Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Are Schools Increasingly Becoming Re-Education Camps?

Are Schools Increasingly Becoming Re-Education Camps? | Intellectual Takeout
Apparently the new government of the Canadian province of Alberta has decided that its schoolchildren need to be re-educated about what ‘family’ means.
As Charlotte Allen quips: “It used to be: ‘Heather has two mommies.’ Now, it's: ‘Heather has two non-gendered and inclusive caregivers.’”
Allen continues:
Here's the pertinent language from the rainbow-adorned ‘Guidelines for Best Practices’ that the high-minded, progressive NDP government issued last week:
“School forms, websites, letters, and other communications use non-gendered and inclusive language (e.g., parents/guardians, caregivers, families, partners, ‘student’ or ‘their’ instead of Mr., Ms., Mrs., mother, father, him, her, etc.).”
The purpose of the guidelines, according to the text, is to create “learning communities” that “respect diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions.”
This is but one more manifestation of where things have been going in our culture.
Sexual autonomy—even to the point of deciding what one’s sex is—trumps natural, biological relationships. 
And when it doesn’t, people should be forced to pretend that it does. 
Because if they don’t, some people’s feelings will be hurt.
Or something.
Hence the Soviet-style rewriting of texts and reshaping of language itself.
There are countless examples of it, especially on secular college campuses.
A few have even been discussed on this site.
How have things come to this pass?
...But the process is reaching the point where reality itself is seen as an oppressive limitation on human freedom. 
...Identity politics hinges on treating certain inheritances—such as one’s race or traditional culture—as features of the individual that must be respected or even privileged for the benefit of those individuals who choose to embrace them as features of their identity. 
And many individuals do so embrace them, because their personal narrative hinges on seeing themselves as members of an oppressed race, class, or ethnic group that is struggling to liberate itself from the other sex or a different race.
Yet the narrative of liberation from oppression works a bit differently with respect to anything regarding sex or sexual identity.
As Scruton puts it:
“My pleasures are mine, and if you are forbidding them you are also oppressing me.
Hence sexual liberation is not just a release but a duty, and by letting it all hang out I am not just defying the bourgeois order but casting a blow for freedom everywhere.
Self-gratification acquires the glamor and the moral kudos of a heroic struggle. 
For the ‘me’ generation, no way of acquiring a moral cause can be more gratifying. 
You become totally virtuous by being totally selfish....”

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