A little while ago, an email was forwarded to me in which a guy, supposedly a new principal of a Canadian High School (but actually a conservative US talk show host) gave a speech to 'his' students. You may have had it forwarded to you. Turns out it was a fantasy piece of what he would say to high school students if he were a principal. Here is an excerpt:
"I will not authorize clubs that divide students based on any identities. This includes gender, race, language, religion, sexual orientation, or whatever else may become in vogue in a society divided by political correctness. Your clubs will be based on interests and passions -- not blood, ethnic, tribal, racial or other physically defined ties. Those clubs just cultivate narcissism – an unhealthy preoccupation with the self -- while the purpose of education is to get you to think beyond yourself. ....If the only extracurricular activities you can imagine being interested in, are those based on ethnic or racial or sexual identity, that means that little outside of yourself really interests you, and that means you don't belong in this school."
Excuse me while I go and have a cup of tea and scream into a pillow.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Ok, thanks that's better. First of all, society has been dividing us all based on gender, race, language, religion, sexual orientation etc for a very long time. It's not something individuals recently invented. What HAS been happening over the last century, at least, is that very courageous people have been shining a light onto the dark corners of oppression. Our society has not been 'divided by political correctness'. We were 'a society divided' a long time before people started speaking a little louder about the ways they were treated differently.
What gets me most is that the man who wrote this belongs to just as many 'clubs', they just go by different names, or no name at all. For instance, according to wikipedia, he's a white, male, Judeo-Christian, wealthy American...heck, practically the whole world is his own resort-type club. He is a board member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, surely a club itself by any definition and inarguably very worthwhile.
It actually IS useful, for a period of time, to claim, own, wear certain labels based on 'physically defined ties' as Mr Prager puts it. In other words, to shine some light onto the ways you have been divided from others as a human being by speaking out loud the labels, by joining clubs and support groups with others who identify the same way, it's so important to break down the isolation so many of us feel.
Sometimes though, we can get complacent, stuck, in the little grooves we make for ourselves with others wearing the same labels, in the same clubs. It makes sense to me to jiggle ourselves out of those comfy grooves to try new things but there's nothing wrong with always having a feeling that people who really 'get' you have got your back.
It's worth remembering we all wear one label under all the others....human.
"I will not authorize clubs that divide students based on any identities. This includes gender, race, language, religion, sexual orientation, or whatever else may become in vogue in a society divided by political correctness. Your clubs will be based on interests and passions -- not blood, ethnic, tribal, racial or other physically defined ties. Those clubs just cultivate narcissism – an unhealthy preoccupation with the self -- while the purpose of education is to get you to think beyond yourself. ....If the only extracurricular activities you can imagine being interested in, are those based on ethnic or racial or sexual identity, that means that little outside of yourself really interests you, and that means you don't belong in this school."
Excuse me while I go and have a cup of tea and scream into a pillow.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Ok, thanks that's better. First of all, society has been dividing us all based on gender, race, language, religion, sexual orientation etc for a very long time. It's not something individuals recently invented. What HAS been happening over the last century, at least, is that very courageous people have been shining a light onto the dark corners of oppression. Our society has not been 'divided by political correctness'. We were 'a society divided' a long time before people started speaking a little louder about the ways they were treated differently.
What gets me most is that the man who wrote this belongs to just as many 'clubs', they just go by different names, or no name at all. For instance, according to wikipedia, he's a white, male, Judeo-Christian, wealthy American...heck, practically the whole world is his own resort-type club. He is a board member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, surely a club itself by any definition and inarguably very worthwhile.
It actually IS useful, for a period of time, to claim, own, wear certain labels based on 'physically defined ties' as Mr Prager puts it. In other words, to shine some light onto the ways you have been divided from others as a human being by speaking out loud the labels, by joining clubs and support groups with others who identify the same way, it's so important to break down the isolation so many of us feel.
Sometimes though, we can get complacent, stuck, in the little grooves we make for ourselves with others wearing the same labels, in the same clubs. It makes sense to me to jiggle ourselves out of those comfy grooves to try new things but there's nothing wrong with always having a feeling that people who really 'get' you have got your back.
It's worth remembering we all wear one label under all the others....human.