Saturday 17 March 2007

Political correctness takes the bacon

Photo from www.ardnamushrooms.co.uk
First of all; Apologies to the terrriblepun - If it even can be called that... And now on to the story. Okay, so I had BBC 5 Live on in the background the other night, when suddenly they mention Honley C of E Primary and Kirklees - Kirklees is the name of our local government and Honley is two villages over from me. I went to Honley High - Would have gone to the primary too but there was a clerical mixup and I lost my place...

Anyway, I instantly turn up the radio and turn up the sound wondering why on earth Honley C of E would be mentioned on a national radio station. Turns out the school is putting on a play for the parents. Okay, so nothing new there - It's a dramatizization of the story the Three Little Pigs....Again - Nothing strange there.

But the school had made the decision that the play the 'Three Little Pigs' would be insensitive to Muslims because they don't eat pigs, and of course in the story the wolf tries to, so instead of pigs it would be the... 'Three Little Puppies'...For heavens sake!

That has got to be one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard in my life! For a start Honley Primary is a Church of England school, meaning it's a Christian school - So technically there should be no Muslims there to be offended in the first place!

That said, my C of E in the next village over had about half a dozen Muslim students when I was there, as well as some Jewish and an odd Jehovah's witness - The school bent over backwards to not offend them and kind of forgot it was supposed to teach Christianity...We never even read from the Bible - Just some good morals and ethics book.

Anyway, the 'best' part of this story has got to be the fact that nobody even complained about it being called the Three Little Pigs, plus a man who phoned in because he was Muslim himself said that the idea anyone from his religion would be offended by the story was just not true.

5 Live then interviewed a member of Kirlees council who said the decision was all the school's own decision, and had nothing to do with them.

Actually no - the story's 'best' part is that about ten minutes after the interview with the 'man from Kirklees' a statement was issued that Honley wouldn't be changing the pigs to puppies after all. Probably because they got told off for being so idiotic.

I must admit when they first started talking about changing the pigs to puppies i couldn't think why they would do that - The only reason I came up with was that fat people were somehow offended - The Muslim/Kosher aspect didn't even enter in my mind at all.

I suppose now is when I should write a summing up paragraph about the state of education today and the problems/stupidity of excessive political correctness..But I think the story kind of speaks for itself...

1 comment:

Mega said...

This is why I despise political correctness, passionately.