A 'novel' way to mock education

In April of 2001, a friend and I took a nine-day trip to Egypt. While walking through a section of Cairo known as Khan el-Khalili, a famous destination for tourists and shopaholics, we were welcomed ebulliently by a young man with the salutation, "Hello, my niggers!" \nLast week, students at Columbus East High School were told that they will not be staging the play To Kill a Mockingbird any time soon because the performers would have to use the word nigger, and Gwendolyn Wiggins, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, says she doesn't want students to hear it. "That would be giving another reason to say, 'Okay, if they use it in the play, we can say it outside the play,'" Wiggins told Fox News.\nGary Goshorn, assistant principal at Columbus East, says that the school consulted with black parents and the local chapter of the NAACP on how to best present the play, but he and fellow staff members wound up canceling the production rather than staging it with its epithets intact.\nThe staff of the Indianapolis Star has recently weighed in on the issue saying, "Columbus East High School officials made the best of a trying situation in their recent drama crisis." But if backpedaling, equivocating and caving in to the pressures of political correctness represent the "best" Mr. Goshorn and his fellow staff had to offer, one can't but wonder who's advocating for the students' and teachers' rights to challenge and amend the academic status quo at Columbus East.\nEducation is not about smoothing feathers, mollifying sensibilities or infecting everyone with a chronic case of the warm fuzzies. Rather, education is about making connections between the facts and the realities of life. One of those realities is that the word "nigger" isn't going to disappear from the English language, regardless of whether students are "allowed" to hear it or not. I went all the way to Egypt and was greeted with that word by someone who didn't even speak English. And that little encounter was made possible, in no small part, by the continued efforts of people like 50 Cent, Nelly, Lil' Kim, Snoop Dog, Dr. Dre and countless others who remain unapologetic about peppering their lyrics with this word. At the same time, movies by black directors, in which the word is tossed around with absolute abandon, are readily available in most video stores. \nSo if the Gary Goshorns and the Gwendolyn Wiggins' of the world truly believe they are "protecting" an innocent public by silencing hard-working students, they could use a quick reality check, as they've obviously closed the barn door long after the horses have bolted. Discrimination and hate speech are best dealt with head-on, and there is no better place to do so than in the context of a thoughtful, well-designed and well-implemented curriculum. \n The school-wide possibilities for historical, social, geo-political and economic discourse related to this play are plenteous. With guidance from teachers, guest speakers, films, books and documentaries, the in-class discussions to which this performance would surely give rise would highlight the strides that we Americans have made towards leveling the playing field for many of our citizens. And, if some of our so-called educators are not going to stand on the front lines of the war against ignorance, separatism, ethnocentrism and bigoted recalcitrance, they should get their thin-skinned selves out of the way so the willing might candidly discuss such issues. That way, students need not suffer the side-effects of timorous school administrators hastily covering their collective butts while a hubristic few, who feign support for social advancement, cancel plays and quietly push for the banning of classic books.