Read on, and try not to weep:
The Bad News? The Schoolhouse Burned! The Good News? No Weapons Were Used!
In which we learn that the inanity of
public school political correctness makes two innocent things, Halloween
parties and firefighters, object lessons on the dangers of fearing
imagined dangers.
Call it a character defect if you must, but I enjoy Halloween. Probably, the pleasure I take in the day simply is a reflection of the happiness it brings to children. In that case, of course, I have the privilege of having lots of reflected Halloween delight shine around me: my wife, Terri, and I have eight children. It might also be, of course, that celebrating Halloween is such an Irish-American contrarian thing to do. After all, even if all doctrinal differences could be resolved among the various communions of the Christian faith, don't you strongly suspect that too deep divisions separate those Christians who demonize the celebration of Halloween, Easter and Christmas, on one side, and those who celebrate these days for their religious significance and as welcome opportunities to spend time with family and to share in the cheer that holidays bring.
Although I enjoy Halloween, I do not like what the slasher movie crowd has done to co-opt this children's event. So, in our home, you will not find ghouls, Freddy Kruegers, demonic minions, or such other characters. You will find little pumpkins running around, and we have had Injuns (er, make that Native Americans), Arabian princesses, gypsies, and even an escaped convict in the classic black-and-white striped suit. Obviously, by guiding my children to innocent and fanciful characters, and by barring them from the macabre, I am helping them to actually experience the fact that fear is not a prerequisite to fun, and that noodling with dark images is not where the children of the light should be found.
Other lessons have also been taught as part of Halloween observations around our Nation. In Deer Lake, for example. There, the lesson is one that truly amazes. One five-year kindergartner and his mom visited a local shop where they purchased a fireman's costume for the boy to where to school on the Friday before Halloween. Little Johnnie, it seems, wanted nothing more than to emulate one of those often-heroic figures that loom large in our communities when lives, homes or businesses are endangered by fire. So the Little Fireman headed happily off to school and his mom headed in to the office for the day. Neither Johnnie nor Mom gave thought to the terrible dangers to which they were subjecting Johnnie's schoolmates and teachers that day.
You see, Johnnie did wear his Fireman's costume to school, even the attached plastic fire ax. When teachers and administrators saw Johnnie all gotten up like a fireman they noticed that his costume included that plastic axe. According to the principal, by bringing that plastic ax to school, Johnnie had violated the school's weapons ban and the school's policy against glorification of violence. Johnnie's mom, who took the unexpected call at work, asked that his plastic fire ax be kept by the custodian at the school till she could pick it up. And, on Monday, when all Johnnie's classmates returned to school hopped up on their Halloween sugar, Johnnie was made to cool his jets at home: carrying the axe to school cost this wayward kindergartner a one-day suspension.
Call it a character defect if you must, but I enjoy Halloween. Probably, the pleasure I take in the day simply is a reflection of the happiness it brings to children. In that case, of course, I have the privilege of having lots of reflected Halloween delight shine around me: my wife, Terri, and I have eight children. It might also be, of course, that celebrating Halloween is such an Irish-American contrarian thing to do. After all, even if all doctrinal differences could be resolved among the various communions of the Christian faith, don't you strongly suspect that too deep divisions separate those Christians who demonize the celebration of Halloween, Easter and Christmas, on one side, and those who celebrate these days for their religious significance and as welcome opportunities to spend time with family and to share in the cheer that holidays bring.
Although I enjoy Halloween, I do not like what the slasher movie crowd has done to co-opt this children's event. So, in our home, you will not find ghouls, Freddy Kruegers, demonic minions, or such other characters. You will find little pumpkins running around, and we have had Injuns (er, make that Native Americans), Arabian princesses, gypsies, and even an escaped convict in the classic black-and-white striped suit. Obviously, by guiding my children to innocent and fanciful characters, and by barring them from the macabre, I am helping them to actually experience the fact that fear is not a prerequisite to fun, and that noodling with dark images is not where the children of the light should be found.
Other lessons have also been taught as part of Halloween observations around our Nation. In Deer Lake, for example. There, the lesson is one that truly amazes. One five-year kindergartner and his mom visited a local shop where they purchased a fireman's costume for the boy to where to school on the Friday before Halloween. Little Johnnie, it seems, wanted nothing more than to emulate one of those often-heroic figures that loom large in our communities when lives, homes or businesses are endangered by fire. So the Little Fireman headed happily off to school and his mom headed in to the office for the day. Neither Johnnie nor Mom gave thought to the terrible dangers to which they were subjecting Johnnie's schoolmates and teachers that day.
You see, Johnnie did wear his Fireman's costume to school, even the attached plastic fire ax. When teachers and administrators saw Johnnie all gotten up like a fireman they noticed that his costume included that plastic axe. According to the principal, by bringing that plastic ax to school, Johnnie had violated the school's weapons ban and the school's policy against glorification of violence. Johnnie's mom, who took the unexpected call at work, asked that his plastic fire ax be kept by the custodian at the school till she could pick it up. And, on Monday, when all Johnnie's classmates returned to school hopped up on their Halloween sugar, Johnnie was made to cool his jets at home: carrying the axe to school cost this wayward kindergartner a one-day suspension.
I have visited a firehouse, with
several of those happy Halloweensters of mine. We have scrambled
through the fire engine, the hook and ladder truck, the rescue squad,
and the ambulance. Now that my eyes have been opened by the case of
Little Johnnie Fireboy, I realize that I was actually passing through an
armory, a battery. Those trucks each had pick-axes, fire-axes, and
similar instruments. Before my enlightenment, I foolishly believed that
these dangerous weapons were merely tools kept handy and ready so that a
fireman could act quickly to save lives and property during a fire. Now
I realize that these axes were weapons; they were nothing more than the
accouterments of an inflammatory band of barbarians.
Ray Bradbury, the science fiction author, has had something to say about firemen and revisionist history. You can read his words in a little tale called Fahrenheit 451. In that story we read about a fireman of the future, the future being a time when the job of a fireman is to find and to burn books. Everyone agrees that this is how it has always been. But the protagonist in Fahrenheit 451 hears other voices, investigates, and concludes that burning things is not really why fireman exist. Here, in the little community of Deer Lake, a principal has actually accomplished that which Bradbury could only envision in fiction; she has converted the truth into a lie. And, she has done it in a way that seems intentionally part and parcel of the revisionist, anti historical, facts-be-damned progress of political correctness in American education.
Given the fact now established that fireman's tools are weapons, and that the use of a fireman's tools is just more macho violence, I admit secret bemusement over the bind into which the principal at Johnnie's school has placed herself. What if her house catches fire? Have the fireman in her community learned the valuable lesson that she taught Johnnie? I don't know about you, but there is a part of me that hopes any fire stations responding to that Principal's 9-1-1 call will have the decency to leave their weapons at home.
