World Geography

I'm surrounded by people who think they know all there is to know about what it means to be an educated person.

 A woman in a long, thick dress tells to me the definition of education. She sighs and continues, "I closed my eyes during the presidential election.If Obama didn't win I would've shriveled into a ball for the next four years. Eh, I refuse to be friends with a republican."

 I ask her how her homeroom class is going.

 She responds, "I don't have my favorite students. They are okay. The kid I hate is gone. He was a poison."

 We walk into an old shop classroom. The decrepit gas heater rudely interrupts our conversation. Other teachers are seated around an old clump of tables. A woman drinks diet coke out of a venti-sized Starbucks cup. An intern tries to look important and takes notes. Another teacher stares at the clock. We discuss what we plan to teach the students. The assigned subject is World Geography. A seasoned teacher with a smoky voice confidently announces: "We need to focus our studies on human rights. Let's read Animal Farm. Let's talk about the Holocaust for several weeks. That's world geography. We don't need to teach world history." My thoughts are off with maps, plateaus, earth's atmosphere, and human movement.


 "I asked my students a question." Says the woman in the thick dress. "I asked them, if it was legal to cheat, would you cheat on your homework? Two students said they would not. Then I asked the students a question that naturally flows from the previous one: do you consider yourself a good person?"

The National Prayer Breakfast and the PC Police

Mitch showed me this clip from the National Prayer Breakfast of a speech by Dr. Benjamin Carson:

You only need to watch the first six minutes to hear what I'm talking about.

I think it's a mistake to understand political correctness the way he does. He frames it in terms of unanimity and restriction - the idea that political correctness means we need to agree on everything or that we get in trouble for what we talk about rather than how we talk about it.

I agree with him that we need to have conversations - hard conversations. I believe in freedom of thought and speech and the value of saying things that maybe not everybody is going to like. But I don't think political correctness negates this.

Political correctness is essentially public politeness. Its benefits are in letting people participate in a conversation who would traditionally be kept out. It strives to keep personal attacks out of sensitive arguments. It's to broaden conversation rather than restrict it.

I think it's a mistake to blame political correctness for the difficulty in talking about hard or complex topics. The reason it's hard to have conversations about a lot of important things is that a lot of those things are hard. The content makes it uncomfortable, not the PC police.

Antigone, Read

Oedipus: Come then, lead me off.
Creon:                                          All right,
      but let go of the children.
Oedipus:                                       No, No!
      Do not take them away from me.
Creon: Don't try to be in charge of everything.
      Your life has lost the power you once had. 
-- Sophocles, Oedipus the King

Audio