Amateur Dramatics
The Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania sent out an email to parents after a photograph of a student in a white hooded robe made the rounds on social media and caused some sort of panic. The individual was in a hallway in Lower Merion High School.
Run, children! The Klan are in town!
The student was wearing part of a monk costume from the play Romeo and Juliet, which was being used by a 9th grade class. The student appeared to be returning to the classroom.
The image, of a child dressed as a monk for a school play, was deemed “disturbing” by school administrators, and as a result of this mind-shattering trauma, “The costume will not be used in future enactments of Romeo and Juliet.”
I’m getting a headache from all the eye-rolling.
Coming soon: BlackkKarmelite.
Also, book burning.
Are there any actual grown ups left in teaching?
Are there any actual grown ups left in teaching?
Maybe the low-level hysteria helps pass the time.
Robeo & Juliet.
Also banned: Brown shirts.
These are the Stupid Years.
Has anyone measured the speed of stupid?
It seems to be increasing.
Maybe the low-level hysteria helps pass the time.
It is always interesting to see where these hysterics take place, in this instance, Ardmore, Pennsylvania, a mainline suburb of Philadelphia, 76.8% Persons of Pallor, average family income just north of $75K. IOW chance of a klansman ever having been there is about the same as winning the Powerball.
Odds of the town being near filled with hysterical leftist nut cases, however, are about 1:1 given the robe fiasco is evidently not an isolates event as the same school has required permission slips for students to eat an Oreo.
Wake me when they also decide to ban black shirts.
“Long time lurker first time poster!”
The average teacher salary in the Lower Merion School District is just above $99k. Lower Merion is where the insufferable basketball prima donna Kobe Bryant attended high school. Rich “Main Line” district with lots of, shall we say, “urban” families on the other side of the Philly line falsely claiming residency to get their kids into the district and out of the abominable Philly district. It’s quite an entertaining scene!
“Long time lurker first time poster!”
I thought I heard rustling in the bushes.
Do help yourself to snacks.
Ooh I bet that goes well with the cheese and pickle sandwiches I’ve been hearing such good things about from my friends on your side of the Atlantic. In fact one threw an insult at Corbyn describing him as a “cheese and pickle sandwich eater.” I’m assuming it’s a counterpart to our “ham-and-egger.”
Maybe the low-level hysteria helps pass the time … Ardmore, Pennsylvania, a mainline suburb of Philadelphia, 76.8% Persons of Pallor, average family income just north of $75K.
“Percentage of minority students: 21.2% (9.6% Black/African-American, 8.8% Asian/Asian-American, 2.8% Latino/Hispanic, 0.3% Native American)”
It seems like good situation for the moment. Enough diversity for photos of minority kids in lab goggles, but probably not enough vibrant diversity to disrupt learning.
And these stunts arguably have some educational use – the students won’t flourish as adults unless they can spot opportunities to one-up their rivals in displays of racial sensitivity, or at least avoid being one-upped themselves.
The risk for the school the “unintentional game of brinkmanship where someone occasionally goes and actually does the stupid thing that everyone else was just using as a phony prop to signal with”. It’s all fun and games until the administrators hand over control to the race hustlers, as we’ve seen in places like Evergreen College.
Wait, I thought the hoodie was a good thing.
I’m so confused.
But remember, kiddies, Lefties are enlightened, rational adults, guided by understanding and science; it’s “right-wingers” who are the ignorant boobs led by fear and hatred.
The median family income in Lower Merion Township is about $107k. It’s the “Main Line” as depicted in the classic film “The Philadelphia Story,” starring Katharine Hepburn who attended nearby Bryn Mawr college. Very tony WASPy upper class area.
“The district sent a second email to allay concerns that having a student dressed as a monk violated constitutional protections mandating the separation of church and state. The email assured parents that the play would be rewritten to remove all explicitly Christian characters, dialog, and iconography, and to demonstrate the school’s commitment to diversity, all students in the class would receive prayer rugs, which the school imam said would be provided free of charge.”
