Whenever schools attempt to prove they are "tolerant" of world cultures, they often create a big, three-ring mess. Hosting a benign "diversity day" is often as far as it goes. The kids learn valuable lessons about Eskimos and the Masai and then get on with the math and reading. That’s fine.
But things get really out of hand when a school like the Bacon Academy in Colchester tries to force a lesson in religious differences down kids’ throats.
According to the Associated Press, Caitlin Dean, a 15-year-old freshman, "volunteered with a few other students to wear traditional Muslim clothing to school for an entire day in February after a Middle Eastern Studies teacher at Bacon Academy announced that she was looking for students to promote her class by wearing the garb. Caitlin covered her slender frame and short brown hair with a periwinkle burqa, which concealed her face."
Not surprisingly, cementheads at the school hurled all kinds of anti-Muslim slurs at her. Racist comments at anyone is wrong and should be punished, but I wonder if the Middle East studies teacher, Angie Parkinson, really thought about what her lesson was teaching her students.
What’s the message of the burqa? That women are separate and unequal, not worthy of sharing public space with males. The full-body, face-completely-covered burqa is a horrendous symbol of oppression against women, under the guise of religious morals. The teacher is trying to teach a lesson about tolerance by endorsing one of the most intolerant symbols ever devised. What’s next? Is she going to have kids walk around in black face and pimp hats during Black History Month?
The deeper schools get themselves into the culture of diversity, the more they twist themselves into knots. For instance, Bacon Academy has a gay-straight alliance club. That’s wonderful, but will Parkinson tell them that in many Muslim countries, being gay is a crime? That there is only one gay pride parade in the Middle East, and it’s in Tel Aviv. There is also a Save Darfur club. Do these kids know who is dying and who is doing the killing in the Darfur region? Black Africans are being slaughtered by Arab radicals as the Islamic government in Sudan looks the other way and Muslim leaders around the world have nothing to say about it. Parkinson wants to set up a teacher exchange with a Saudi Arabian school. Perhaps the Saudi teacher could bring some of the nation’s official school textbooks, which teach first graders that "every religion other than Islam is false."
If that’s diversity, then the circus clowns are running the show.