Don't Delete Our Disturbing Past: Label it instead!
Oxford University's Oriel College just managed to stave off a campaign to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes. He may have done a lot for scholarship at Oxford with his endowments, but his racist views and atrocious racist activities in South Africa offend many students. You can read the story here .
The pulling down of statues is something that we humans tend to do when times change.
Around the world, we have pulled down many statues of Lenin. .
ISIS are currently doing the same with ancient statues that offend them .
Might I suggest a more enlightened educational approach. Why not simply label these "offensive" memorials - exactly as curators veraciously label exhibits in a museum?
Charles Darwin is newly 100 per cent proven to have lied in order to create a number of myths that enabled him to get away with plagiarizing Patrick Matthew's prior published and cited hypothesis of macroevolution by natural selection and convince us all that no one read Matthew's ideas before he replicated them without citing Matthew. Read the facts here.
As a spokesperson for Oriel College at Oxford University said of the decision to remove a plaque that celebrated Rhodes, but to keep his statue:
"...by adding context, “we can help draw attention to this history, do justice to the complexity of the debate, and be true to our educational mission”
What a marvellous sentiment. Might I propose it is seriously adopted.
In the interests of veracity - let us get those labels up.
I will even pay all the costs for the one for Darwin. Hell, I'll make it myself and cast it in bronze!
Feel free to use the infomatic below in any way you see fit
Feel free to use the infomatic below in any way you see fit
