Minister of Education Kadar Asmal this week announced a new and controversial decision that will make the teaching and use of so-called ‘politically correct” language compulsory in all schools.
Asmal said that the new regulation would enforce ‘a respect in the classrooms for the cultures, beliefs and sensitivities of learners from widely differing backgrounds and race profiles”.
A spokesperson for the minister went on to explain that, in his opinion, schools were far too ‘disciplinary” in their teaching habits and tended to stick to outmoded terms of reference and communication.
‘We simply cannot have learners who are forced to use terms like Miss and madam, or even sir. Learners have to understand that, in the eyes of the democratic system, they are equal in every way to their teachers. If a teacher can call a learner by his or her first name, then why can’t the learner be accorded the same right? Call the teacher by his or her first name. This will reduce a lot of classroom tension and put things on an equal footing,” said the minister.
That is apparently just the start of Asmal’s ground-breaking new idea. Learners will also be carefully taught to avoid the use of terminology that could be hurtful to others.
Sexist and gender-based words; any terminology or slang that could give offence or be discriminatory; any phraseology that refers unfairly to physical or mental disability or any life-disqualifying conditions; any reference in any manner whatsoever to race; and many others are to be outlawed.
Asmal’s spokesperson said the new policy was based on ground-breaking work done by Dr Ernest T Billyouse, a Canadian psychology researcher and author, which has been published in a book called Taking the Gunpowder Out of Language: The Removal of Discrimination from Everyday Communications.
The spokesperson said that new educational policy guidelines would expunge for ever the use of the discriminatory language that ‘infests our life today”.
The reduction in racial and other tensions in our schools will be remarkable. ‘For instance, a learner will be taught never to use words describing colour, unless in a positive context.” Billyouse identifies these as ‘Loaded Words”.
‘If you say something like ‘I think that yellow kite is ugly’, you may well be hinting that you believe Chinese people are also ugly,” said the spokesperson, giving an accurate impersonation of one of the warm, understanding smiles Asmal himself often uses when explaining obscure facets of education policy to journalists. ‘The same would apply to other ‘Loaded Words’ like ‘blind’ and ‘deaf’, which need to be replaced with compassionate terms like ‘visually impaired’ or ‘aurally challenged’.”
Eldon Eagles, director of the Cape Town-based Movement for Free Speech, has said his organisation is ‘appalled at yet another invasion on personal and individual liberty” by the education authorities.
‘You can’t go around tinkering with language use,” said Eagles. ‘Over their long evolutions languages have developed subtleties, inner meanings, whole galaxies of metaphorical life. You can’t have some cant-struck Canadian quasi-intellectual fiddling around with that.”
Eagles went on to say that, in effect, what the education department was trying to do was produce a line of ‘educational clones, rendered incapable of individual thought; incapable of communicating in anything other than officially approved, politically-correct gobbledygook.
‘We won’t even need Ritalin to kill off the minds and imaginations of our children,” fumed Eagles. ‘What with outcomes-based education and this new nonsense, the government is doing it for us.”