Willard Schools Surrenders to Triggered MSU Professors
Willard Schools Surrenders to Triggered MSU Professors
Plus more than a few observations
Friday afternoon, thanks to the efforts of several MSU professors, the Willard School District quickly deleted a couple of Facebook posts containing pictures of a school employee “culturally appropriating” an Indigenous American headdress to celebrate Kansas City Chiefs Spirit Week.
More on the story below after my rant.
RANTING IN THE WILDERNESS
Lucky for us, when contentious issues like this arise, we live in a politically-binary society where nearly everyone acts on the basis of human reason, rather than reacting on brute instinct. Where hurling names and accusations at one another out of sheer frustration isn’t even considered. And where we all come together, work out our differences, and go on with our lives in peace.
Mindless, blanket accusations that devolve into fits of name-calling, such as “Groomer!” or “Nazi!” — do not occur.
Even better, we’ve all been forcibly made a part of an involuntary collective known as “the public school system”.
But the best part of all is this:
Though we are different, each one of us thinks we know what is best for everyone else, and have been granted the means (i.e. government coercion) to try to make everyone else do what we want.
It works great!
And don’t try to tell me it doesn’t.
Because our betters have assured me it does.
We should be thanking God daily for our betters, America’s powerful sainted class — the university professors and the corporate journalists — who help shepherd society along in her struggle for equity and equality against so much annoyingly objective truth.
Rarely do I offer anyone the benefit of my scorn, but, in their case, I’ll do so out of a great respect for the widening circle of their destructive accomplishments.
So, speaking of name-calling, let’s henceforth refer to our brave professors as “Bull-yard” and “Run-dick”.
Voice of narrator:
“When cultural appropriation looms, Bullyard and Rundick stand ready to fight!”
Cue inspiring music.
Bullyard and Rundick enter the scene, oozing so much Pedagogy of the Oppressed that the slick oily substance is in danger of being all burned up at once.
THE TALE OF THE TRIUMPH OF BULLYARD AND RUNDICK
Sweet little Zandria (not her real name) probably thought she was having the perfect Friday.
Her grade school had just posted a picture of her, beaming proudly and holding up a completed “goal sheet” for all the world to see. She had worked so very hard, and now her efforts would be forever enshrined on Facebook.
And so they were — until everything all went to hell an hour later.
Zandria’s principal, broadly smiling beside her, also appeared in the photo, you see. And everything would have been fine were it not for that “dastardly” stylized headdress that she’d worn for Chiefs Spirit Week.
Small ‘p’ professors Bullyard and Rundick, triggered and ready to pounce, hopped on Facebook and condemned this gross display of cultural appropriation (harmless celebration to some; a sign of oppression to others) as “deeply racist” and “not a good look”. Another professor (though I didn’t catch his name) even showed his support by ‘loving’ a comment.
Not long after, some unidentified school official — capitulating to the diktats of MSU’s critically-conscious champions — quickly removed the offending post.
A capital ‘V’ victory for justice!
Just not for little Zandria.
BACK TO LIBRARY BOOKS
Now contrast this near-immediate removal with that of the district’s response to parents who are concerned about sexually-explicit content in school library books. They’re left to navigate a lengthy bureaucratic process, fighting tooth-and-nail to have their concerns addressed (and in many districts, those concerns are completely ignored).
And you can probably guess how our two brave professors feel about that particular issue.
It’s “How dare you wear that headdress!” versus “Dildos in middle school library books? Diversity trumps your values.”
Now, do I think government schools should be banning books? No way!
Giving a coercion-based government the power to either ban, or forcibly mandate anything can never be a good idea. But I can still understand why some parents would not want sexual content in their children’s public school library, just as I can understand the reasoning of parents who do.
Two completely different worldviews — both vying for control of the government school system.
But pick apart either side’s best and most well-articulated arguments, and — no matter how well-intentioned their goals — none of it stands up to scrutiny, because they’re arguing over fixing something that simply cannot be “fixed” to everyone’s liking — an involuntary collective.
Yet the same people banning library books still manage to strongly object to the banning of so-called misinformation on social media. And the same people who support banning so-called misinformation on social media are always “free speech or die” over book bans in school libraries.
It’s the magic fairy dust that makes the difference, you see.
“But…but…we’re just trying to protect the children!” or “We’re just trying to protect the public and/or the oppressed!”
I know you are. I know. I do. The problem isn’t with what you want; the problem is that we’ve built systems that enable and/or require you to force what you want onto everybody else (a concept Bullyard and Rundick most definitely understand).
WHERE IT’S HEADED
And what of our two professors? Well, if you want control, then these two have it in spades.
Higher education produces the secondary education teachers, the counselors, the administrators. More importantly, higher education produces the pedagogy (the teaching methods). And you, as a trusting parent, likely have no idea what they are even up to, and have been up to for a very long time.
They are entrenched and fully in control of dispersing their bullshit, just like earlier progressives who removed Indigenous American children from their parents and placed them in boarding schools to “kill the Indian [in them], and save the man.” They possess what the Ku Klux Klan fought for 100 years ago when they made federalizing education their top priority — top-down control.
And make no mistake: if conservatives, or libertarians, or any other group were to fully seize control of this centralized mechanism, they would employ it in the same way, too. Just with a different shade of tyranny.
Government education has always been about gaining control to reshape society.
The people in charge now are no different.
“You WILL comply in our public spaces, citizen!”
“And — thanks to continually refined social-emotional learning and critical pedagogies — soon your children will comply with us, fully and willingly, against your wishes, and against your values.”
“And you, citizen, will pay us to make it happen.”
The much less significant, yet constantly publicized and demonized inroads that conservative parents have made recently are, by comparison, no more than a flickering candle, waiting to be snuffed out by the swift winds of change that will follow.
The Obama-era values of liberal parents are to be swept away, too.
Complete social revolution.
But that’s a story for another time.
Go Chiefs!
Addendum
If you’re interested in reading the open letter mentioned in the professor’s comment, you can find it here: An Open Letter to Non-Natives in Headdresses