Upon coming home from school one day last month, I sat down
and took out The Canterbury Tales, which I was then reading for English
class. I was reading “The Reeve’s Tale” when I became confused by a certain
line. Two young men are telling each other their “accomplishments” with the
ladies from the previous night. One says, “Three times the [night], from
midnight until morn, / The miller’s daughter helped me grind my corn.”
Well, I was downright discombobulated. Why
would a man grind corn three times during the night with a pretty lady and then
brag about it the next day? If it were me, I would have slept with her! Then I
thought, “Wait one medieval minute!” – they weren’t REALLY grinding corn. They
were talking about S-E-X. Needless to say, I was highly, deeply, morbidly
offended.
Lately, it seems impossible to talk to more
than three people without offending at least one of them. Everything is drenched
in Political Correctness and that which isn’t is often censored. This PC
paranoia is more disconcerting than David Duke working in a Sheets and Linens
store.
I began ruminating about my own inner PCness
this summer while writing my report on Ron Suskind’s A Hope in the Unseen,
a tale of a poor black youth beating the odds and making it big. One of the
questions in the assignment was, “How has this book affected your thinking about
relating to peers whose backgrounds are different from yours?” Huh?
Occasionally I do think about relating to peers
whose backgrounds are different than mine, but it’s such a crazy thought that I
could never actually go through with it. Thinking about relating: what does
that mean? How many possible answers could you give to this question? I wonder
how many people wrote, “After reading Suskind’s book, I have come to despise
peers who have backgrounds different than my own and I will think negatively
about relating to them in the future.” Or maybe someone wrote, “I don’t think
about people whose backgrounds are different than mine.” When someone does
write or say something that offends someone, it is often censored.
Is there too much censorship at Pingry? Some
people seem to think so. Take, for example, those disappointed by the
abbreviated Rufus Gunther Day Assembly this year. The Student Activity Committee
was not too happy when they had “to cut out the funniest stuff right before the
performance.” Of course, students are curious as to what diabolical, immoral,
ungodly material got censored from the show.
*WARNING* If you are easily offended, do not
read the next paragraph. The vulgarity of the content will permeate and take
control of your innocent mind.
In a skit where Sonic the Hedgehog is talking
about his buddy, Tails, Sonic says, “He always cried like a little girl with a
scraped knee.” I can see the angry letters pouring in now from the
anti-Defamation-to-Little-Girls-With-Scraped-Knees Alliance. It is ironic that
this is found offensive by a school that has a “sport” in which girls bake
cookies for football players.
Later, in a different sketch, the line “I hit
the bottle pretty hard” was deemed inappropriate. This could be because it
promotes violence towards bottles – and this school just won’t have that.
If this type of material is censored, why can a
certain very fine actor in The Skin of our Teeth have a cigar hanging out
of his mouth after he enters the stage while implying that, off-stage, he and a
girl were “grinding corn”?
Certainly, the school play is intended for the
same audience as school assemblies, yet the SAC has “racy” material censored
that would be allowed in a drama production. Quite an inconsistent standard.
True, some of what was written by the SAC might
have offended some people and any institution must have some standards of
decency about what can and cannot be said, but that standard should be
consistent and should not be so confining that everything is filtered to be 100%
inoffensive. If students are in fact offended by SAC’s material, a good idea
might be to have optional SAC performances during Friday’s assemblies.
Speaking of filters, the logic behind the
Internet filter on Pingry’s computers is more misguided than a deer trespassing
on Charlton Heston’s lawn.
We have the motto, “The highest respect is to
the students,” yet the school needs a piece of software to monitor us.
The filter is not necessary, it belies the
Honor Code, and it presents more of an inconvenience than it does a benefit. Why
are students trusted to adhere to the Honor Code when taking a test while the
teacher leaves the room, but are not trusted to look at “suitable” material on
the Internet?
When I was attempting to research the Second
Amendment, I was blocked from accessing pro-Second Amendment sites because they
dealt with firearms. It took two days to lift the filter so I could gain access.
It is not only an inconvenience to have to
e-mail proxy filters and wait for a reply every time you want to access certain
sites, but it is also insulting to be so mistrusted.
Some sites are blocked because they have “hate
messages.” Censoring these sites does not alleviate the problem of intolerance;
it merely makes people more blind to it, which can be even more harmful.
As the great thinker, Voltaire, once said about
offensive speech: “I’m rubber; you are glue….” These words should not be taken
lightly.
It is essential that humanity does not begin to
prioritize PCness above free speech. Once we do away with all “offensive”
material, we are left with nothing. Everything is offensive to someone, and, if
you want to live without being offended, high school is definitely not the right
place for you.