Category ►►► Academic Asininities

August 18, 2017

Testy test

Academic Asininities
Hatched by Dafydd

Did Annette fix it yet?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 18, 2017, at the time of 12:54 PM | Comments (1)

March 29, 2009

The Fourth Mythical Monkey

Academic Asininities , Liberal Lunacy
Hatched by Dafydd

I'm sure you're familiar with the three mythical monkeys: One has his hands over his eyes ("See no evil"), the next over his ears ("Hear no evil"), and the last covering his mouth ("Speak no evil"). But our government school model, coupled with an insane "zero tolerance" drug policy that only accepts perfection as success, have created a fourth mythical monkey: He has his arms wrapped tightly around his body as he hides in a corner, for this monkey represents "Touch no one. Ever!"

Submitted for your ridicule and pity:

Connecticut School Bans Physical Contact

A Connecticut middle school principal has laid down the law: You put your hands on someone -- anyone -- in any way, you're going to pay.

A violent incident [a student was kicked in the groin] that put one student in the hospital has officials at the Milford school implementing a "no touching" policy, according to a letter written by the school's principal.

What exactly does the principal mean by "no physical contact" and "no touching?"

"Observed behaviors of concern recently exhibited include kicking others in the groin area, grabbing and touching of others in personal areas, hugging and horseplay. Physical contact is prohibited to keep all students safe in the learning environment," [Principal Catherine] Williams wrote. [If it saves the testicles of just one child....]

"Potential consequences and disciplinary action may include parent conferences, detention, suspension and/or a request for expulsion from school," Williams wrote.

Let's, ah, put our heads together (banned!) on this. The following behaviors are now absolutely forbidden at East Shore Middle School:

  • Shaking hands;
  • Arm wrestling;
  • A pat on the back;
  • Any gym class other than Self-Pleasuring 101 (I presume that touching oneself is still permitted);
  • Two little girls walking along holding hands;
  • A kiss (a kiss may be just a kiss as time goes by; but at East Shore, it's a one-way ticket to the streets);
  • A hug;
  • Standing in line (contact is unavoidable);
  • Sitting too close to your friend, allowing your elbow to touch;
  • Stretching when tired (if you bump someone else, you could be expelled from school);
  • Trying to help another child who has gotten hurt.

    (I assume this means you can't use compression to stop bleeding, hold an injured student steady to prevent him from thrashing around and hurting himself further, using the Heimlich maneuver if your friend is choking to death, or God forbid, giving some kid CPR if he has a serious accident. Far better he die or be seriously injured than allow one person to touch another!)

  • Any "horseplay" -- by which I suppose Ms. Williams means to ban any behavior other than shuffling along slowly, eyes on the ground, wary of getting too close to another human being.

Great Scott. What a living hell Principal Catherine Williams must have grown up in, to promulgate such a rule for children as young as ten, as old as fourteen. But it does point up the sheer evil of liberal "lightswitch" reasoning: The light is either On or Off; either some broad category of behavior is 100% good... or else it must be 100% bad:

  • Some touching is inappropriate; therefore, nobody can touch anybody for any reason.
  • Some drugs are inappropriate to bring to school; therefore girls having severe menstrual cramps cannot take Mydol, not even with their doctor's permission.
  • It's bad for kids to take weapons to school; therefore, if an eight year old is caught at school with a bright green plastic squirt gun, he must be expelled and the police summoned.
  • Child pornography is a great evil; therefore, if an adolescent takes a naked cell-phone picture of herself and foolishly sends it to her friends, she must be arrested for distribution of child pornography -- and must register as a "sex offender" for the rest of her life (this is how we save her, you see).
  • Some kids are allergic to peanuts; therefore no child can eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. (Presumably, the allergic child is inherently mentally defective; he will be so overwhelmed with ungovernable desire for a PB&J that he will grab it away from his friend and shovel it into his mouth, even knowing it means possible death.)
  • Some kids cannot handle losing; therefore there will be no competition of any kind allowed at the school.
  • Some kids will score badly on tests and suffer diminshed self esteem; therefore all children will receive the same grade, regardless of the quality of their work.

I think I even know the underlying ideology that generates such utter madness: It's the core liberal doctrine that Equality of opportunity yields equality of results; therefore, if success is unequally distributed, the losers must necessarily have been denied their right to equality under the law. If one person succeeds more than the others, he must have cheated; there is no other explanation.

Liberals consider this a universal axiom; they apply it not just to schools but to job salaries, arrest rates, retirement savings, and even to entire cultures, where it becomes the Boasian ideal of cultural relativism. All cultures must only be judged by their own standards; thus every culture, from the Aztecs to the North Koreans to the Taliban to modern Americans, is equally as good as every other culture. We cannot discriminate, because everyone knows that discrimination is bad!

As the barber sings in Man of La Mancha, "I can hear the cuckoo singing in the cuckooberry tree..."

How does this work in the microcosm of the East Shore Middle School? Well, if it's wrong for a boy to kick another boy in the groin, then it must be equally wrong for two girls to hug each other: We cannot discriminate between A and B. Ever!

I read a wondeful book some years ago titled the Death of Common Sense. It was written by Philip K. Howard, a self-described liberal Democrat, and was first published fifteen years ago. Things have only deteriorated since 1994.

God, how I wish liberals were literate.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, March 29, 2009, at the time of 4:47 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

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