Apparently, at least according to BECTA (our esteemed government’s educational technology awards agency), a story based on ‘The Three Little Pigs’ is too controversial for an award, because it might offend muslims.

And so they said:

But judges at this year’s Bett Award said that they had “concerns about the Asian community and the use of pigs raises cultural issues”.

The thing is – the majority of the muslim community are intelligent, free-thinking and knowledgeable about other cultures – why would our government bodies assume otherwise? They are the same as the majority of the Christian community – both have fringe elements who tend to be extreme.

I also don’t believe muslims are taught to hate pigs, or not learn about them, or even rear them, they are only taught to not eat them. Is this not correct? To completely cut them out of life simply because they don’t eat them is ridiculous and for our government to believe this and reinforce it is tantamount to state extremism. The story certainly does not encourage muslims or anyone reading the book (aside from highly literate wolves, of course) to eat pigs, perhaps BECTA missed that point?

And humorously:

The judges criticised the stereotyping in the story of the unfortunate pigs: “Is it true that all builders are cowboys, builders get their work blown down, and builders are like pigs?”

Hmm that’s a pretty close call on those; 1) no, but there’s a lot who are, 2) no, but we don’t exactly get hurricanes and tornadoes here on a regular basis, 3) do you know any working builders?