[WND] A Tennessee school district apologized Thursday after a homework assignment asked students to pretend their “family owns slaves.”Actually, it was a pretty good assignment. I don’t think Dr. Mike Looney, director of Williamson County schools, should have apologized. It was a thoughtful assignment and would likely have benefited the students, their families and even critics. The students were eighth-graders, and were asked, “Imagine that their family owns slaves and then ‘create a list of expectations’ for those slaves.”
Besides, which slaves in that school district were offended?
Dr. Looney’s real problem wasn’t that he touched the slavery-rail of “I’m offended politics”; it was that he asked students in his district to think. You see, thinking about things means you might arrive at the wrong conclusion.
Yes, it’s a harsh and brutal world outside the protected halls of the academy. Almost everything has been “thought through” by someone, who has arrived at the conclusion that benefits him or her most. To protect yourself, you must set up an advocacy group to yell and scream the loudest for your position – because your friends and neighbors need to be protected from thinking and coming to a wrong conclusion. Wrong conclusions are ones the advocacy group founder disagrees with.
Little academia was once thought to be preparation for big academia. Since thinking usually makes use of facts and experience, the focus began on facts (kindergartners have so few), then added experiences, and certainly by the eighth grade had moved toward thinking for oneself.
Now that big academia has ruled that thinking is no longer allowed – everyone must share the same dogma to graduate – little academia has had to fall in line. Thoughtful exercises that might lead someone into personal growth must be eliminated.
But why is it the radical left, the Democrats, are the ones so obsessed with thought – or more correctly, thought crimes? Well, I have some thoughts on that.
First, having the wrong thoughts does nothing to advance the party’s objective. Since obtaining political power (owning the power of the state to compel behavior) is the Democratic Party’s objective, everything else they say is their platform.
