Outrage as Department of Education Quotes Notorious Chinese Leader Mao Zedong on its Website

Originally posted by Cabin
To be honest, it does not matter who he was.

The point behind the words matters, not the person who said it.

Many most hated men in history have been true geniuses and excellent speakers. We may argue on the matter, but you can not get to the top without any mind and afterall, there is a slim line between a genius and a lunatic.

Most of their quotes are cruel, although some of them are simply brilliant and nothing evil, like the Mao
Zedong quote.

Lenin, who also was a mass murderer, once said : "Learn, learn, learn"

Is it bad to show kids such quote, simply because it was said by someone so terrible, even though it is a nice quote?

edit on 25-3-2013 by Cabin because: (no reason given)

I'm usually pretty lenient about this stuff, but to quote someone usually suggests that we should care about what that person said and/or did. That their contribution to history deems them quotable. People such as this are not worthy of positive exposure.

Hey guys... before you get all crazy... do a search on "qotd server". It's an old school internet server that provides quotes from a canned list. Somebody probably thought it would be cool to have some inspirational quotes on the site and was using whatever quote list it defaulted to. I doubt someone is creating a new quote each morning for the site.

The "learning" Mao was talking about was the absolute indoctrination into his "system".

Not about language, math or science.

You had better toe the line or you are dead. Much like that fat boy dictator that thinks he knows what is best for North Korea.

Looks like a lot of people like murderous jerks

reply to post by grey580
Yeah, you can also go out and buy some t-shirts to show your love!








Sorry to say, but, people are idiots!

Since when does quoting someone put them as an inspiration?

I was under the impression that people were capable of learning about someone and getting know a figure of history before labeling them as an "inspiration" and following their lead.

According to some people, kids upon seeing a Mao quote will all of a sudden follow his lead and want to be just like him, unbeknownst of his actions. But how exactly would they emulate him and follow in his stead if they don't first research on their own to know who Mao was and what he did?

I've seen many quotes by "bad" people in my time, and some of them are inspirational. Just because they were bad does not make it any less so. I've also seen some down right nasty and evil quotes by what many would consider to be "good" figures of history. Do those quotes discount or change their effect on time in any way?

No.

In short, people are taking this too harshly. Quoting someone does not mean you are insinuating them to be good or that you should follow. Understandably, kids are impressionable and perhaps something like this should come with some sort of back story and information for them to learn. Perhaps a link saying "to learn more about Mao Zedong, click here" so that they can get the full story. Other than that, I see no flaw here. You can't change what was said in the past, regardless of who it was said by.

Originally posted by Unity_99
Yes well, we don't want our children learning educational and inspirational quotes from dictators and mass murders. Period.

Yet you have no problem with your kids learning about Columbus who was a mass murderer and a slave owner ?!

I'm sure he ate apples to, so don't let your children....
history is history and for some strange reason that's where quotes come from.

reply to post by Mobidinc


Couldn't agree more, yes he caused millions of people's death they are not saying hey go out and kill people they are quoting something he said. Maybe they just shouldn't teach kids about history!