Vladimir Lenin, the man who in 1917 created the now-defunct one-party socialist state called The Soviet Union, understood how critical education is in molding pliant minds.
“Give me four years to teach the children, and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted,” he once said.
Lenin knew that planting the seeds of communist doctrine in the young would result in ideas that were not only intransigent but enduring. He was right–at least until the late 1980s, when the old Soviet Union began to crumble under the crushing weight of decades of intractable political miscalculation, failed socialist ideology, and acute economic infirmity.
When I look at that quote from Lenin, I can’t help thinking about what is happening in many of our schools and universities today as the iniquitous objectives of Political Correctness continue to run rampant through the classroom.
Examples of PC in our schools are everywhere.
Increasingly we see schools intent on indoctrinating children with PC ideas and behavior. Too many public schools have become “Big Brother” indoctrination centers that monitor, track, scrutinize, and condition children to behave in “acceptable ways.”
The PC fanatics who are running too many of our schools are seeking to impose uniformity of thought and behavior on children while stigmatizing those who dissent or who insist on impeding their values with things like free speech or objective intellectual inquiry.
Actual education and instruction, meanwhile, continue to decline.
Don’t say anything that might offend little Johnny or Mary. Don’t wear t-shirts with the American flag on them. That might offend non-Americans. Don’t use your finger as an imaginary gun and point it at another. That is threatening.
And let’s not compete. Let’s have all sports events end in a tie. There are no winners or losers. Give everybody a trophy for just showing up. One middle school went so far as to ban footballs, baseballs and soccer balls during recess because students might get hurt playing competitive games with them.
Now at least one university has decided that personal pronouns should no longer be used by students.
Administrators at the University of Tennessee worry that students might be offended by the use of traditional pronouns like she, he, him, and hers, according to the university’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
“With the new semester beginning and an influx of new students on campus, it is important to participate in making our campus welcoming and inclusive for all,” wrote Donna Braquet on the university’s website. “One way to do that is to use a student’s chosen name and their correct pronouns.”
“Correct pronouns?” Yes, says Braquet, who is director of the university’s Pride Center. “There are dozens of gender-neutral pronouns we can use instead of traditional pronouns.
Her solution is to rewrite critical elements of the English language, which apparently she considers offensive.
Remember when you were in school and the only pronouns were him and her, he and she, etc.?
Well, get ready for the new (and improved?) gender-neutral pronouns: ze, hir, zir, xe, xem, and xyr.
PC Madness? You bet. But don’t tell Braquet that.
“These may sound a little funny at first, but only because they are new,” she insists. “The ‘she’ and ‘he’ pronouns would sound strange too if we had been taught ‘ze’ when growing up.”
Thank God Braquet and her dopey ideas about gender-neutral language were not around when I was learning English back in the Pleistocene era.
But Braquet doesn’t stop there. “Instead of calling roll, ask everyone to provide their name and pronouns,” she wrote in her post. “This ensures you are not singling out transgender or non-binary students.” Non-binary students?
“We should not assume someone’s gender by their appearance or by what is listed on a roster or in student information systems,” Braquet continued. “Transgender people and people who do not identify within the gender binary may use a different name than their legal name and pronouns of their gender identity, rather than the pronouns of the sex they were assigned at birth.”
Assigned at birth? Does that mean we may have been mislabeled in the delivery room?
OK, whatever happened to educating children and students about American history, math, science, etc.?
This is just another example of the totalitarian nature of Political Correctness on college campuses.
If you dare depart from the imposed “norms” established by Feminazis, homosexual-rights activists or any other PC-anointed “victim” group, you do so at your peril.
People who challenge the PC-madness saturating our institutions of learning are liable to face some form of retribution and even punishment.
Students have been expelled from school for using what academic kangaroo courts deem “inappropriate behavior, offensive language, or hate speech.”
Yet it is okay for PC-demented teachers and professors to infuse children and students with the idea that America (whoops–one school has already banned that word) is at the root of all the world’s problems; that the founding fathers were a bunch of malevolent old white men who hated women and minorities; and that all the evil in the world is a result of American (that word again) power, hegemony, and exceptionalism.
Once upon time schools actually educated children and gave them a broad, useful understanding of American history. They explained America’s uniqueness in history and imparted knowledge of and appreciation for our Constitution and the rights that it guarantees.
Then along came political correctness and socialism, and ideas that were once considered worthy and beneficial were suddenly turned on their head. No longer was the goal to prepare high school and college graduates to be good citizens and informed voters. Now the goal was to turn out millions of “right-thinking” young people who left school believing that government and only government could solve their problems.
That, my friend, is the epitome of totalitarianism.
Increasingly today, we are seeing that schools are forbidding children to acknowledge the reality of our history. Instead, they are filling children’s heads with a revisionist view of our history–one that attempts to marginalize people like Jefferson, Washington, and Adams.
Our founding fathers are “exposed” as examples of Western class, gender, and racial evil. One school in the state of Washington is even teaching that the Bill of Rights is outdated and needs to be rewritten–and has given students an assignment to do just that.
If I think too long and too hard about all of this, I get a headache.
The only cure, I have found, is to find some politically incorrect jokes, read them, and laugh out loud.
Try it. It may work for you too. These are from across the pond, where politically incorrect humor still rages:
- How does the leader of the Taleban practice safe sex? He marks the camels that kick.
- I was walking down the road when I saw an Afghan bloke standing on a fifth-floor balcony shaking a carpet.
I shouted up to him, “What’s up, Abdul? Won’t it start?” - An older couple goes out to dinner to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary. After dinner, they decide to stop in at an old disco they used to go to when they were dating. As they walk in, they see this older gentleman out on the dance floor, and he’s doing backflips, moonwalking, jitterbugging, and really cuttin’ a rug. The guy’s wife said, “you see that guy? 25 years ago, he proposed to me, and I turned him down.” Husband said, “looks like he’s still celebrating to me.”
(NEXT, PART 3: A Politically Correct & Woke Version of Little Red Riding Hood)
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