I really don’t think another of my rants about political correctness is necessary today. These scenarios speak for themselves, in volumes.
Scenario 1:
1958 – Jack goes duck hunting before school and then pulls into the school parking lot with his shotgun in his truck’s gun rack. The Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack’s shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun out to show Jack.
2021 – School goes into an immediate lock-down and classes are suspended. FBI and local police are called, Jack is hauled off to jail and his gun confiscated. His truck is towed away and impounded. Counselors are called in to aid any traumatized students and teachers. The Vice Principle was later terminated and cited for not wearing his mask.
Scenario 2:
1958 – Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school. A crowd gathers. Mark wins the fight. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.
2021 – Police are called and SWAT team arrives — both Johnny and Mark are arrested. They are charged with assault and both are suspended even though Johnny started it. Both are also cited for failure to maintain safe distance requirements because of the pandemic. Johnny was also found unmasked. Juvenile hearings are scheduled and Anger Management therapy mandated. Teachers are required to attend a training seminar on How to Handle Out of Control Students and a review session on Covid-19 rules and requirements is scheduled..
Scenario 3:
1958 – Jeffrey will not be still in class and he disrupts other students. Jeffrey is sent to the Principal’s office and given a good paddling by the Principal. He then returns to class, sits still and doesn’t disrupt the class again.
2021 – Jeffrey is isolated from other students. His parents are called and he’s transported to his doctor’s office. A recommended dose of Ritalin is prescribed by his physician. He then becomes a zombie. Next he’s then tested for ADD allowing the family to collect extra money (SSI) from the government because of his disability. Family counseling is ordered by the authorities.
Scenario 4:
1958 – Billy breaks a window in his neighbor’s car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt. Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college and becomes a successful businessman.
2021 – Billy’s dad is immediately arrested for child abuse. Billy is removed to a foster care home until the father has completed his Anger Management classes. Billy then joins a local gang and is later arrested for a host of crimes. The state psychologist is told by Billy’s sister that she vaguely remembers being abused herself as a child and their dad ends up in prison. Billy’s mom has an affair with the psychologist and Billy steals a car and runs away.
Scenario 5:
1958 – Mark gets a headache and brings some aspirin to school. Mark shares his aspirin with the Principal outside at the smoking dock.
2021 – The police are called and Mark is expelled from school for drug violations. His car is then searched for drugs and weapons. His parents are detained and their house searched for any illicit drugs or paraphernalia. The Principal is suspended pending an investigation of his receiving drugs from a suspect student and supplying that student with cigarettes.
Scenario 6:
1958 – Pedro fails high school English. He then goes to summer school, passes English and goes on to college.
2021 – Pedro’s cause is taken up by the state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files a class action lawsuit against the state school system and Pedro’s English teacher. English is then banned from the core curriculum and Pedro is given his diploma anyway. He ends up mowing lawns for a living because he can’t speak English.
Scenario 7:
1958 – Johnny takes apart some leftover firecrackers from the Fourth of July. He puts them into a model airplane paint bottle and blows up an ant hill. Ants die.
2021- ATF, Homeland Security and the FBI are all called. Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism and possessing unauthorized explosives. The FBI investigates his parents – and all siblings are removed from their home. All computers are also confiscated. Johnny’s father and mother are placed on a terror watch list and are never permitted to fly again. The family is sued by a neighbor when a drug sniffing dog bites his son.
Scenario 8:
1958 – Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary is seen hugging him to comfort him. In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2021 – Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job after another teacher saw her hugging Johnny. She faces 3 years in State Prison for child molestation. Johnny undergoes 5 years of intense therapy, becomes sexually confused after hypnosis therapy revealed alleged repressed memories of abuse. He now identifies himself as a transgendered named Janine.
If you read this blog at all you know how much I detest political correctness. I come by that honestly due in part to a man who assisted me in setting up my first blog many years ago. His ideas and writings on political correctness are exactly the same as mine. He is what you might call my “blog father” and his name was Rob “Acidman” Smith. Unfortunately for us all he passed away on June 26th 2006. He’s been missed by me and many others and his blog remains online, maintained by his family. It will always hold a place of honor on my Favorites List. I visit him there on a regular basis to read his old postings because they’re still as pertinent to the discussion today as they were back then. If you’re interested, his blog is called gutrumbles.com, check it out. You are missed Rob.
Acidman
As you are well aware there are many bright people in this world who see the dangers of political correctness and the ongoing damage that it’s causing within the society. It’s become so ingrained in our society that it’s now the norm rather than the exception. My main question, can it be reversed? Seems to me correcting political correctness will be a long-term and difficult process. As anyone can see it’s taken a few decades to drag us down to this level and very well may take a few more decades to correct it.
It seems to me that the fault belongs primarily with academia. Public education systems in this country are being run by a liberally biased group of academics whose whole purpose is to brainwash each upcoming generation to embrace political correctness and to revile those who don’t. The amount of power wielded by the teachers unions across the country has made it virtually impossible to root out these individuals and to reclaim control over our education system.
There you have it folks, responsibility for correcting political correctness is once again in the hands of the parents. I think it’s time that PTA groups across this country become better organized so they’re able to rein in the administrators and not rubber-stamp every stupid and ignorant idea being shoved down their throats by school committees. Lazy parents concede control over school subject matter and then blame everyone but themselves for the results. Stand up, be heard, and take back control of your children’s schools. I’m all for turning the kids into productive citizens and not just people who worship social causes, the environment, and poo poo personal responsibility.