-not yet, but would you be surprised?
not yet
I’ll admit you had me up until the prayewr rugs.
Are there any actual grown ups left in teaching?
As someone married to a 2nd grade teacher let me tell you: no.
Around my parts everyone says we have “great schools” yet through my observations of the teaching staff I’ve noticed they all fall into one of two categories:
Either they are a new, bright-eyed naive well-meaning SJW type who will bend over backwards to implement the admin’s directives while being unable to use any remotely effective disciplinary measures (ie will burn out soon).
Or
They are a hardened multi-decade vet who will half-ass admin directives, use whatever disciplinary techniques they can get away with (usually simply yelling at the children), and bitterly complain about how it all used to be better (ie soon to retire).
Admins are usually right in the middle – still toeing the company line like good little bureaucrats but too cynical to actually care about doing their job.
Though I never looked down on homeschooling I always thought, like most things, it was better to pay a specialists rather than do a half-assed job yourself. Now? You could hardly do worse. At least with homeschooling the teacher won’t spend half their time trying to contain other unruly children while your kid dutifully sits idle. If our society wasn’t so hell-bent on the socialist schooling model I could see lots of moms choosing to homeschool the young ones and hiring specialist tutors for subjects they weren’t as comfortable with. Ugh, I’ve already said too much. Seriously don’t get me started on this subject. =/
*Oh and all my wife’s colleagues are uniformly leftists. All of them. And I live in Texas. Sure, they’re not commies and a lot of Texas lefties are mildly pro-gun and the like, but out of the 30 or so I’ve met not a single one could reasonably be described as a conservative.
I had to leave Austin, TX once a quirky left-leaning but still very “Texas” cool creative affordable college town which has become an insufferable soulless overpriced city of “woke” transplants, mostly Californians.
Jack, I wish I could disagree. Though I’m finding the faraway burbs where I live (in part because those
fucking communistswonderful Californians have driven up home prices into the stratosphere) to be very pleasant.in part because those
fucking communistswonderful Californians have driven up home prices into the stratosphereDamned out-of-state buyers forcing the local sellers to sell at inflated prices. I hate it when that happens.
Hey Spiny, bitching about carpetbaggers is one of the few joys of being a townie.
Also, that little equation doesn’t benefit the local seller unless they move to a different city, since any home they will buy in the area will have an inflated purchase price as well. They’ll also enjoy their property taxes skyrocketing, which helps fund the local government’s idiocies that have only become more ridiculous because of said carpetbaggers.
The cuisine has improved, though. So there’s that.
Right, tomorrow’s ephemera has been compiled and will materialise just after midnight.
Time for one of these, I think.
The property taxes in the Austin metro area are astronomical. I think that forced a lot of local sellers to unload reluctantly because they couldn’t afford their homes anymore.
Sam – I loved the small towns around Austin – Taylor, Thrall, Coupland, Granger, etc. Great people.
Inappropriate fashion at a school?
We can’t allow that!
Sam:
==========
…it was better to pay a specialists rather than do a half-assed job yourself. Now? You could hardly do worse…
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Instapundit has been on this for ages. I read his book, and one thing I don’t think it dealt with was why schools don’t even seem to do what they used to do well.
OK, so we’re supposed to be rejigging schools for the New Economy (choose your flavour of New Economy), but schools can’t even seem do the 3R’s anymore. Reasons?
schools can’t even seem do the 3R’s anymore. Reasons?
Because that’s racist!
Or Patriarchal.
Or something.
Shut up!
“Also banned: Brown shirts.”
Wonder how long it will take the school administration to figure out why they aren’t getting delivery of UPS packages anymore?
Odds of the town being near filled with hysterical leftist nut cases, however, are about 1:1 given the robe fiasco is evidently not an isolates event as the same school has required permission slips for students to eat an Oreo.
Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon
I think I can be forgiven for initially thinking there was a “racism” angle to this.