Your child's right to be labelled

There are times you think the world finally has gone so mad it can't keep on spinning, but then you look at the mainstream news and see all the spinning there so you know this is where it comes from. But yes, the world does get more and more mad. The 1963 film "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" was about fifty years too early; I'd settle for their version of madness any time.


Be that as it may, madness grows daily. Many of us lately have seen on tinterwebz the letter from a school to parents about a religious visit. In short, the original letter said a child must go on the trip unless certifiably ill. No, it wasn't as the letter assured anxious parents any cause for worry as there would be no requirement for the little ones to participate in a religious service (which one supposes may clash with parental choice) but would involve handling of religious artefacts.


These were not spelled out but I can imagine religious books, prayer wheels, beads, small statues of deities, remnants of some saint and so on. Or maybe it was just one item, which may be a book beginning with the letter Q, or K in some translations.


The letter said: "Refusal to allow your child to attend this trip will result in a Racial Discrimination note being attached to your child's education record, which will remain on this file throughout their school career."


Now please stop and pause here. This is a no doubt a caring 'n' sharing school handed the enormous power to label a child for years. They cannot beat your child, they cannot make them undertake harmful practices or endure uncomfortable lessons. Yet they can label the kid for being racist by doing nothing except not going on a trip to look at something.


The school has been granted a power and they are damn well ready to use it. That alone should scare us.


You may ask, reasonably, what religion is a racial matter? As far as I know people pale and blonde can join a religion mostly made up of dark and swarthy, or people with ginger genes can be in a religion originally founded for people with yellow pigmentation. At no point is a religion exclusively racial, no matter what its origins.


Yet here was a school, dedicated to the welfare and the future of its pupils, jumping up and down and screaming potential racist to a child whose parents had to give permission for a trip. Get this clear, please: the parents may or may not be racist (allowing for the fact that religion isn't) but the child is blamed.


The. Child. Is. Blamed. For a long time too, in fact for all his or her school life.


Remember those softy mushy-headed liberals with such finely tuned sympathies for all humans, those who love us all no matter what because they say they do? Well, they may well like this approach a lot because one of their persuasion believes that religion is race and little children should be condemned for what the parent says.


I suppose it is the sins of the father's visited on the children. Probably a religious idea, once.


So once more we see the left's wailing that religion is race, though many people know it isn't.  However this majority are apparently callous reactionaries who know nothing. We also suspect we aren't talking Quakers or Buddhism here. Nor are these elite-crazies in charge acknowledging atheism or even that some folk quietly nod to the gods of chance and the weather. But your child, dear parent, is deemed racist –– and we have the label ready to pin on them.


Privately I think a shit storm should descend on this school's high ups and any teacher who backed this abominable idea, and none be allowed to escape with an apology as if it was a typing error. I do not normally call for the removal of people in office, though I think some are dangerous if allowed to stay. However I think it is time the real world said to these lunatics it is time to stop, and if you oh-so-highly-paid-person has now not got a job being in charge of children, then fine. We will get someone sensible instead to oversee our children's development in school.


Better, let's not stop there. The council who approved this idea in the first place and handed this power to a school needs to go as well. Sure, that's lot of useless lefty wets out of work but I am sure they can find a job stacking shelves in time.


Just tell them that separating white milk from black puddings isn't racial stacking by the supermarket; it's because milk goes under dairy and black puddings go with the meats. And they can pray to the gods of consumerism that they still have a job next week.