Racist Colour Code Mnemonic Get Teacher The Sack

[Sionyn]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360623/Racist-rape-rhyme-teacher-James-Hersey-guilty-misconduct-Birmingham.html

[rolycat]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360623/Racist-rape-rhyme-teacher-James-Hersey-guilty-misconduct-Birmingham.html

That article is over a year old, and the same incident is referenced in a less inflammatory BBC article linked from the Wikipedia entry on resistor colour codes. The Wikipedia entry lists a number of mnemonics, both offensive and inoffensive.

However, it doesn't mention the version I learned as a kid, which was politically incorrect (and thus memorable) without being sexual or racist:

Bad Beer Rots Our Young Guts But Vodka Goes Well.

Anyone else remember that one?

[tom66]

I doubt the term was intended deliberately as a racist term, even though it is. My GCSE Electronics teacher used the decidedly less racist "Richard of York gave battle vanely"; of course, it omits the first two and last two words, and vanely isn't an actual word (just changed from in vain to vanely because there's no indigo in component colour codes.) But it was good enough for me to remember the "main sequence" as it were. GCSE Electronics in this country is a good introduction to electronics and more teachers are sorely needed.  Most schools don't do it. I was lucky to be near one that offered it.

I liked my electronics teacher (Mr. Goldthorpe); he had good electronics knowledge (good enough for GCSE), but the combination of actually building something real on a soldered prototype board, and testing and debugging it was fantastic experience, and he taught me a lot. I got an A. Not A*, probably because I didn't focus enough on my documentation.

A-Level electronics is a joke - everything on prototype board, for example. Nothing soldered. In the induction in my first week in Uni, only a couple of kids had ever soldered in their life, and because they did, their project boards worked (proper PCBs.)  I had a fantastic teacher - Dr. Rutherford - but the syllabus really let him down. We don't discuss bipolar transistors any more for example, because apparently they aren't used enough in digital circuits (and about half the course is on digital circuits.)

The teacher should have been disciplined, and told not to say it again, especially not around students. I think firing is too harsh.

[rolycat]

I'm not convinced he was fired - the BBC article only mentions a reprimand:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-12584669

The Daily Mail would not be my first choice for accurate and unbiased reporting.

[N2IXK]

I never heard the racially-tinged version until later on, but I learned a somewhat similar version as a kid:

Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls,  But Violet Gives Willingly--Get Some Now!

Still has one of the words as the actual color (Violet rather than Black), and adds the colors for the 4th (tolerance) band, Gold (5%), Silver (10%), and None (20%). Also politically incorrect in this day and age...

[icon]

My dad taught me "Bye, Bye Rosie, Off You Go, Birmingham Via Great Western". Not offensive, never forgotten.

John

[EEVblog]

What's all this Violet rubbish? 
Purple thank you very much 

Dave.

[ejeffrey]

What's all this Violet rubbish? 
Purple thank you very much 

Purple is a different color than violet!

[rolycat]

What's all this Violet rubbish? 
Purple thank you very much 

Dave.

Not if you are considering spectral colours, which colour codes are supposed to represent. To quote Wikipedia, which as we know has now supplanted the Hitch-Hiker's Guide as  the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom in the galaxy:

Violet is a spectral colour of a shorter wavelength than blue, while purple is a combination of red and blue or violet light.

[entereev]

I learned a similar racially offensive mnemonic, but this one came from one of the students and it caught on. How do you memorize the OSI model (networking)? Here's how: OSI network layer model
1.Application layer > Alle
2.Protocol layer > Paki's
3.Session layer > Stinken
4.Transport layer > Toch
5.Network layer > Naar
6.Datalink layer > ?
7.Physical layer > Poep

Dutch to english translation: Every Paki's stinks like ? feces. 

[Bored@Work]

I learned a similar racially offensive mnemonic, but this one came from one of the students and it caught on. How do you memorize the OSI model (networking)? Here's how: OSI network layer model

Please Do Not Throw Sausage Pizza Away.

[bullet308]

I think I will just keep the little color chart posted above my bench.

And, really, not smart on the teachers part. Going racist is NEVER a good option. Even in jest, even for a good cause. It WILL come back and bite you.

[david77]

I find this an incredibly usefull tool:

[poptones]

You'd have to be pretty stupid to teach that as a teacher in a classroom. I picked it up "on the street" as "bad boys." It's funny, I'm 50 years old and never thought about the "black" part until I read this article. When I clicked to it I thought I knew what it would be but I was wondering "what's the racist part?"

[TerminalJack505]

This is the same mnemonic I learned in my high school electronics class in the 80s.  I don't think I learned it from the teacher, though, but another student. 

Back in those days I don't think anyone would have batted an eye if the instructor happened to use the mnemonic.  The students would just have a bit of a chuckle and that would be the end of it.

[G7PSK]

I learnt it the easy way, none of the silly rhymes, Just write it out and reapeat it a few times until learnt by heart. If you can remember the first colour the rest follows. Black = 0 or zero light reflection.

[Sionyn]

it cropped up today when i met a friend whilst shopping in tesco he asked what i was upto one thing and another and he mentioned the colour code thing that was back in 2002 in secondary school.

[steve30]

I never knew they had mnemonics for this. If I can't remember it, I get one of my many colour code charts out.

In Physics they did try to teach us something to do with a bloke call Richard for the colours of the rainbow but never saw the point when I can just remember the much simpler mnemonic of roygbiv.

[AndyC_772]

A-Level electronics is a joke - everything on prototype board, for example. Nothing soldered.

I did my A-level electronics project on breadboards. It was a sound effects processor with a 6502 CPU, separate RAM and EEPROM, display, ADC, DAC and audio circuits... huge, stupidly over-ambitious, and worked like a charm. Taught me quite a bit about power distribution, interference and decoupling too, which I probably wouldn't have learned if the whole thing had been done on a PCB.

[GeoffS]

Certainly the same racist mnemonic I learned from my RAAF instructor in the early 70s.
At the time, aged 17, I didn't think much about it being racist.

[Galenbo]

Liking most of the races, and making fun of all of them, is that also called "being a racist"

Mostly the workless/ educationless/ public employees are complaining.
The ones payed by the government who steals my money, are searching things to do to occupy their time...

.

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--Regarding racism I found this interesting quote on the DNC website:

http://www.democrats.org/about/our_history

"For more than 200 years, our party has led the fight for civil rights"

--I guess Slavery,  The Civil War, Lincoln, The KKK, Jim Crow, and the fact that more Republicans than Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was fillibustered by some Democrats, must have slipped their minds.

“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
H.L. Mencken 1880 - 1956

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[Dawn]

I'm aware of the racist version. First time I heard it was from a guy that attended a residence school to get his commercial radio ticket back in '69. Prior to that, the one that I learned and the standard in US texts was: Better Be Right Or Your Great Big Venture Goes West. I forget the one that was taught in military training, but equally inoffensive.