I knew there was something fishy behind excess PC in schools
Oct 9, 2016 9:03:57 GMT -4
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Post by Souriquois on Oct 9, 2016 9:03:57 GMT -4
A lot of the people who push it are actually involved in the SCHOOL PRIVATIZATION MOVEMENT
An activist in my city uncovered this:
The killjoys on the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional school board are at it again.
Last year, the board banned dances at the middle-school level. I wrote about that decision, and the Ohio “education expert” who advised the board, in the Examiner.
The board brought in Dru Tomlin, the “Director of Middle Level Services for the Association for Middle Level Education.” The AMLE’s partners include America’s Promise Alliance, “Founded by General Colin Powell…comprised of corporations, nonprofit organizations, foundations, policymakers, advocacy groups, and faith groups.” Other AMLE partners are active in the school privatization movement. As I wrote at the time:
It’s difficult to find much information on AMLE, but even from this cursory look into their partnerships, there seems to be ideological and business interests worth investigating further before we import these policies and “experts” into Canada. This article by Bruce A. Dixon provides some background on school privatization and its devastating effects on Black communities in the US.
This story is being reported as “it’s like Footloose!” but if these policies are driven by the undermining of public education, the attack on teacher’s unions, the privatization of schooling, and the further disenfrachisement of poor and racialized children, we should be giving these “experts” a much closer look.
And now, this year, they’re removing Halloween costumes from elementary schools.
When dances were banned at the behest of an American expert, the rationale given was about the importance of the school atmosphere:
A very big part of middle school is building up positive camaraderie, cohesion and a positive school climate, ” said Donnie Holland, the board’s acting co-ordinator of school services.
“He (Tomlin) talked about a lot of the activities that they have done that have built that type of atmosphere and he kind of led us down the path that school dances at a middle school level weren’t a great way to achieve that.”
My take on that last year was:
The suggested “alternate social gatherings, such as pep rallies and athletic events” sort of sounds like this quasi-Victorian idea that if the kids are kept busy with sports and the outdoors and “healthy” activities, they won’t be thinking about scary things like sex. It’s like the Junior Anti-Sex League in 1984.
Well, now we’ve left 1984 behind and gone fullThomas Gradgrind:
“Sometimes (costume parties) take away from instructional time in the classroom,” said Cathy MacNeil of the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board.
Jesus, lady, maybe you should start a factory after school hours and have the kindergarteners work there. I hear that small infant hands are useful for reaching into the machines. Too bad about the amputations! What’s next, cancelling lunch so the kids can eat at their desks just like real working adults?
MacNeil also claims that banning fun helps kids with anxiety:
“We have some children who are quite anxious and costumes that show a lot of fake blood or weapons do cause them some anxiety,” she said.
It seems, then, like you could simply set guidelines for appropriate costumes. No blood or weapons!
Look, I have an immigrant mother who didn’t grow up with Halloween or possess any kind of creative skills. I was totally the kid sent to school wearing a sheet as a costume. One year my mom dug out an old Sari and wrapped me in it, except I couldn’t walk so I had to hop everywhere. I used to gaze in envy at the girl whose mother bought her one of the Swan Lake tutus from the ballet company. So pretty! Meanwhile, my mother was too cheap to even buy a plastic costume at Walmart (“Why would I spend $20 on an astronaut costume? You want to be an astronaut, save the money and go study physics in university”) so I would be dressed as a cardboard box or whatever.
So I can understand the arguments some schools (not the ones in Cape Breton though) have made that costumes aren’t in everyone’s culture and that kids without parents or money can end up feeling stigmatized or left out if they don’t have an awesome Nerds box costume.
In which case, ok, chill on the costumes, but still let the kids have the little classroom party and play Halloween games. But this “the time would better be used teaching” argument is some bullshit. Like kids in Cape Breton are busy engaged in fucking advanced robotics programming in Grade 1 or something and they can’t take two hours out of the day to eat a cupcake with a witch on it. Do they have a deadline at Apple to meet or something? Is the Grade 3 class at Sydney River Elementary releasing a new waterproof phone? Are theydesigning a new rudder for the Bluenose II?
Maybe the Cape Breton elementary school kids should have been given the contract on the Convention Centre since they apparently work round the clock.
I say, good on the school board for clamping down on the “prevailing headwind of union sympathy in industrial Cape Breton” (thanks, Chronicle Herald!) That’s right, teach thesedrones kids now that they don’t get any breaks, leisure time, or enjoyment! That’ll stamp the commie right out of them! Today it’s Halloween costumes, tomorrow it’s walking the picket line!
It would be funny if people sent their kids in little orange prison jumpsuits for Black and Orange Day (“students can wear those colours during class.”) Yay. Sounds fun. You mean I can wear a colour I can wear anytime and also do math?
