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Today’s blacklisted American: NY elementary school bans singing “Jingle Bells”

Banned by Brighton Central School District, NY
Banned by Brighton Central School District, NY.

The administrators at an upstate New York elementary school, Council Rock Primary, have decided to ban the song “Jingle Bells” because it might be “controversial or offensive.”

“Jingle Bells,” explained Council Rock principal Matt Tappon in an email, has been replaced with other songs that don’t have “the potential to be controversial or offensive.”

…Allison Rioux, Brighton Central School District assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, offered a different reason for removing “Jingle Bells.” She wrote, “Some suggest that the use of collars on slaves with bells to send an alert that they were running away is connected to the origin of the song Jingle Bells. While we are not taking a stance to whether that is true or not, we do feel strongly that this line of thinking is not in agreement with our district beliefs to value all cultures and experiences of our students.

“For this reason,” Rioux concluded, “along with the idea that there are hundreds of other 5 note songs, we made the decision to not teach the song directly to all students.” [emphasis mine]

Rioux use of the weasel words “Some suggest” as her source for this ridiculous justification is of course another way of her saying “I’m making this up.” According to Kyna Hamill of Boston University, the foremost expert on the history of the song (and whose work the school cites as their justification for the banning),

“The use of bells on enslaved peoples may be true, but there is no connection to the song that I have discovered in my research.

Hamill also demanded Rioux provide a real source for her theory, something Rioux of course has yet not provided.

It appears this decision is linked to — surprise! — Brighton’s school “Diversity and Equity” program, since the journalist who broke the story above learned about the banning on that program’s webpage.

It also appears that everyone involved in the decision has retired, and the two officials quoted above appear to not have the slightest idea why the song was banned, only that it was and that they have to now make excuses for this stupid action.

This story epitomizes the true state of the professional education community that runs public schools: foolish, bigoted, hateful of all of western civilization, and — worst of all — willfully ignorant. These so-called teachers not only do not know much, when successfully questioned about their ignorance they’d rather make up facts than rethink their actions, do some real research, and learn something.

Why is anyone sending their children to any schools taught by these “educational professionals?” It is like sending your kids to learn lion taming from Monty Python. Not only will they not learn anything, the fake knowledge they are taught will do them great harm for the rest of their lives, even possibly killing them prematurely.

Get your kids out of these public schools. Home-school! Hire your own teachers! Team up with your neighbors! Do anything you can to get your children away from these vultures. Otherwise, their future will be grim and ugly, built on sand and thus guaranteed to fail and harm them badly.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

21 comments

  • Questioner

    Such cases show that America’s cultural-national identity is on a weak footing. Otherwise such actions and attacks would be largely ineffective or would not even be attempted by these fi…hy communists.

  • MadRocketSci

    A phrase I’ve seen on the internet a lot is “Clown World”. It really is hard to take these loonies seriously, even as they proceed with their iconoclasm and attempt to menace us. Threat to life and liberty, or ridiculous sideshow? Is every tyranny this stupid and absurd?

  • MadRocketSci

    Also, what self respecting kid sings some official song without sarcastic modifications?

  • Questioner

    MadRocketSci:

    One can clearly see here that it is not enough to define a nation (or a people) using abstract terms such as freedom, constitution, or even just as a collection of consumers.

    More is needed to bring cohesion to the nation: For example, a common culture and cultural heritage that goes back a long way, a feeling for a fateful bond, a shared religion, a shared mentality, perhaps the same genetic heritage and so on.

  • David Telford

    “This story epitomizes …” Apparently it lobotomizes, too.

    My God, where is the pushback? Shouldn’t it take a perfunctory 5 minutes at the start of the next “bored meeting” to both repeal and ridicule the prior decision?

  • Col Beausabre

    “Also, what self respecting kid sings some official song without sarcastic modifications?”

    My college’s alma mater is sung by thousands at a time in public as “We don’t know the G D words”

    Every military that I am aware of has songs that mock the official ones. Example, the marching song of US airborne troops is “Blood upon the Risers” sung to the the tune of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”. about a trooper who dies when his chute malfunctions, the chorus being…

    “Gory, Gory, What a hell of a way to die”

    When I graduated from Basic Airborne School at Fort Benning a lifetime ago, the band played that song as we newly qualified paratroopers passed in review so officialdom has had to acknowledge it.

  • Col Beausabre

    “Some suggest”

    Who is “some”? What it really means is ” I’m making this up”

  • Don

    Just when you think it can’t get any crazier the leftoids surprise you. But we shouldn’t be surprised at the depths of their mental illness.

  • wayne

    Jingle Bells (or The One-Horse Open Sleigh)
    Edison wax cylinder (1908)
    https://youtu.be/pZoXLIrYru4
    2:28

  • Andi

    When I was a kid, this version was popular:

    “Jingle Bells, Santa smells,
    Rudolph ran away…
    Oh what fun it is to ride,
    In a beat-up Chevrolet…”

  • The traditional, twisted version …

    Jingle bells, Batman smells
    Robin laid an egg
    Batmobile lost a wheel
    And the Joker got away

    OTOH, I know of a teacher whose surname is “Chestnut” … you can imagine what the kids do with that, during the holidays.

  • pawn

    Mock them, it’s the only way.

  • Kevin R.

    The Left carries-on the KGB propaganda tradition.

  • wayne

    Pink Floyd –
    “One Of These Days” (1971)
    [animation from: “Dinner for Few” by Nassos Vakalis ]
    https://youtu.be/YZCqh0beUwM
    5:32

    “One of these days, I’m going to cut you into little pieces.”

  • Apparently, it’s sarcastic because sleigh rides were dangerous (being “upsot” is no laughing matter; okay, it’s hard to even type that without laughing; “upsot”, really?).

    https://www.humanprogress.org/crashing-through-the-snow-the-grim-sarcasm-behind-jingle-bells/

  • Star Bird

    Will they replace it with fake songs for that fake Celebration Kwanzaa? Whats become of Common Sense? Replaced with Liberal PC nonsense

  • pzatchok

    The whole Critical Race Theory thing is just made up BS.

    These idiots are so scared or being called racist they are making up junk just to have a jump on the accusations.
    ‘ I can’t be racist I banned jingle Bells.’

    Seriously bells on slave collars? Can you imagine just how irritating that would sound on the old plantation?
    I would be pulling the bells off my own slaves inside the first week and then just chain a slow slave to a fast slave.. The dogs will find any runaways easy enough.

    Bells on slaves. Ridiculous.

  • Questioner

    Mr. Z .:

    Thank you for quite short (only one word), but very friendly greeting with which you express your wishes for my welfare and well-being. I don’t want to stand back to this and wish good luck and health for the new year 2022.

  • Let’s look at the lyrics:

    “Dashing through the snow”

    Away from the Plantation, or after a runaway?

    “In a one-horse open sleigh”

    Either grand theft, or Massa’a a-comin.

    “O’er the fields we go”

    Maybe running away, but maybe chasing.

    “Laughing all the way”

    This doesn’t seem to fit with the runaway scenario. Unless the escapee was driven mad by the constantly jingling bells on the collar for which there doesn’t seem to be the slightest historical evidence.

    Why does no one challenge these people?

  • Andi

    “Dashing through the snow,

    In a one-horse open sleigh”

    Aha! Proof positive of global warming if they could dash through the snow-covered fields of Mississippi back then! SMH

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