Yesterday, I wrote a blog about how schools are spirit murdering our children. Today, we are going to focus on one school in New York City, the Grace Church School, and the administration’s new 12-page language guide. You may think that this doesn’t affect your community because you don’t live with the coastal elites. Pay attention. This is going nationwide at warp speed.

Grace Church School is a $57,000/year, private Episcopal school in the NoHo section of Lower Manhattan. The Episcopal Church, in the whole, has been on a leftward lurch for decades. There have even been questions about whether there is room for Conservatives in the church. The upper-crust Manhattanites who send their children to this pre-K-12 school know what they are getting.

Here is the opening paragraph from the “Grace Inclusive Language Guide”:

The goal of this guide is to provide the community with more inclusive language that is aligned with the mission of Grace Church School. While we recognize hateful language that promotes racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination are already addressed in our school handbooks, we also recognize that we can do more than ban hateful lanugage (sic); we can use language to create welcoming and inclusive spaces. This guide addresses ways we can remove harmful assumptions from the way we interact with each other.

You can read the school mission statement here. That word salad has the appropriate woke lingo, but nothing about the three r’s.

The next paragraph is chilling:

We know this guide is not exhaustive, and language is constantly evolving. Polite and thoughtful questions are typically the best way to get accurate information rather than basing decisions on assumptions. Be aware that people may not always welcome questions, and they are not obligated to respond.

Let’s suss that out, shall we? These are the words you may use today. Be aware we may disappear these words tomorrow. Be wary asking questions. No matter how hard you try, you may offend someone. The other person may cancel you.

These children are expected to use this Newspeak at school and at home.

Did the administrators at Grace Church School not read anything George Orwell wrote? Newspeak, anyone? For those of you younger than the age of 40, Newspeak comes from Orwell’s novel “1984”. Here is the definition of Newspeak:

an official or semiofficial style of writing or saying one thing in the guise of its opposite, especially in order to serve a political or ideological cause while pretending to be objective, as in referring to “increased taxation” as “revenue enhancement.”

George Orwell was a stickler for both concision and precision in expressing oneself. He believed that in order to make oneself as clear as possible, exacts words should be used in the shortest form possible. And, as he wrote in “1984”, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” It follows then that if children don’t use the Newspeak, they will be committing “thought crimes”. The way they think is changed by this corrupted language.

As the novel explains, people are taught “doublethink”. That is, they are taught to believe two contradictory ideas at the same time. Here is a brief video on the meaning of 1984:

Orwell was prescient. The book’s concepts of totalitarianism, surveillance and truth are relevant to everyone.

I have led you this far without telling you what the evil words that must be stricken from use are. Remember, this is a 12-page guide to Newspeak. Here are two examples:

Terrified yet? When a guide tells you that not only should you avoid saying “Mom and Dad”, but that you should avoid saying “Mom and Dad must be so proud” that is totalitarian in a way that would make Josef Stalin proud. Is it okay to say, “Your caregiving units must be satisfied.”?

I would bet you that this diseased thinking is already in your local school. This stuff spreads faster than a stomach virus on a cruise ship. It is a million times more deadly.

The Head of School at Grace Church School insists that words are not banned. George P. Davidson issued a statement, you can read here. Here are two paragraphs:

We know that policing language demonstrates more concern for getting a community to use the right words than for cultivating a sense of belonging for their members. That is not how we do things at Grace, and that is why our Inclusive Language Guide does not ban any words. At Grace we understand the power of language both to include and to cause alienation. We also know that it is our job to give community members resources to allow them to make informed and generous choices.

And:

So if the boorish “cancel culture” press wants to condemn us a newly dubbed “Woke Noho” school of politeness, dignity and respect, then I embrace it, and I hope you will too.

The problem Mr. Davidson doesn’t seem to grasp is that young children are little beasties who will cancel their friends for Wrongthink. Has Mr. Davidson ever met a middle school girl? Finally, this Administrator (please read that with dripping condescension) calls out the “boorish cancel culture press”. So, much for politeness, dignity and respect.

Why not teach kids to just be kind and polite? If someone makes a mistake in addressing you, be kind and correct them gently.

This Newspeak and Doublethink at schools has to be stopped. I urge everyone to nip this totalitarian adventure in the bud, right now.

Featured Image: Cassowary Colorizations/flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)