changed the scale of grading pupils from 2-5 to 1-6 scale. For 8 years the grade 2 was called mierny - poor/weak. In 1999 they changed it into dopuszczający - passing/acceptable. I thought it was really funny. What else?

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Jun 23, 11, 16:38 #2

Lefties believe you can solve problems by changing their names, hence PC (poltiical correctnerss). The perpetually inebriated Jacek Kuroń used to be described as 'trzeźwy inaczej' (differently sober). You can call a fool 'differently intelligent' or 'intellectrually challenged', but that doesn't make him any brighter.
The PC gang is free to call anything however they want, the problem is they insist that everyone else use their hare-brained terminology.

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Jun 23, 11, 16:42 #3

Polonius3:

Lefties believe you can solve problems by changing their names, hence PC (poltiical correctnerss). The perpetually inebriated Jacek Kuroń used to be described as 'trzeźwy inaczej' (differently sober). You can call a fool 'differently intelligent' or 'intellectrually challenged', but that doesn't make him any brighter.
The PC gang is free to call anything however they want, the problem is they insist that everyone else use their hare-brained terminology.

However, there are also advantages of PC. Instead of saying Cygan ( gypsy), people are advised to say Roma which still sounds neutral, while cygan is highly derogative and combined with worst connotations of a thief, cheater and liar.

Polonius3Threads: 1,005 Posts: 4,835 Joined: Apr 11, 08 ♂	Jun 23, 11, 17:09 #4
Who is to pontificate what is and what is not pejorative? I for one do not regard Cygan as pejorative. Are we to change the title of the Strauss operetta to 'Roma Baron'?

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Edited by: Llamatic Jun 23, 11, 17:40 #5

pawian:

they changed the scale of grading pupils

Polonius3:

the problem is they insist that everyone else use their hare-brained terminology.

The problem with PC is it starts with silly word games but leads to very real policy shifts which create further problems. In this case, for their not wanting to hurt school children's feelings, they are dumbing-down the education process. But the kids will come out feeling better about their less educated selves. :s

Misguided, feel-good Liberalism always, always, always leads to harmful unforeseen consequences worse than the problem they were trying to address.

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