The left that gave us the destructive idiocy of “political correctness” and “identity politics” has more recently been joined by “wokeness” as the latest labeled obscenity of the political cancelation movement.
Apparently, political correctness, identity politics and wokeness have taken over the Board of Education in Randolph, New Jersey. The members of the Board – who should represent the interests of parents and students – unanimously voted to cancel holidays and remove their names from the school calendar. Of course, this caused an outrage among the parents and children.
Instead, the Board created a universal name for all holidays. A new holiday, if you will. No more Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Hannukah, Ramadan, Yom Kippur or any other offensive school-year holiday on the Randolph school calendar. The one-size-fits-all new holiday is … “Day Off.”
Incredibly, the Board claims that the decision to replace all the holidays with Day Off was to respect diversity. I find it difficult to conjure up words to properly express how incredibly crazy that explanation is. You cancel all reflections of diversity to respect diversity? No! No one should buy that line of bovine byproduct.
It is the variety of holidays that enable us to nationally – as Americans – share expressions of our diversity. Every holiday is a learning experience – making it that much more repugnant for a so-called educational institution to crush diversity in favor of sterile secular monolithic meaninglessness. This is the stuff of Russian communism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
One can reasonably question whether removing the holidays from the school calendar will also expunge classroom education and participation in these traditional DIVERSE holidays.
How would one celebrate Day Off?
I suspect as the new holiday takes hold, we would develop activities and even holiday songs. In keeping with the spirit of the holiday, families might gather in local parks and do nothing. We could serve bread and water as the soon-to-be traditional holiday meal. Homes might be decorated with colorless signs saying, “Not in school today – HAPPY DAY OFF!” Our talented songwriters may compose such unforgettable holiday songs as “I’m staying home today, but I don’t know why.”
If the School Board of Randolph, New Jersey were to take their measure to the logical conclusion (and I use the word loosely), they would fill in the rest of the calendar with “Day On.” That would eliminate all those divisive notations, such as “Final Exams” or “School Play.”
More and more, our school boards are taking actions that would be hilarious skits on Saturday Night Live. Or reported in the satirical publication, The Onion. But unfortunately, this comedy is no laughing matter.
So, there ‘tis.
I’s more than a little disgusting that Boards of Ed. are going downhilll and that people aren’t even aware of the problems that are attacking school boards! One one can only hope that they come to their senses before it’s too late — especially for all those children whose edcation relys on them!
This business of holidays not meaning anything has been coming for a really long time. When I was in elementary school in the 1960’s we got Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthday off. If it fell on, say, a Tuesday, that was the day we got off. Later, they made them into three day weekends which morphed into a vague “President’s Day”, but we still got a three day weekend out of it. Now we just have “holidays” and soon no one will know what we are celebrating.