Political Correctness Trumps Reading Comprehension

by Mike Tonks

Clearly the teacher is much better this year than last year regarding indoctrination. His main goal seems to be avoiding trouble. And the students even learned a patriotic song, "This is my country, land that I love...."

Yet what can you say when your child reports how his fellow eleven-year-olds constantly talk about how terrible America is and how everything is "racist"? At one point he says he remarked to them, "Who's feeding you this crap?" But we know that don't we?

I can't decide whether this incident is negative or mildly positive. Students were given a reading comprehension test about the Junior Scholastic magazine that I analyzed. In discussing the Times' Square bomb incident, the magazine had called--somewhat to my surprise--the would-be bomber an "Islamic terrorist."

When students were asked about it in class, however, the "correct" answer was that he was a "home-grown" terrorist. While there are cases like that, the Times' Square bomber, who was given a life sentence today, was certainly not one of them. He may have been living in America but had strong connections to the Taliban and seems to have immigrated as an agent for the group, not some average joe who just got enraged by economic difficulties.

At any rate, my son wrote accurately that he was an Islamist-motivated terrorist. The teacher would not acknowledge this as the right answer, though it is true and what was written in the text. He responded that while this was the "wrong" answer, my son was "entitled to his opinion" and so he didn't take off points.

In a sense, though, this was an exercise in learning to put ideology over evidence, perhaps the main theme of these kids' education on social and political issues.

yes, we all know that the BS ( it really was steer manure this fried bean used ) bomber and the overstated 'panic' ( thanks, whore media.. ) you freaking rabid dogs for Israel are all over the place with these obvious staged escapades of frightclown performances with, but could you at least be a bit more subtle about the anti-Muslim rhetoric?

Oh, that's right, subtlety is not a practiced art when blunt trauma has always worked so well.

There were no Muslims who assassinated a 19 year old American citizen on the high seas, trying to break your miserable siege on Gaza.

I think the correct term is "domestic terrorist."

"Islamic terrorist" is also correct, but too broad. It's racist because it's too broad and Islam isn't well known to Americans. We especially aren't familiar with it first-hand.

They key is to identify the specific organization, or lack thereof. "Al Qaeda affilited terrorist", "Al Shabab affliated terrorist." "Domestic terrorist unaffiliated with any organization."

When people were dealing with the JDL, they never said "Jewish terrorist." They'd say "the JDL", and some would add that they're a domestic terrorist organization. People went pretty easy on Irv Rubin.

They didn't call Tim McVeigh an "American terrorist". They did call him a domestic terrorist, but associated him with "the militia movement", but weren't clear of the exact ties.

They didn't call Joe Stack, the guy who flew into the IRS building in Austin, a terrorist at all, but he was clearly a right wing libertarian-oriented domestic terrorist.

When you get specific about terrorism, it becomes clear that the typical terrorist has some mental issues, is highly idealistic, and has knowledge and the money to create some kind of bomb. The political right wing terrorists are isolated politically, but also operate in the mainstream. The religious terrorists seem to be networked to other fanatics, but the network is in the fringe of society.

"Islamic" terrorist?

heh heh

thanks for trying to use all of those staged, false flag events by our terrorist government agencies to paint a picture of 'terrorists' flying around like gnats, everywhere...

We have terrorists; and they run the bribed, blackmailed and corrupt U.S. corporate administration as anyone with eyes can see for themselves and they commit terrorism over the world, directly or through their proxies.

And their pet propagandists can be counted on to parrot the ragged myths that have been shown to be lies.