Monday, January 25, 2010

Cow equals HE? Anyone ever seen a male cow? If one sees a herd of cattle, he can pick out the cows and the bulls by distinctive features

Since when are cows called He? Bulls are male. Cows are female. A group of such animals is referred to as cattle.

An otherwise wonderful children's show from the Fayetteville Public Library has one major fault. A cow is referred to as HE.
Some kids accept such an error as fact at 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or even older and consider it as fact for years afterward.
As a college English teacher I heard students, especially freshmen, argue over words they had mis-undertood for more than a decade. This might be an exception to the rule that government channel should never EDIT its productions.
Any farm child (not talking about someone who has grown up on a monoculture soybeen or cotton or rice farm but about people who grew up on an old-fashioned all-purpose farm) would know better. But kids growing up in Fayetteville today need facts. The city has rules against having either a cow or bull in a yard in the city. A rule that guarantees ignorance in significant areas for our children and creates the need for cute productions on TV and online to teach them about the life they ought to be experiencing on this precious land.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aub is this sort of like the show on discovery channel or pbs or something a few years ago that brought about the joke about how do you tell the girl penguins from the boy penguins before nesting season?
The answer is "by the muddy footprints on the backs of the girls!"

Anonymous said...

I hope you realize that in China that comment would be censored from Google. That borders on naughty. But it is funny and factual!