Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Apparently, We're Not Americans (thanks for that, Michigan)

Abso-freakin'-lutely Un-freakin'-beleivable.

The Michigan Department of "Education" is apparently attempting to ban the use of the words "American" and "America" in public schools.

Even though the word "America" appears in the department's own civics and government benchmarks, the department's style protocol for the Michigan Education Assessment Program requires that "America" and "Americans" be expunged from our testing and grade level expectations. Last week, the department ordered that our hard-working teachers not utter the words.
We're all 'North Americans'

The Department of Education asserts that "Americans" includes Mexicans, Canadians and others in the Western Hemisphere, so referring to U.S. residents as Americans is inappropriate. In the department's view, "America" happens to include South, Central and North America. Accordingly, when referring to the colonial period, the state bureaucracy requires teachers to refer to "the colonies of North America" or "North Americans." After the American Revolution, the nation is called the United States (not of America).


So, we are not the United States of America (as it states in the FREAKING CONSTITUTION!!!!), we are simply the United States. Goody for us.

The state's edict would be laughable if it were not so disgraceful. Instead of focusing on better teaching methods and educational resources to help our hard-working teachers and parents, the Department of Education spends its energy on confusing, misleading, historically inaccurate and counterproductive wordplay.

One can only imagine how teachers struggle to meet the semantic dictates of an educational bureaucracy gone awry. According to the department, before the American Revolution, George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were North Americans. But so were the French colonists in the Louisiana Territory, the Spanish settlers in Mexico and the British colonists in Canada -- not to mention the Native Americans


So would the French settlers be "French North American Colonists from France?" What the crap is going on here?!

After the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers no longer qualified as North Americans, but apparently the British, Spanish, French and Native Americans did. What people in the United States are to be called after the Revolution is not clear, so long as they are not referred to as Americans.


Oh, well, THAT'S freakin' helpful. Shut your cake-hole Michigan, and teach kids the ACTUAL HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY. Of course, it might hurt someone's feelings, so we must be nuanced to the point of incomprehensibility. Maybe we should let Canada have Michigan, that way they can be even MORE "Northern American". This kind of crap gives me a kidney stone.

4 comments:

JTapp said...

Pretty soon you'll have a government regulator in every Michigan home, making sure no one eats, thinks, or watches something they're not supposed to.

Who are the "they" who come up with this stuff???

Time to resurrect the old Michigan Militia.

Greatmoose said...

No kidding. They used to call Michigan the "Texas of the North." Guess those days are gone...

Patriot Action said...

I think when you said Native Americans, you meant to say Native North Americans. God bless North America, land that I love.

Joshua "Doc" Wible said...

Im NOT American. Im TEXAN!