Can’t anyone take a joke today?
Well, no and certainly not at Yale or Missouri where political correctness is no joking matter.
At our pseudo-bastions of open and free discourse, we find students “outraged” at perceived micro-aggressions, vaguely defined as structural bias.
They are so traumatized that college administrators must provide “safe spaces,” presumable to protect them from insensitive comments. It actually would be a laugh out-loud joke if the students were not serious.
Indeed they are serious; seriously uninformed.
The mini campus mobs are out to silence anyone who disagrees with them. Apparently, the sensitive scholars never took a high school civics course.
They never studied the First Amendment to the Constitution which, as most people recognize, is needed to protect harsh, disturbing and often abhorrent speech so such speech can be challenged by more rational, intelligent free speech.
Today, we reap the results of the collapse of civic education in the country and, in particular, New York State.
The New York State Education Department began its attack on the Constitution in 1998 with a process that scrapped a required 12TH grade, rigorous American Government course and replaced it with a Participation in Government course.
Essentially a course on the origins, foundation and basic principles of American Government was replaced with a vacuous, simplistic course based on “issues and community service.” An in-depth study of the U.S. Constitution was replaced with a course best described as a primer for community organizers.
The lack of civic education is not only dangerous in a democracy but may also be illegal in New York State. Section 801 of the New York State Education Law reads:
“The regents shall prescribe courses of instruction in the history, meaning, significance and effect of the provisions of the Constitution of the United States, the amendments thereto, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the state of New York and the amendments thereto……”
Parents who care about the rule of law may consider sending their children to colleges that uphold free speech. They may consider inquiring if their local school district teaches 12TH grade Participation in Government or American Government.
Better yet, parents should be “outraged” that Education Commissioner MaryEllen Eliia presides over a State Education Department that fails to adequately educate students on the bulwark of our basic freedoms, the state and national Constitution.
Laurann Pandelakis
Manhasset
