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Dinosaur fate
“The end of the print set is something we’ve foreseen for some time,” said Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “It’s the latest step in our evolution from the print publisher we were to the creator of digital learning products we are today.” The online version offers some free services and charges an annual fee for enhanced content and has an audience of 100 million people worldwide. “The print edition became more difficult to maintain and wasn’t the best physical element to deliver the quality of our database and the quality of our editorial,” explained Cauz. The first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was published and printed in Edinburgh in 1768. In 1901, it became a U.S. company.
Dinosaur ban
Dinosaurs, birthdays, Halloween, politics and poverty could soon disappear from tests issued by the New York City Department of Education, reported the New York Post, March 30, 2012. Why? Such topics could “evoke unpleasant emotions in the students.” For example, “dinosaurs refer to evolution, which might upset fundamentalists; birthdays aren’t celebrated by Jehovah’s Witnesses; and Halloween suggests paganism.” Even the topic of dancing is taboo, but an exception has been made for ballet. “Wealth” is excluded because the very mention of the word could make some students jealous. The forbidden topics were given to companies bidding to overhaul English, math, science and social studies tests. The tests are administered several times a year to measure student progress. The city’s education officials say such exclusions are normal procedure. Deanna Kuhn, a professor at Columbia University Teachers College, disagrees with the city’s decision. “If the goal is to assess higher-order thinking skills, controversial topics, for example—ones that are the subject of political debate—are exactly what students should be reasoning about.”
