Sensitivity Training AKA Save the Jell-o!

I’m all about cultural diversity. Really. Maybe I’m naïve but I believe anyone should be allowed to come to America in search of a better life. My family did. But when they got here, they learned the language and respected the traditions that were here long before they arrived.

My friend’s daughter is a teacher at the school in this news story. Noble profession, shaping the minds of younguns. There’s a Muslim family that has been raising hell for a few years now and making everyone uncomfortable. Once it was because the mother wanted to teach children about Ramadan in school. HELLO!? This is a public school! Do they want me to come in and explain transubstantiation?! (Grew up Catholic y'all so I know what it means!) But she pushed until she got her way. Then she pushed again because she wanted to remove pork from the school lunches – and anything gelatin based! – because it offended her Muslim sensibilities. WTF!? My kids lunch menu has a little asterisk next to anything that may contain pork. They can’t manage to figure that out and bring their own lunches that day? Who says you HAVE to eat school lunch? And what’s more – last year when some parents asked for peanut based things to be stricken from said menu when everyone suddenly had peanut allergies, they were told that was too drastic.

This woman (yes, the one quoted in this article) has now pushed to have all traditional American holiday celebrations stopped. So they’ve now sent a letter home saying there will be no more decorations or parties at school during school hours. Get outta here! These aren’t religious holidays at school! Easter is about the Easter Bunny, not Jesus. Christmas at school is about Santa Claus and presents, not Jesus. Halloween is about costumes and candy. Someone tried to say it’s a pagan holiday and it’s about ghosts and goblins. Tell that to the next fairy princess you see trick or treating. Go on, call her a little heathen when you see her trot by with her shiny dress and evil shoes.

And furthermore if they don’t like these standard American practices, they can send their kids to a private Muslim school. That’s right, you must pay for the privilege of telling the school what they can and cannot do. Take it from me – I pay quite a bit of money every month to send my kids to private school. Why? Because I don’t like the public school system here, that’s why. I don’t agree with their system of social promotion, the way they handle discipline problems and I don’t like ghetto ass parents, either. Yeah yeah, I know not all of them are ghetto, but the ones we dealt with certainly were. Surprise! If you stand outside calling your children horrible names, that’s how they’re going to talk to other people. No kindergarten teacher should have to deal with that.

If I moved to a Muslim country, I'd be expected to wear a hijab and dress conservatively, right? And I would do so because that's their culture, and in moving to THEIR country I would be making the choice to immerse myself in it, and respect it. I would never assume that another country should conform to the expectations I brought with me. If I liked the culture in my own country so much, I'd have stayed there.

So I got off subject here. My whole point is that public schools are exactly that – public. They are run with American tax dollars. They usually celebrate American holidays – who’d have thunk it?! Either accept it and become a part of it, or pay to send your kids elsewhere. You do have that choice, afterall, it’s a free country, right?