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silveradeptTouching on an issue that, while I may not ever send myself or students through it again, is still important to me - education, Mr. Prager presents his ideal speech from a high school principal to his school, coming back from summer break. As with anything that warrants the Special Comment, let’s go through the exercise point by point.
- First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity. I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow or white....And the only national identity this school will care about is American....We will end all ethnicity-, race- and non-American nationality-based celebrations....This includes all after-school clubs. I will not authorize clubs that divide students based on any identities. This includes 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, racial or other physically defined ties. Those clubs just cultivate narcissism... - Second, I am uninterested in whether English is your native language. My only interest in terms of language is that you leave this school speaking and writing English as fluently as possible. The English language has united America’s citizens for over 200 years, and it will unite us at this school. It is one of the indispensable reasons this country of immigrants has always come to be one country. And if you leave this school without excellent English language skills, I would be remiss in my duty to ensure that you will be prepared to successfully compete in the American job market. We will learn other languages here -- it is deplorable that most Americans only speak English -- but if you want classes taught in your native language rather than in English, this is not your school.
- Third, because I regard learning as a sacred endeavor, everything in this school will reflect learning’s elevated status. This means, among other things, that you and your teachers will dress accordingly. Many people in our society dress more formally for Hollywood events than for church or school. These people have their priorities backward. Therefore, there will be a formal dress code at this school.
- Fourth, no obscene language will be tolerated anywhere on this school’s property -- whether in class, in the hallways or at athletic events. If you can’t speak without using the f-word, you can’t speak. By obscene language I mean the words banned by the Federal Communications Commission, plus epithets such as “Nigger,” even when used by one black student to address another black, or “bitch,” even when addressed by a girl to a girlfriend. It is my intent that by the time you leave this school, you will be among the few your age to instinctively distinguish between the elevated and the degraded, the holy and the obscene.
- Fifth, we will end all self-esteem programs. In this school, self-esteem will be attained in only one way -- the way people attained it until decided otherwise a generation ago -- by earning it. One immediate consequence is that there will be one valedictorian, not eight.
- Sixth, and last, I am reorienting the school toward academics and away from politics and propaganda. No more time will devoted to scaring you about smoking and caffeine, or terrifying you about sexual harassment or global warming. No more semesters will be devoted to condom wearing and teaching you to regard sexual relations as only or primarily a health issue. There will be no more attempts to convince you that you are a victim because you are not white, or not male, or not heterosexual or not Christian. We will have failed if any one of you graduates this school and does not consider him or herself inordinately lucky -- to be alive and to be an American.
- Now, please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of our country. As many of you do not know the words, your teachers will hand them out to you.
In translation: I do not care who you are, nor do I care about your heritage. The fact that you are here means you will assimilate to what I believe to be American culture. LGBT students, you will find no support groups here from me. Minority students, you are not allowed to band together and try to educate us about privilege and the way it colors our experiences. Nobody here will celebrate great people who are non-white, unless they happen to be someone we have appropriated from their context and made safe for us, or events that are important to people of non-WASP heritage. My students, I intend fully to kill any hope you might have of understanding your history and of experiencing the very real diversity of culture that is America. I intend to leave you woefully unprepared for the real world.
Translated: You will assimilate to my culture by learning my language. Language is important to culture, and as I have already said that I intend to kill any cultural experience you get outside the confines of what I deem to be appropriate, it naturally follows that I must relegate your native language to the dustbin. I do not care whether English is your second or third language, nor do I care that this school might be the first time that you are exposed to the language with any intensity. You will be fluent in my language, my culture, and my way of thinking before you leave, or I will declare you a failure and require you to take your indoctrination again until it sticks. I will, however, make token gestures toward learning your languages and cultures by offering rudimentary courses in your languages - enough to get around as a tourist, but not enough that someone might appreciate the language and the cultures that developed it.
Translated: Having crushed your ability to express yourself in clubs and in speaking your native tongues, I will now stop you from expressing yourself through your dress. You will not be allowed to make political statements, cultural statements, or any kind of statement other than the one I have chosen for you, one born of my beliefs about what you should be. Any attempt that you make at creativity in your dress will be ruthlessly quashed under the dress code. I will look out upon you, and I will see a sea of conformity, of pleasant inoffensiveness, and I will be heartened. I do not tolerate individuality here at school. Get used to it.
Translated: Rather than teach you the manner of usage and allow you to explore why certain words have come to be obscene, the privilege of a select minority, or otherwise deemed offensive, I will simply ban you from saying any of them. Having already regulated what language you speak, I will now regulate how you can speak it. When I am finished with you, you will sound like me, with all of your ethnic constructions, portmanteaus, neologisms, and patterns of speaking erased so that I may present you as a properly assimilated cog in the machine to your new corporate masters once you are finished. In doing so, I hope to be able to instill into you the value system that I follow and override your own, so that you will naturally cultivate to my point of view and be unable to find the words or the manner to contradict me without running into banned speech and discipline consequences.
Translated: I believe you are too soft, raised by a nation of whiners who prize feelings and equal rewards for those who participate equally. This is unacceptable, and may lead you down the road to Marxism, socialism, Communism, or just general liberal behavior. Americans believe that there must be one winner and an army of losers. Only the winner is important - all others must be relegated to second class. I will teach you to be cutthroat, to do what it takes to win, to attack each other and fight over a supply of rewards that I will keep artificially low, to see each other not as companions and fellow humans, but competitors aiming to take your piece of life, sub-humans who must be crushed and subjugated, their pieces taken, and then broken so they cannot challenge you again. You will justify this by believing that because you took it from them, you obviously deserved it more than they did. I will ensure that you are ready for what I perceive the workplace to be, ready to take on office politics, backstabbing, and climing the corporate ladder by any means necessary.
Translation: I believe in a curriculum that teaches to standardized tests without actually measuring student progress. I am not content removing your ability to speak, dress, or otherwise express yourself politically and culturally, for that still allows you to possibly express yourself within the confines of class or your teachers. I will thus remove this last avenue of expression, debate, learning, and awareness by forbidding your teachers to teach anything that is not safe and approved by white culture. I will forbid you from discussing the current events of our times, and I will stop you from being able to hear any alternative opinions to my WASP perspective on morality, ethics, and how minorities have been treated over the course of history. Especially in sex, which I think is icky and should only be talked about once you’re safely married and you want to have children. LGBT students, I hate you with every fiber of my being. I will do everything I can to stop you from feeling like you are normal people with normal feelings and will encourage the bullies and attackers in your classes to make you feel inferior, wrong, and a deviant. If they use offensive language in my presence, I might slap them with token discipline to keep up appearances, but I will steadfastly do what I can to overlook anything that might happen to you because you are LGBT.
I will not tolerate opinions other than my own, and I will forbid you from ever expressing them in my school, and I will do my best to make sure you are so overloaded with boring core classes that you won’t have time or desire to do anything else. Enjoy your new Hell.
And because he can’t leave well enough alone without a stinger on the end, as if we didn’t get the point that he thinks our students are all stupid, lazy, whiners with victim mentalities who refuse to assimilate into the superior culture, here’s the last paragraph.
No need for translation here, just one thing to say. Get plugged, bunghole. Or, possibly: FUCK. OFF.
Re: A Vision Of A Bleak Little World Where There Is No Black Or White, Only Grey...
Date: 2010-07-15 07:38 am (UTC)Wither that, or someone will eventually end up shouting out the secret ingredient in Soylent Green. I'm not sure which one we're moving toward.