So wait, now parents have to find a black and orange outfit and a Halloween costume for later. Couldn’t all that time shopping and changing clothes be used to sew garments as a family or to go pick fruit or mine some coal or something? Seems impractical.
But also, damn, there’s a ton of racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim bitching about this issue. When I looked up “Orange and Black Day Halloween” almost every article isblaming brown people.
It doesn’t make any sense, frankly. Why would we alter a centuries old tradition to accommodate a cultural minority? A cultural minority, that didn’t even ask for the sanitization.
The debate is just getting started. In 2 months it will be Christmas. The seasonal celebrating starts the second the pumpkins are composted. The Season’s Greetings, Happy Holidays and Best of the Season wishes will start flowing as nobody dare say Christmas at the risk of offending the Jewish, Muslim or Hindu among us.
Or this:
Parents are upset about seeing Canadians continually give up traditions and losing sight of accepting others for whoever they are,” said Shannon Taylor, who has a child in Grade 4, at the school…
And it’s not just in Windsor. The issue reared its head in London, Ont., where a candidate for school board trustee promised to bring back Halloween. Shawn Lewis, the candidate in question, won his seat. He called “Black and Orange Day” political correctness run amok.
The Toronto District School Board encourages “Black and Orange Day” over costume-clad Halloween: in 2005, the board issued a memo that schools should avoid Halloween parties because they may offend some Wiccan students — this despite the fact most witches say they aren’t bothered by the watered down version of Samhain.
WHITE PEOPLE CAN’T HALLOWEEN BECAUSE OF REVERSE RACISM.
As far as I can tell from teacher comments and message boards, the concern is more with kids peeing their costumes than with the brown hordes.
But anyway, back in Cape Breton, last year “experts” representing “corporate” and “faith based” interests advised them to ban dances in middle school to “build camaraderie” (presumably of the Stalin’s Five-Year-Plan kind.) Now they’re banning Halloween costumes and parties in elementary school to “increase instructional time.” I suppose next year they’ll be instituting “innovation co-ops” in high school where students work for free at the local Burger King or implementing “technologically diverse learning” by having the daycare toddlers work a phone bank.
Or maybe they can just have the grade primary kids make an assembly line and injectneedles and razor blades into Halloween candy. That will work.
www.halifaxexaminer.ca/featured/dumpers-gon-dump-and-other-life-lessons-morning-file-saturday-october-8-2016/
An activist in my city uncovered this:
The killjoys on the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional school board are at it again.
Last year, the board banned dances at the middle-school level. I wrote about that decision, and the Ohio “education expert” who advised the board, in the Examiner.
The board brought in Dru Tomlin, the “Director of Middle Level Services for the Association for Middle Level Education.” The AMLE’s partners include America’s Promise Alliance, “Founded by General Colin Powell…comprised of corporations, nonprofit organizations, foundations, policymakers, advocacy groups, and faith groups.” Other AMLE partners are active in the school privatization movement. As I wrote at the time:
It’s difficult to find much information on AMLE, but even from this cursory look into their partnerships, there seems to be ideological and business interests worth investigating further before we import these policies and “experts” into Canada. This article by Bruce A. Dixon provides some background on school privatization and its devastating effects on Black communities in the US.
This story is being reported as “it’s like Footloose!” but if these policies are driven by the undermining of public education, the attack on teacher’s unions, the privatization of schooling, and the further disenfrachisement of poor and racialized children, we should be giving these “experts” a much closer look.
And now, this year, they’re removing Halloween costumes from elementary schools.
When dances were banned at the behest of an American expert, the rationale given was about the importance of the school atmosphere:
A very big part of middle school is building up positive camaraderie, cohesion and a positive school climate, ” said Donnie Holland, the board’s acting co-ordinator of school services.
“He (Tomlin) talked about a lot of the activities that they have done that have built that type of atmosphere and he kind of led us down the path that school dances at a middle school level weren’t a great way to achieve that.”
My take on that last year was:
The suggested “alternate social gatherings, such as pep rallies and athletic events” sort of sounds like this quasi-Victorian idea that if the kids are kept busy with sports and the outdoors and “healthy” activities, they won’t be thinking about scary things like sex. It’s like the Junior Anti-Sex League in 1984.
Well, now we’ve left 1984 behind and gone fullThomas Gradgrind:
“Sometimes (costume parties) take away from instructional time in the classroom,” said Cathy MacNeil of the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board.
Jesus, lady, maybe you should start a factory after school hours and have the kindergarteners work there. I hear that small infant hands are useful for reaching into the machines. Too bad about the amputations! What’s next, cancelling lunch so the kids can eat at their desks just like real working adults?
