Teacher ordered to remove signs from classroom, including one saying ‘Everyone is welcome here’
Teacher ordered to remove signs from classroom, including one saying ‘Everyone is welcome here’
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This policy is designed to maintain consistency across all classrooms while ensuring that no one group is targeted or offended by the display of certain items.
Mmmm.
Removing this display does literally the exact opposite of that.
Yeah, but it triggers future homophobic, white incels!
What about the straight white cis men?? When will someone think of them???
The key in that phrase is “offended”. You see, right-wing parents get offended when brown people are welcomed.
Logically that means whoever would be offended by that sign is offended because part of everyone is people who are not like them, i.e. they are admitting their preconceived bias. Those people are who most need this sign, so that they can learn that not everyone is like them. Those people need to go back to 6th grade.
On the surface, the policy sounds completely reasonable. That kind of thing is probably standard in most schools the world over.
What’s insane is that we’re at a point where “welcoming people” is offensive to somebody.
Or maybe more realistically, it’s easy to feign offence at a bland statement like that and be a bigot without being forced to say the quiet part out loud.
Also, isn't it the Republicans that love to plaster on a big punchable smirk and tell everyone they don't have a right to not be offended? I mean, in this, they are actually correct - people do have a free speech right to be absolute assholes in what they do and say, for the most part. Free speech does have its limits, yes, but if someone else gets offended, well....too bad. Free speech is there to protect speech others do not like and yes, that includes speech that will offend liberals.
But wow, the very second the right might have the least bit of offense - they think the government should step in.
See for example the actual political correctness they try to enforce around the rituals when a song plays at a sportsball event, or forcing kids to say "under god" while they force them to say the pledge at schools. Or about burning flags in protest, or a president they support being burned in effigy. Or trying to get their book club smuggled into schools. Or not genuflecting for "the troops", but only when there is a profitable war of aggression on the table, and so on. Or people not going out of their way to say, pointedly, "MERRY XMAS" (vs. the easy shorthand of Happy Holidays to cover both xmas and New Years, FFS. GD these babies are such whiners. Saying Happy Holidays was never a problem until these assholes had to act like it was some personal insult to them, even if they were just jagoffs that were only nominal xtians anyway. ) to these special snowflakes.
Apparently, they think they have the right to not be offended their entire fucking lives.
I understand uniformity and all, but there's also a lot of over-sheltering going on. Part of being ready for the world is knowing things out there are rarely fair and most of us get offended at one point or another. You learn to brush it off and grow thicker skin, making you a stronger individual.
I agree, we shouldn't be coddling folk triggered by messages like "Everyone is Welcome". They need to toughen up and learn to accept messages of inclusivity.
They SHOULD feel uncomfortable if they don't like this sign. It'll put hair on their chest.
Maybe they should grow thick enough skin to not get offended at this sign.
I strongly disagree with you.
Aside from the fact that teaching children to be inclusive and accepting is the path to these things being normal in the future, “well you have to learn to be offended” is the shield of the bully. It’s what people who want to be assholes say to protect their assholery.
But you know what, if someone needs to learn to be offended then maybe it’s the bigots and bullies that need to learn that inclusive language is here to stay and to just deal with it.
I agree with that last part, but I do think the notion that people should not learn that they won't be offended is not a great life lesson. I also don't think anyone should be messaging that bullies are right or that they are given a free pass and so on.
But I think instilling a certain amount of resilience in everyone would be beneficial, long term. Life throws a lot of shit at you, including a barrage of offensive things.
Ironically, it actually turns out that the cons are weaponizing this sort of thing by demanding the signs come down, because they are claiming they are "offended".
I'm not sure why we're name calling (that's what bullies do, right?) but I was definitely the receiver of the bullying growing up and have never bullied others.
I think the sign is fine and when I see signs that aren't inclusive of me, I'm fine with that too. If my kids see something that they are uncomfortable with, I'll talk to them about it. I'm not going to storm down to the principal and demand to know why someone dared to not include my child. Over-sheltering kids does them an injustice because they're unprepared. That's the point I was making, not some pro-bigot diatribe or whatever you're describing.
We absolutely should be inclusive, and we should also prepare our children for an imperfect world. You can do both.
If you don’t see a problem with the sign being up then I’m not sure why you needed to offer a counterpoint that we’re “over sheltering” children. Taking the time to write out a rebuttal sure would seem to indicate that you think the signs coming down are a good thing.
I beat my kids to make them stronger
Okay then.
I don't see how people are so opposed to the idea that "we should help our children become strong and robust so that they're not offended by everything".
Life is a lot easier when you can handle people saying and doing things you don't like without it breaking you. I'm not saying injustice should be tolerated: Quite the opposite. I'm saying that fighting injustice is easier if you are robust enough withstand it when it's directed at you.
My impression is that that's what you mean, in which case I wholly agree.
The problem is that It’s a cop out, a ruse, a diversion, a disingenuous misrepresentation of what’s happening here. It’s a flat out straw man.
Casting taking down signs that say “everyone is welcome here” as strengthening our children is simply not an assertion based in reality. Yes, we need to be real with our children so they can be prepared for the real world but this scenario is not applicable to that argument.
I would argue that taking down these signs weakens our children by sending a message that being different is bad—the exact message racists and bigots have been pushing forever. It robs them of a little bit of their humanity and we should not be tolerant of this.
It's funny how we interpreted OP's comment completely oppositely. I interpreted it as
Classrooms should, as a starter, be uniform. However, we need to expose kids to all kinds of things and not overly shelter them from different opinions, therefore these signs should remain.
If I understand correctly, you interpret OP as arguing that the signs should be removed?
I'm saying that taking down the signs is being "overly sheltering" in the sense that it's showing kids that you can just make anything you don't like go away. This is an argument to keep the signs in order to help the kids learn to deal with exposure to the world, regardless of whether they like what they see. I honestly have a hard time seeing how OP's comment can be interpreted differently?
