Culture As A T-Shirt
Wednesday, November 21, 2007 at 11:12AM Yesterday I received a set of guidelines sub-titled “A Peaceful Solution for the Teaching of December Holidays” that had been handed out to a teacher-in-training at Ontario’s notoriously left-wing Institute for Studies in Education (OISE).
The gist of the memo was that teachers-in-training must avoid teaching about any religious celebrations in the month of December, teaching only about cultural diversity, etc., etc., because the stated hope of the Institute was that teachers and administrators would “become more aware of the real issue: the pain suffered by students and parents with minority religious views.”
Oh, the pain, the pain!
Gee, I had always thought that the real issue at the heart of all genuine religious celebration, regardless of type, or time of year, was the worship of God, the sincere expression of gratitude, love, generosity, and so on, and that’s what students ought to learn about. Somehow I missed out on the pain bit, how it’s all about me, and so on.
So I wrote the student back a brief note, as follows:
“When societies are bent on self-destruction through immolation of their own core values and traditions, not much can be done. Multiculturalism is not a culture. It is a flight from culture. It presents culture as a T- shirt; something to put on or take off at the right time. But real cultures do not operate this way; they are soul-embodying realities. Any nation that fails to sustain itself by teaching a core culture (around which other cultures may rotate, so to speak), will eventually fragment and pass away. Before that time comes it will transform from a common home into a kind of motel, with each in his or her own space which they can check into or out of at will without relating to anyone else. In this motel the only common interactions will be pragmatic, commercial, and legal.”
Reader Comments (3)
What are you people so afraid of? An islamist take over? The complete erosion of your antiquated belief structure?
A solemn and dignified Eid ul-Fitr to all of you.