MacNeil also claims that banning fun helps kids with anxiety:
“We have some children who are quite anxious and costumes that show a lot of fake blood or weapons do cause them some anxiety,” she said.
It seems, then, like you could simply set guidelines for appropriate costumes. No blood or weapons!
Look, I have an immigrant mother who didn’t grow up with Halloween or possess any kind of creative skills. I was totally the kid sent to school wearing a sheet as a costume. One year my mom dug out an old Sari and wrapped me in it, except I couldn’t walk so I had to hop everywhere. I used to gaze in envy at the girl whose mother bought her one of the Swan Lake tutus from the ballet company. So pretty! Meanwhile, my mother was too cheap to even buy a plastic costume at Walmart (“Why would I spend $20 on an astronaut costume? You want to be an astronaut, save the money and go study physics in university”) so I would be dressed as a cardboard box or whatever.
So I can understand the arguments some schools (not the ones in Cape Breton though) have made that costumes aren’t in everyone’s culture and that kids without parents or money can end up feeling stigmatized or left out if they don’t have an awesome Nerds box costume.
In which case, ok, chill on the costumes, but still let the kids have the little classroom party and play Halloween games. But this “the time would better be used teaching” argument is some bullshit. Like kids in Cape Breton are busy engaged in fucking advanced robotics programming in Grade 1 or something and they can’t take two hours out of the day to eat a cupcake with a witch on it. Do they have a deadline at Apple to meet or something? Is the Grade 3 class at Sydney River Elementary releasing a new waterproof phone? Are theydesigning a new rudder for the Bluenose II?
Maybe the Cape Breton elementary school kids should have been given the contract on the Convention Centre since they apparently work round the clock.
I say, good on the school board for clamping down on the “prevailing headwind of union sympathy in industrial Cape Breton” (thanks, Chronicle Herald!) That’s right, teach thesedrones kids now that they don’t get any breaks, leisure time, or enjoyment! That’ll stamp the commie right out of them! Today it’s Halloween costumes, tomorrow it’s walking the picket line!
It would be funny if people sent their kids in little orange prison jumpsuits for Black and Orange Day (“students can wear those colours during class.”) Yay. Sounds fun. You mean I can wear a colour I can wear anytime and also do math?
So wait, now parents have to find a black and orange outfit and a Halloween costume for later. Couldn’t all that time shopping and changing clothes be used to sew garments as a family or to go pick fruit or mine some coal or something? Seems impractical.
But also, damn, there’s a ton of racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim bitching about this issue. When I looked up “Orange and Black Day Halloween” almost every article isblaming brown people.
It doesn’t make any sense, frankly. Why would we alter a centuries old tradition to accommodate a cultural minority? A cultural minority, that didn’t even ask for the sanitization.
The debate is just getting started. In 2 months it will be Christmas. The seasonal celebrating starts the second the pumpkins are composted. The Season’s Greetings, Happy Holidays and Best of the Season wishes will start flowing as nobody dare say Christmas at the risk of offending the Jewish, Muslim or Hindu among us.
Or this:
Parents are upset about seeing Canadians continually give up traditions and losing sight of accepting others for whoever they are,” said Shannon Taylor, who has a child in Grade 4, at the school…
And it’s not just in Windsor. The issue reared its head in London, Ont., where a candidate for school board trustee promised to bring back Halloween. Shawn Lewis, the candidate in question, won his seat. He called “Black and Orange Day” political correctness run amok.
The Toronto District School Board encourages “Black and Orange Day” over costume-clad Halloween: in 2005, the board issued a memo that schools should avoid Halloween parties because they may offend some Wiccan students — this despite the fact most witches say they aren’t bothered by the watered down version of Samhain.
WHITE PEOPLE CAN’T HALLOWEEN BECAUSE OF REVERSE RACISM.
As far as I can tell from teacher comments and message boards, the concern is more with kids peeing their costumes than with the brown hordes.
But anyway, back in Cape Breton, last year “experts” representing “corporate” and “faith based” interests advised them to ban dances in middle school to “build camaraderie” (presumably of the Stalin’s Five-Year-Plan kind.) Now they’re banning Halloween costumes and parties in elementary school to “increase instructional time.” I suppose next year they’ll be instituting “innovation co-ops” in high school where students work for free at the local Burger King or implementing “technologically diverse learning” by having the daycare toddlers work a phone bank.
Or maybe they can just have the grade primary kids make an assembly line and injectneedles and razor blades into Halloween candy. That will work.
www.halifaxexaminer.ca/featured/dumpers-gon-dump-and-other-life-lessons-morning-file-saturday-october-8-2016/