Children Textbook Recall: ‘Bloody satanist symbol’ found in Primary 2A Chinese textbook, Publisher to recall all distributed copies

After a Redditor drew attention to a “bloody satanist symbol” they had found in a Primary 2A Chinese textbook, the text’s publisher, Marlinsons, said it would pull all the copies of the book that had been distributed.

Redditor Themoltenbeacon posted several photos of a bloody pentagram within the textbook on r/Singapore on Thursday (Apr 28), captioning it with “Didn’t know Satanist symbols were part of learning Chinese for primary school students.”

Since then, Marlinsons issued an apology.

The publisher told Coconuts Singapore that it was unaware of the symbolism behind the pentagram, which appears to have been used to teach shapes.

Marlinsons added that it will reissue the book, which is used by 8-year-olds, without the bloody pentagram, telling Coconuts, “We are not aware that this is a satanist symbol and have used it in our books carelessly.

We totally agree that our choice of picture is highly inappropriate and are appalled by this grave mistake.”

Marlinsons also said, “We pledge to exercise greater care and improve our quality inspection system to prevent such mistakes from being made in the future.”

Commenters on Themoltenbeacon’s Reddit post, however, pretty much made light of the matter.

Others commented, in surprise, about “higher Chinese” in the lower Primary levels.

/TISG

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