Plan B Forum

CHRISTIANS are outraged that the birth of Jesus Christ will no longer be cited when recording dates under the new national history curriculum.

High school students will not use the terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) when referencing dates.

Although history dates won't change, with textbooks still using the birth of Christ as the change point, they will use the neutral terms BCE (Before Common Era), BP (Before Present) and CE (Common Era).

Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen said yesterday that removing BC and AD from the curriculum was an "intellectually absurd attempt to write Christ out of human history".


"It is absurd because the coming of Christ remains the centre point of dating and because the phrase 'common era' is meaningless and misleading," he told The Daily Telegraph...It was akin to calling Christmas the festive season, he said.

A spokesman for the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, responsible for developing the national curriculum from kindergarten to Year 12, said BCE and CE were to be introduced because this was an increasingly common standard for the representation of dates.

The little known term BP (Before Present) will be used when dealing with "very ancient history and archaeology, and allows for the teaching of more sophisticated understandings of representations of time".

In anticipation of the curriculum change, textbooks for student teachers such as Teaching And Learning In Aboriginal Education, by Neil Harrison, were already using the term BP.

Federal Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne said: "Australia is what it is today because of the foundations of our nation in the Judeo-Christian heritage that we inherited from Western civilisation.

"Kowtowing to political correctness by the embarrassing removal of AD and BC in our national curriculum is of a piece with the fundamental flaw of trying to deny who we are as a people."

The curriculum was to have been introduced next year but has been delayed.

HISTORY OF CE AND BE

The Common Era was originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth century.
It appeared in English as early 1708 and its use can traced back to the Latin term vulgaris aerae and the English Vulgar Era.
Use of the CE abbreviation was introduced by Jewish academics in the mid-19th century.
The terms CE and BCE became popular in academic and scientific publications in the late 20th century. It was used by publishers to emphasise secularism or sensitivity to non-Christians.
The terms still use the Gregorian calendar, and the year-numbering system associated with it.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national/for-chr ... z1Wl1r2ZMH

"It is absurd because the coming of Christ remains the centre point of dating and because the phrase 'common era' is meaningless and misleading," he told The Daily Telegraph

Crackpot wrote:Like it or not it is part of our collective religious history]

if it is so important that we remove the one we should remove them all. Which nixes all of the days of the week and about half of the months.

they will use the neutral terms BCE (Before Common Era), BP (Before Present) and CE (Common Era).

"very ancient history and archaeology, and allows for the teaching of more sophisticated understandings of representations of time".

Crackpot wrote:It is a meaningless change spurred for no other reason to remove an Christian reference from our dates.

Like it or not it is part of our collective religious history .

Scooter wrote:

Crackpot wrote:Like it or not it is part of our collective religious history]

That's just it though, it's not part of our collective religious history. It was never part of the history of huge parts of Asia and Africa, for example, who are now consigned to using the same dating system out of need for consistency.

if it is so important that we remove the one we should remove them all. Which nixes all of the days of the week and about half of the months.

Different cultures have different names for the days of the week and the months of the year based on their own history. No one ever expected the Japanese to rename their months based on the names of Roman gods and emperors. But if we do expect them to adopt a uniform dating system, it's inappropriate that they be expected to name it after a god who didn't choose Tokyo harbour for his walking on water trick.

Sean wrote:I think CP, that there is a slight difference between naming a day (or a month) after a deity and splitting up the entire history of our planet into events that took place either before or after the birth of a single deity.

Scooter wrote:

Crackpot wrote:Like it or not it is part of our collective religious history]

That's just it though, it's not part of our collective religious history. It was never part of the history of huge parts of Asia and Africa, for example...

loCAtek wrote:Neither is the English language part of their collective history, but it's what the global community has agreed to adopt as a standard.

A lingua franca (or working language, bridge language, vehicular language) is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.[1]

...

Examples of lingua francas are numerous, and exist on every continent. The most obvious example today is English, which is the current lingua franca of international business, science, technology, and aviation. There are many other lingua francas centralized on particular regions, such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish.

Wiki

loCAtek wrote:I understand your confusion, but lingua franca does not pertain specifically to the French language;

loCAtek wrote:Neither is the English language part of their collective history, but it's what the global community has agreed to adopt as a standard.