{"id":83100,"date":"2023-06-25T05:00:03","date_gmt":"2023-06-25T09:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=83100"},"modified":"2023-06-24T11:52:41","modified_gmt":"2023-06-24T15:52:41","slug":"british-schoolchildren-mock-their-oh-so-woke-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/06\/25\/british-schoolchildren-mock-their-oh-so-woke-teachers\/","title":{"rendered":"British schoolchildren mock their oh-so-woke teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/oxfordsour.substack.com\/p\/the-weekly-wit-terms-and-conditions\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Christopher Gage&#8217;s weekly round-up<\/a>, I discovered that I shared a trait with Ted Kaczynski (&#8220;austere anarchist scholar&#8221; as US mainstream media might have described him). Not just <em>any<\/em> trait, but the one that ended up putting him in prison after nearly twenty years of sending bombs through the mail:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_68320\" style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Elliot-Rodger-Ed-Kemper-and-Ted-Kaczynski.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-68320\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Elliot-Rodger-Ed-Kemper-and-Ted-Kaczynski-480x272.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"272\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-68320\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Elliot-Rodger-Ed-Kemper-and-Ted-Kaczynski-480x272.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Elliot-Rodger-Ed-Kemper-and-Ted-Kaczynski-853x483.png 853w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Elliot-Rodger-Ed-Kemper-and-Ted-Kaczynski-150x85.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Elliot-Rodger-Ed-Kemper-and-Ted-Kaczynski-768x435.png 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Elliot-Rodger-Ed-Kemper-and-Ted-Kaczynski.png 1385w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-68320\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Elliot Rodger, Ed Kemper and Ted Kaczynski.<br \/>Photos from <em>Quillette<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230; Ted insisted on the proper use of the idiom, &#8220;You can&#8217;t eat your cake and have it, too&#8221;. Ted rejected the common and logically fraught version: &#8220;You can&#8217;t have your cake and eat it, too&#8221;. Indeed, you can. You must have your cake if you are to eat your cake. You cannot have your cake once you&#8217;ve eaten your <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/02\/20\/magazine\/20FOB-onlanguage-t.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">cake<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That turn of phrase helped F.B.I agents snare Ted. His sister-in-law read his essay, recognised the writing style, and the peculiar diction, and then grassed him up to the rozzers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For the record, this may be the only point of agreement I have with that noted austere scholar, although I&#8217;ve never read any of his writings to find out.<\/p>\n<p>Another amusing incident involved children taking the Mickey out of ultra-progressive teachers in British schools:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Last week, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lbc.co.uk\/news\/school-girl-identify-cat-investigation\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">schoolchildren<\/a> in Sussex dropped themselves into the soup after suggesting that their fellow classmate is not actually a cat.<\/p>\n<p>Two thirteen-year-old girls at Rye College were told they &#8220;should go to a different school&#8221; if they didn&#8217;t believe that a girl could identify as a cat.<\/p>\n<p>During a &#8220;life education&#8221; class, the pair said there was &#8220;no such thing as agender&#8221; and: &#8220;If you have a vagina, you&#8217;re a girl, and if you have a penis, you&#8217;re a boy \u2014 that&#8217;s it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When they queried how someone could identify as a cat, the pair were blasted for questioning their classmate&#8217;s identity.<\/p>\n<p>An <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2023\/06\/18\/pupil-teacher-despicable-identifying-cat-transgender\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">investigation<\/a> found children at schools across the land now identify as dinosaurs and horses. Another often dons a cape and demands to be acknowledged as a moon. Another identifies as Bambi.<\/p>\n<p>After the hysteria simmered, it became obvious what was going on here. And it too became obvious that this is a good thing.<\/p>\n<p>Reader, these children are <a href=\"https:\/\/idioms.thefreedictionary.com\/taking+the+Michael\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">taking the Mickey<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>When confronted with obvious nonsense held by their preachy, supposedly superior teachers, these kids cannot resist mocking them to a nub.<\/p>\n<p>After all, if one can identify as whatever one wants then that includes anything one wants. For teenagers primed with mischief, this is just too good a brew not to sup on a daily basis.<\/p>\n<p>And it is a promising sign. Ridicule, the sharp-elbowed sister of truth, is essential to all progress. Clearly, these kids are unafraid to think for themselves and are determined to see that which is beyond their own nose.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps this is the beginning of the end of what almost everybody knows to be patent nonsense. As history assures us, once something becomes a laughingstock it soon dies of ridicule.<\/p>\n<p>As James Thurber put it, that which cannot withstand laughter is not a good thing. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Christopher Gage&#8217;s weekly round-up, I discovered that I shared a trait with Ted Kaczynski (&#8220;austere anarchist scholar&#8221; as US mainstream media might have described him). Not just any trait, but the one that ended up putting him in prison after nearly twenty years of sending bombs through the mail: &#8230; Ted insisted on the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,79,9,28,13],"tags":[343,254,400,196,257],"class_list":["post-83100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-education","category-law","category-media","category-usa","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-gender","tag-language","tag-lgbt","tag-terrorism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-lCk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83100"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83103,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83100\/revisions\/83103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}