As ridiculous as it sounds, many schools in America, including colleges, are no longer requiring students to study American History. In fact there was a university that announced a couple of years ago that history majors did not have to take an American History course. Even worse, if American History is taught it's usually telling kids how bad we are. History revisionists are having a field day as we fill our kids heads with multi cultural garbage instead of teaching our distinct American culture. Yes, we have one--or at least we used to. This is as sad as it is dangerous when you don't know our history, why this country was founded, how unique we are and how we became the richest and most powerful county in world history in less than 200 years against civilizations that had been here for thousands.
Now the nanny state has struck again...and we've seen this "movie" before. The debate among the PC Police has been going on for years about taking Mark Twain's classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because it has racial slurs like the infamous "N" word! Some in the PC world say it should be banned altogether or reprinted without that word. PUH-LEEZE!!!
So here's the latest: District official in Duluth, Minnesota have removed not only Huckleberry Finn but now another classic has been added, Harper Lee's 1960 Pulitzer Prize winner To Kill a Mockingbird from their required reading list. To their credit, they are not going to burn them in the school yard and wave Nazi flags but just as well because the kids probably wouldn't know what a Nazi flag was nor the significance of the burning. They'll remain in the library but no longer required reading because, to quote the district's director of curriculum instruction, Michael Cary, the books will be replaced on the aforementioned list with others that touch the same topics without language that makes students uncomfortable. MAKE STUDENTS UNCOMFORTABLE??? So what? We should make them uncomfortable so perhaps they can cope with--oh, I don't know--the real world.
"We felt that we could still teach the same standards and expectations through other novels that didn't require students to feel humiliated or marginalized by the use of racial slurs," Cary told the Duluth News Tribune. He says the move follows similar ones taken by other school districts as ridiculous as they are (my observation) in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Mississippi when complains came in.
So some of the students say the n-word used throughout both novels makes uncomfortable. Pass the violin! The president of the Duluth NAACP has praised the move. Give me a freaking break! Apparently these kids and this guy have never listened rap music (a contradiction in terms if there ever was one). These recording "artists" use the n-word all the time while violently trashing women and police in the most vile and explicit terms. They even go so far as advocating killing police officers and there's ample evidence some have acted on those desires.
Free speech organizations have strongly objected to this politically correct crap. The National Coalition Against Censorship urged the Duluth Public Schools to reconsider. Hope they're not holding their breath. When Barry Sotoro (aka Barack Obama) was president he spent all eight years of his administration criticizing police and when a police officer shot or killed a black suspect he always sided with the victims long before the evidence was in. When the evidence came in that he was wrong, which was almost 100% of the time, he never apologized. He constantly did everything in his power to foment hatred between the races and class warfare could have been his middle name.
The NCAC did have some success in Mississippi when they criticized the Biloxi School District in Mississippi for the school district's decision last year to ban To Kill A Mockingbird from an eighth grade reading list. They later reversed their decision allowing students to read the book if they wanted to--but only if their parents gave the okay. A Virginia school district banned both books in 2016 pulling copies from the classrooms and libraries after receiving a complaint from a parent. This is beyond pathetic. That's funny...I've been ticked off and complained about a lot of things like not being able to pray in school or before a public school football game. Those got banned because one person complained. But when I have called to complain about those bans I don't get the same consideration...or any consideration at all.
We have kids dying from shootings by other kids who have no business having a gun, opioid overdoses killing tens of thousands, gang violence and students who can't read or write when they graduate from high school and this what school officials are worried about? Making students "uncomfortable" because the n-word is printed in a book. Just how "uncomfortable" are they going to be when someone(s) start shooting at them? Put the books back on the required reading list. Take off junk like Catcher in the Rye and replace it with something great like The Caine Mutiny the 1951 Pulitzer Prize winner by Herman Wonk. Making them "uncomfortable" will give them life skills to cope rather than coddle them so they can never succeed when the real world confronts them. Just askin'!