A deputy sheriff subsequently attempted to search the family home, but the father stopped him. The deputy returned with a 4-page questionnaire full of obtrusive questions about mental health and how many guns they owned. The family were told that the boy wouldn’t be allowed to return to school unless they completed the form.
This reminded me of a story from last year (here) where a school in Nebraska asked a three-year old deaf boy to change the sign for his name because it required him holding his index fingers together in a gun-like gesture. Apparently he was violating the school’s “weapons policy”.
A three-year old.
We know all too well that over here in Yurp state school authorities consist of petty-minded, scaredy-cat, pantywaist, left-liberal wastes-of-space determined to churn out generations of bed-wetting, gender-neutral, limp-wristed pseudo-boys who burst into tears at the merest whiff of physical courage or competitive sports or harsh words or … well, any sign of burgeoning manliness, really. This even seems to have infected private schools. (I once got a call when my son was on a school trip abroad telling me he had been accused of bullying. I knew that was ridiculous. Turned out his crime consisted of telling a kid whose behaviour he found obnoxious that he really didn’t want to spend the third evening in a row in his company. Later, after the school group had returned, I made my own investigations and informed the old bag who had made the accusation that my son had nothing to apologise for. The charge was dropped but neither I nor my son ever received an apology – obviously. Working in schools evidently means never having to say you’re sorry.)
Okay, so our educational system has long been in the grip of visitors from Planet Liberal. But how did America – a country that used to be synonymous with get-up-and-go pep and vigour and frontier spirit and personal freedom and all of that sort of stuff – how did it allow its educational system to be taken over by a bunch of mean-minded, hand-wringing, socialistic wet blankets determined to socially engineer the testosterone out of all-American boyhood?
British and American parents desperately need to reclaim their respective educational systems from left-liberal wimps who seem absolutely determined to brainwash our sons into believing that wanting be a hero is wrong, that there’s something about a three-year old holdng his index fingers together that’s sinister, and that honestly expressing your opinion of a jerk to their face – without any form of threat or bad language - is tantamount to bullying.
After all, testosterone can come in handy occasionally. For instance, if you want to build a business or defend a country – or educate kids - I wouldn’t bother calling on an education bureaucrat for the purpose.
(After posting this, I came across an excellent article on American Thinker by Selwyn Duke on this very issue. He wants parents to damn well fight back!:
...there are things we can and should do to counter the schools' war on guns and tradition. First, parents should organize, pick up their children from an offending school with toy guns in hand, and play a visible shoot-'em-up game on school grounds. I'm serious. It's called desensitization. Moreover, it tells the children in the strongest way possible that there is nothing wrong with toy-gun play. And if the schools are trying to condition your kids the wrong way, why not condition them the right way?
Then there is the stick. The reason insanity keeps occurring at schools and elsewhere is that leftists are never held accountable. But here we must take a leaf out of their book. When someone transgresses against their politically correct code...an apology won't suffice. The left wants the person destroyed.Amen to that!
So follow suit. Don't be like a certain popular cable-news host who is wont to say "I don't want to see the ____ (the tyrant du jour) lose his job." Make sure a school official who commits leftist abuse upon a child never works again. Go for the jugular, for the kill shot; give no quarter. Go Roman. It's only when thousands of the thought police's decaying corpses of careers are lining the Apian Way that those in darkness will see the light. The Culture War is just that -- a war. And if you want to turn it around, this must be your mindset -- every day, every way, every school, at every level.
An excellent post. Echoes of Philip Roths's "The Human Stain" and "spooks". There are a whole bunch of people out there desperate to be affronted.
ReplyDeleteIn order to make life easier why doesn't someone write up "the politically correct code" and make it law? Also, why is there not an investigation into the harmful effect of the feminisation of our education and political systems? The left-wing veers towards mumbo-jumbo and good intentions and away from action.
Principles vs Pragmatism, Idealpolitik vs Realpolitik and the rest of it so it will never happen.
As a small step, why doesn't the Tory Party get rid of that pudgy-faced stupid bitch Maria Miller and get Teresa May a decent "friseur". French female politicians are always delightfully groomed whereas ours always look like they are on day-release from Holloway.
A coach-load of militant feminist harpies is heading for Scotland as I write this, SDG.
ReplyDeleteI've been meaning to write about the feminisation of the educational system for some time. The mother of one of our son's friends once described it as resulting in an obsession with "syndromes" that explained away boys' behavioural problems - ADHD, for instance, or dyslexia or depression or SAD or gayness or whatever. Any teenage boy who stepped out of line without a ready-made syndrome, disorder or minority sexual preference (i.e. a "victimhood" pass) to excuse fairly classic teenage boy behaviour was treated as plain evil. What happens to the syndrome kids when they have to function in the real world where excuses are harder to come by is anybody's guess.
Or the feminisation of Radio4. To-day I listened to "Women's Hour". It featured one Kanya King MBE talking about her life - single mother at 16, dirt floors, poor sanitation, you name it. She founded something called the Moby Awards [which I assume is some form of Herman Melville Appreciation Society?]. Her expression for minority groups was "People of Protected Characteristics" and this included all women. Even the impeccably correct Jane Garvey had a little snort at that one.
ReplyDeleteI'm usually reaching the end of my leisurely perusal of the Telegraph when Women's Hour scomes on. I often find myself still sitting there ten minutes later, half-way through an interesting article about spin-bowling or whatever, so appalled at the tide of deranged drivel washing out of the radio that I find myself unable to move. The other morning there was some cat-fight amongst feminists, with one "radical" berating the mainstream feminist movement for not embracing (metaphorically, one presumes) trans-gender "women". Part of our licence fee is being spent on providing a platform for goofball Wimmin so obsessed with fighting for their imaginary cause that they don't seem to realise that all the barriers to their "advancement" were removed years ago. Ridiculous programme that should have been killed off 20 years ago.
DeleteI think the Moby Awards are given to Dicks.
I shall be using the phrase "People of Protected Characteristics" at every opportunity from now on - at least, until someone tries to kill me.
Protected characteristics? Is that the same sort of thing as the planning laws that prevent people from altering Grade1 listed buildings? Are PPCs to be forbidden from having cosmetic surgery? It might be necessary as a means of preserving their integrity.
DeleteI hope the expression does catch on. It would save a lot of time and avoid unnecessary offence just to be able to use one catch-all expression when talking about minority groups, given the frequency with which the acceptable terminology changes.