It appears that Australia are going to remove the BC and AD date terms from school history books. Instead they will now use BCE and CE; before common era and common era.
Does this mean that there is historical doubt over the birth of Jesus Christ?
Or is it that the sheer mention if Christianity in schools is too dangerous an issue?
Has the world gone mad?
I know I speak as a Christian, but seriously, even Mike believes Jesus Christ walked the earth and surely it's an appropriate point in time as any. Indeed the cut off for BCE and CE IS Jesus' birth. This seems like fear speaking to me, a fear over faith.
Please Australia, let's concentrate on big issues in education, like historical knowledge if world faiths.
Emma, BC and AD are a Christian way of counting the years. Jews use a different way, counting from a supposed date of creation. Muslims use yet another counting from the date of the Hijra.
ReplyDeleteThe terms CE and BCE are a way of trying to find a neutral way of designating they years, based on what is called the Common Era. But in fact it still uses the Christian calendar because it counts from the year 0, which is the same as 0 BC/AD. So why make a fuss ( especially since those who first brought in the system got things wrong, and Jesus was probably born in 4 BC!)
All academic text books tend to use CE & BCE these days. Australia is simply bringing school text books in line with that. I think you will find a lot of school text books in the UK already do so too.