As I’ve mentioned previously my better-half’s daughter is a Math teacher in one of our local Middle Schools. I love listening to her war stories when we get together because I envy her at times. Nothing is more important than education and the interaction with the students is what I consider a major perk. Unfortunately some students take a little longer to get their act together as you will see in the following short essays. All errors in spelling and grammar remain as they were written. They will make you smile.
The inhabitants of ancient Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinnesss, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, once asked, "Am I my brother’s son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his brother’s birth mark. Jacob was a patriarch who brought up his twelve sons to be patriarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.
Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David’s sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.
Without the Greeks we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns – Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intollerable. Achilles appears in The Iliad, by Homer. Homer also wrote The Oddity, in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.
Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.
In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athens was democratic because people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn’t climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought with the Persians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.
They made me laugh a little and took me to a whole new level of respect for teachers. Molding these youngsters into intelligent and thoughtful human beings is quite the challenge and I’m just glad there are people out there who’ve been called to the teaching profession. Just amazing.
And last but not least I’d like to acknowledge and thank my newest followers. I encourage you to visit their sites and to enjoy their efforts as I do. Thanks again.
I hate to admit that in my high school days I absolutely hated English class and writing assignments. The only good thing about that class was the smok’in hot teacher (Ms. Walters) who was much better known for her long legs and colored bra collection. Unfortunately that’s a story for another time. She attempted to teach us morons grammar and other tools needed to write coherently. Two of her favorites things were the use of similes and metaphors. I really never cared much for those exercises and assignments and I’m sure most kids these days feel the same way. I’ll list the official definitions now and then offer up some actual samples from our current crop of students. I have to admit that even my first attempts weren’t as bad as some of these.
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sim·i·le
/ˈsɪməli/ [sim-uh-lee] noun
1. a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared, as in “she is like a rose.” Compare metaphor.
2. an instance of such a figure of speech or a use of words exemplifying it.
met·a·phor
/ˈmɛtəˌfɔr, -fər/ [met-uh-fawr, -fer] noun
1. a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our God.” Compare mixed metaphor, simile ( def 1 ) .
2. something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else; emblem; symbol.
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He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
She was as easy as the "TV Guide" crossword.
She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
Every minute without you feels like 60 seconds.
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
Even in his last years, Grand Dad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.
Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
"Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.
She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.
I feel much better about my subpar efforts back in the day after reading this collection. Ms. Walter’s would have been even more unfriendly than usual after reading such drivel and I would have certainly received her favorite punishment. One hour of detention after school while she strutted her stuff around the room and drove us all crazy. Man that was one sexy women. Most of us would have volunteered to stay anyway. What a punishment.
Why is it that we just love to entertain ourselves listening and watching young children. I suppose it’s their innocence and honesty so effortlessly projected. The recent rash of TV commercials containing one adult and four kids in a discussion group setting has captured everyone’s hearts. The honest answers coupled with their totally innocent facial expressions is priceless.
I understand the desire of businesses to use these kids for commercial purposes. If there were four or five adults sitting around talking most of us would click the remote and move on to things that were more interesting and believable. Adults are never perceived as being honest, especially those involved in the making of television commercials.
Over the years most commercials involving young kids and adults have not so subtly treated the adults like idiots. The kids are then shown as the smart and sensible members of the family. This kind of posturing plays right into the younger demographics but I always thought it was a little insulting to us adults. I readily admit that many adults are idiots but I always held out hope that it was just a small percentage.
This morning lying in bed in a semi-relaxed state I was quietly surfing the net when I came upon a number of sites listing actual letters from parents who were excusing their children from school. These samples reflect the actual wording and mis-spellings that those parents used. I’m sure the teachers who received these notes were as shocked as I was. It’s hard to understand how a reasonably intelligent parent would want their notes to the school to read this way. Enjoy them and then just slowly shake your head with your total lack of understanding as I did.
Please excuse Pedro from being absent yesterday. He had (diahre) (dyrea) (direathe) the shits. [words in ( )’S were crossed out.]
Sally won’t be in school a week from Friday. We have to attend her funeral.
Please excuse little Jimmy for not being in school yesterday. His father is gone and I could not get him ready because I was in bed with the doctor.
My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the Marines.
Maryann was absent December 11-16, because she had a fever, sore throat, headache and upset stomach. Her sister was also sick, fever and sore throat, her brother had a low grade fever and ached all over. I wasn’t the best either, sore throat and fever. There must be something going around, her father even got hot last night.
Chris will not be in school cus he has an acre in his side.
Please excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday.
My child was absent from school yesterday because he had a sore trout.
Please excuse my son for being absent yesterday. “He has a cold and could not breed well”.
Excuse my son. He’s been under the doctor.
Please excuse my son from being absent yesterday. “He had diarrhea and his boots leak”.
Please excuse my daughter for being absent yesterday. “She was in bed with very bad gramps”.
Please excuse my child from school yesterday. “He had a bad stomach egg”.
Please excuse my child from missing school yesterday. “I thought we had a 3 day weekend”.
I certainly hope that the children of these parents are smarter than the parents seem to be. Bad grammar, misspellings, and a general lack of concern with making the notes read like they came from a thinking adult. There are times when talking with youngsters is the most refreshing part of the day. At least they’re honest and anything humorous they come up with is based on a lack of experience and not a lack of intelligence.