Some years back I wrote a piece about PC-Gone Wild, about a venerable, 300-some year-old yet decidedly progressive independent school where I witnessed a middle division head admonish a girl drawing a picture to illuminate a scene from a great children's literature offering her class had been reading. The division head, a bright, accomplished, widely published educational theorist, asked the girl about her drawing. The child said, among other things, that she'd used the black Crayola to fill in a portion of the drawing. The accomplished educational leader scrunched up her face, leaned in toward the child and sharply said, "You know: here we call that The Crayon of Color." *
Until today I thought I might not hear again an example of political correctness so foolish.
We went to lunch with very old friends, back here after decades living in the Near East. They returned, largely, to enjoy being new grandparents from several miles off and not thousands. In the course of a wide-ranging conversation, I asked them how their grandson, two-and-a-half, was getting on. "Well" Marty said, "he's been suspended from day care."
"At two-and-a-half?"
"Uhmhmm."
Biting? (Nah.)
Spitting? (Nope.)
Kicking? (Uhuh.)
Hair-pulling? (No.)
Fighting? (Try again.)
"Tell."
The dimpled miscreant was suspended from day care when, asked to sing a song for the class, as all the tots were similarly asked to do, the child violated a dearly-held nursery-school standard by mumbling a song, sing-songily, perhaps the only song he knows by heart, the official song of his family's favorite football squad, their (and my own) Philadelphia Eagles.
The mumbled song has the lyric "fight" three times, once in the title and twice in the body of the work. And that's too much for the day-care teacher and her director, dedicated as they are to The Rules which demand that no one, ever, use Words of Violence. (They have that rule written down.)
After all, two-and-a-half year-olds mumble-singing "fight" pose a threat, a palpable threat, and Adults Who Care cannot, will not, tolerate it.
Never mind that the "fight" in the "fight song," to any but the most simple-minded, politically-correct psychopathological educators, means:
"strive!"
"play hard!"
"try to win!"
and not:
"Bash Hell Outta the Guy Across the Line, Throw Him Down, Castrate Him Right Now! Rah! Rah!"
(That's just not what it means.)
Yet the lad remains suspended in the charge of his negligent parents.
In his honor, please join me (no matter which team may own your heart) as I sing
"Fly Eagles Fly" EAGLES Fight Song
Fly Eagles Fly, On The Road To Victory.
Fight Eagles Fight, Score A Touchdown 1-2-3.
Hit 'Em Low. Hit 'Em High. And We'll Watch Our Eagles Fly.
Fly Eagles Fly, On The Road To Victory.
Note: "Hit" is also likely actionable.