If you would have told anyone 35 or older several years ago that an elementary school in the heartland of America would ban Valentine’s Day and other “dominant holidays” for any reason, you probably would have just shook your head and wrote the person off as a loony tune.

And yet, that’s exactly what happened a few short weeks ago in the run-up to one of the most fun “holidays” for children (and for adults).

As reported by the Washington Times, none of the young pupils at the Bruce Vento Elementary School in St. Paul, Minnesota, were not able to exchange paper valentines and candies last week because the politically correct Leftist running the school – that would be Principal Scott Masini – deemed the celebration no longer “inclusive” enough.

The other holidays that will no longer be observed include Thanksgiving, Christmas and Halloween.

In a letter addressed to families, Masini said “my personal feeling is we need to find a way to honor and engage in holidays that are inclusive of our student population.”

The letter, which was sent just a few weeks before Valentine’s Day, continued, “I have come to the difficult decision to discontinue the celebration of the dominant holidays until we can come to a better understanding of how the dominant view will suppress someone else’s view.

“One of the concerns that I have,” Masini noted, “ … is whether or not this practice is encroaching on the educational opportunities of others and threatening the culture of tolerance and respect for all.

“I’m struggling with this and I don’t know what the right answer is. But, what I do know is celebrating some holidays and not others is not inclusive of all of the students we serve,” he wrote.

Increasingly, the “right” answer from Leftist worshipers of PC is to just ban something, and always something that is traditional to American culture, in deference to others who are not Americans but are in America and are [allegedly] here to absorb and assimilate American culture.

It has not spread to all schools

Not all public school administrators have drank the Marxist kool aid, however. As the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported:

Thomas R. Scarice, the superintendent of Madison Public Schools in Connecticut, promotes celebrating holidays in schools while remaining inclusive.

“Children are predisposed to have fun, and once we take those opportunities away, learning suffers,” Scarice said. “While being sensitive to backgrounds of all different folks, I think school should be a place that children want to run into every morning rather than run out of out of every day at 3 p.m.”

But clearly the trend is away from American cultural traditions so that, in another century, many of them will probably disappear altogether. Think not? Consider that 50, 40, 20, even 10 years ago this kind of stupidity wasn’t even on the cultural radar. That’s because back then we still expected those who were fortunate enough to emigrate to the United States to bring their culture with them, but to be expected to learn ours as well – and adopt it as their own.

“When in Rome… do as the Romans do.”

Noted columnist Pamela Geller on her web site: “No other country other than Western ones strip away their traditions, holidays, customs and cultural mores to suit their immigrant populations. Moves like those made by Masini and others of his ilk are actually the opposite of being thoughtful, rather, they are reckless and pave the way for grave cultural consequences for our country.”

She’s right, of course. Try moving 100 Christian students into a 300-person school in any Muslim-dominant country and demand an end to the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, in deference to Christmas, and see how that works out.

But there is also this: Ethnicism and racism. These hatreds are taught to children by adults – PC adherents like Masini, and likely some of the parents of kids who go to his school. Banning American cultural traditions and holidays makes little minds believe they are inherently bad and unworthy; as they grow into young adults they will continue to believe as much, because they’ve been taught to believe it through the actions of those over them.

Banning American traditions and culture is not “inclusiveness” – it’s exclusiveness.

Sources:

Washington Times

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Pamela Geller