Litchfield--Where morality is FUN-de-Mental

There's a dustup in the sleepy town of Litchfield over the content of several reading assignments issued to students in Campbell High School.  "I like Guys," and "The Crack Cocaine Diet,"  (among others) are being defended based on their 'Tone and Point of view' which is the same excuse I used to give my mom when she caught me reading Playboy back in the 70's.

What's actually at odds is content, but the problem goes way beyond such a superficial reading of this issue.  

What this demonstrates is a deep and chronic disconnect between the direction the education culture has headed--and to some degree the diversity Nazis embedded in it--and what is relevant and appropriate for the state to teach other peoples children.

There is an elitist culture in state run education. (Well, all education but lets not wander too far).  And in their idea-mills, where the curriculum faeries live, they have long thought of these kids as their children.  And they use their employment by the dopey taxpayers as an entitlement to make moral educational decisions based on their own values about what is appropriate.  I mean, what happens to these poor children if they don't?  They might grow up thinking the wrong way.  They might believe in God and family and country before environmentalism and the good of the state.   I mean, what if they really do turn out to be self-responsible capitalists instead of limp wristed statist cogs?

I'm not saying its intentional on an individual basis, and its certainly not embedded in every educator but the younger teachers are products of their university education curricullums, and there is something absent in the relationship when stories of this nature are deemed suitable simply because they have a certain tone or point of view.

So what?  You not only have to teach this point of view, you have to do it with these specific books and stories?  One wonders how we managed any tolerance or understanding of habitual abuse at all prior to their authorship.  But of course the irony is that they are taught none existed, and so they impart that on their students--so these kinds of books don't even warrant comment anywhere throughout the process until a parent (aka taxpayer) serendipitously comes across them and asks a question.

The curriculum facilitator--a title with something of a 1984 feel to it--contends that the stories were not about violence or drug use or sex, (it's not about the naked chicks at all mom) but about tolerance and respect (in the case of "I Like Guys") and for discussing the devastating consequences of drug abuse.  Much like Playboy is about the riveting investigative journalism and cutting edge social commentary, and not about beautiful unclothed nymphs.

Some people are so smart they are stupid.

Do you suppose the next assignement will be about the devastating consequences to a curriculum fascilitator when out of the thousands of books available to provide discussion material about tolerance, respect, and the consequences of drug use, they chose books about gay sex, murder, cannibalism and drug use?

Before you get your panties in a bunch this has nothing to do with censorship or free speech.   No one is saying parents can't buy these books for their kids or allow them to buy them themselves.   And there is ample precedent for limited access to activities and resources based on age and content in standing law so please don't wander off on a tirade about that. 

This is more about state compelled speech as compelled values. 

The state and its adherents flushed religion out of public education--abusing the First amendment in the process--because they objected to its presence as representing a fixed set of moral values to which not all of their students might relate.   But in the void they created--where you still may find it necessary to discuss things like right and wrong--they replaced it with material that represents their own ideas regardless of how that might represent a set of fixed moral values potentially at odds with what parents might want their children to relate.

But when attendance is mandatory, the state controls the content, and the gate keepers have long since banished any morality but their own, they begin to feel comfortable in their position as sage and arbiter of all thing appropriate.  It's like idea prison isn't it?

The state just assumes their values are better.  And the state is wrong.

While it is true that there are plenty of kids who can handle this material, these are things parents and guardians get to decide, not the state or its stable of facilitators.   So the debate shouldn't be about what's in the stories so much as it should be about why the state and in this case Litchfield even thinks it has a right to control the values debate and then inflict them on students at their convenience.

For this, there is no defense.

Comments

[Observer]

You can teach tolerance without teaching what it is they do.

Why should kids have to listen to stuff they could if they just hung with the 'bad' kids anyway? That Crack book was horrid.

Hey what did you expect? This is Marxism.. the UN has taken over and wants to assure that your child has the 'right' to read anything he or she wants.

NOT ON MY DIME, buster!