printWhat people flippantly call “political correctness” is often something far more sinister: state-initiated intimidation, violence, and coercion. How else would you describe the arrest of an English girl (called Codie), by British law enforcement, for asking to be paired in class with English—as opposed Urdu—speakers?
Following the girl’s reasonable request, the disgraceful teacher began “shouting and screaming, ‘It’s racist, you’re going to get done by the police’.” (Teachers, who score very low on college admission tests, are quality people in all state run, union-dominated establishments, aren’t they?) “Codie Stott’s family claim she was forced to spend three-and-a-half hours in a police cell after she was reported by her teachers.”
Codie “said she went outside to calm down where another teacher found her and, after speaking to her class teacher, put her in isolation for the rest of the day.”
Get this, instead of apologizing to the girl, in the hopes of avoiding litigation, “the school is now investigating exactly what happened before deciding what action—if any—to take against Codie.” As if the school has not done enough damage already.
The man behind this regime of gunpoint tolerance is “Headteacher Dr. Antony Edkins.” Under his totalitarianism, “a ten-year-old boy [had been] hauled before a court for allegedly calling an 11-year-old mixed race pupil a ‘Paki’ and ‘Bin Laden’ in a playground argument at a primary school in Irlam.”
Robert Whelan, of the classical liberal think tank CIVITAS (whom I had the pleasure of meeting in April this year), defended Codie. “It’s obviously common sense that pupils who don’t speak English cause problems for other pupils and for teachers. A lot of these arrests don’t result in prosecutions—they aim to frighten us into self-censorship until we watch everything we say.” (Whelan’s colleague, my good friend David Conway, comments here.)
You’d think this act would be hard to follow, but British Airways gave it a bash, suspending without pay a Coptic Christian for wearing a small cross to work, “even as Muslims and Sikhs are allowed to wear headscarves and turbans,” reminds Lawrence Auster.
A book I would recommend on this and related subjects is Theodore Dalrymple’s “Life at the Bottom.”
The US isn’t quite that bad but we’re getting there. This sort of foolishness in academia is the perfect training ground for generations of government controlled clones instead of citizens. Kill any identification with “The United States of America”, mostly through the snow job of “diversity” and kill any personal feelings of individualism and iniatave through political correctness and you have a perfect nation of robots, ready to pay their taxes and accept whatever “big brother” says.
Just sign me:
Fed Up Old Grump..
PS..I like the new picture up top today. You look like Emma Peel with long hair. [You said you liked the photo with leather jacket, so…]
My five-year-old son’s preschool teacher recently asked us to please tell him not to put lego blocks together in a pistol shape and play guns. How do you explain that to a kid? At least she looked embarrassed by it all.
[I’d shove “Shafting Boys” and “Run Little Man, If You Can” in teach’s mug.]
Do you think this is part of a concentrated agenda or is this just a case where those involved didn’t use proper discretion or reason? [It’s based in law. There is no free speech in the UK–or Europe. You can be charged for so-called hate speech.]
The problem never should have left the classroom – the teacher is at fault.
The double standard at British Airways seems equally silly.
If this is indeed “state-initiated intimidation, violence, and coercion” why is it occuring and who is behind it? Government is composed of people like you and me. [Not quite. The state and those in its employ have power–a lot of it. They can use the power of the state to take away natural freedoms. That’s why libertarians do not want the state to have such powers.]
Stephen,
How do you explain that to a kid? You don’t!!
A woman in a park kindly told me once that my sons were “chauvinistic”. Apparently, she heard my 5 yr. old tell his 3 yr. old brother that, “boys shouldn’t hit girls because boys are stronger than girls”. I just smiled and remarked that my son was, after all, telling the truth!
The Regency and Victorian era of Great Britian is my favorite era for historical study. The British Isles have always had a special place in my heart. It is so sad to see what was once a proud and honorable nation turn into a debilitated, effiminate shadow of itself.
Sociology was required in college. One of the few things I remember from that course-book is a large two page
spread which announced: THE MASSES ARE
ASSES. There was no specificity and I assumed it to apply to all of us, but with the passage of years I find it applies to all the little Adolf Hitlers in positions of real or imagined authority…particularly when their inverted logic is applied to situations
where they swat flies with sledge hammers instead of using flyswatters.
One of my sisters has lived in Canada since just after high-school graduation in 1971. She has gone the whole nine yards and become a citizen… more Canadian than the other Canadians, in fact. She got her degree in sociology. She has always loved the welfare state, and believes that all Canadians just love their busybody government. *sigh*
A Coptic Christian flight attendant suspended for wearing a cross? And what does the dear lady, her majesty the Queen, head of the C of E, have to say about this? Anyone? Anyone? And jailing a school girl for asking to be paired with an English speaking student? Can you hear Oliver Twist’s voice asking, “Please sir, can I have another?” Let us suppose the Urdu speaking student had asked to be paired with an Urdu speaker. Would he get his own cell or have to be in the tank with the riff raff? When are the teachers in England going to be issued their jackboots and whips and SS insignia? It appears to me that teachers have become the new terrorist group to beware of. Every sociopathic child abuser in society must be gravitating to the teaching profession. And what are Englishmen doing about this? Probably about as much as Her Majesty. At this rate, there will apparently not always be an England.