Parents who send their children to local schools may feel powerless in the face of woke administrators and faculty. It may seem impossible that your discontent with your local school system could ever have much of an effect one way or the other.
Well, parents in Princeton, New Jersey, pretty much blew that myth out of the water this week. Here's what happened there earlier this month:
On Sept. 21, [Riverside Elementary Principal Ebony] Lattimer informed parents that the traditional Halloween parade and celebration and the annual Valentine's Day celebration would be replaced to make the school more inclusive. Lattimer's plan was to replace the Halloween celebration with a book bonanza day that would include a parade where students would be asked to dress up as their favorite book character and celebrate why this character is their favorite. Valentine's Day would be replaced with an "Upstander Day" in February that would "highlight our students and the Riverside normative culture, as they display the upstander codes of respect, responsibility, safety, and positivity."
Ha ha! That sounds absolutely miserable and ridiculous, which is to say completely woke. Yet after "news of the changes resulted in an outcry from parents and community members," the whole absurd plan was scrapped:
[Lattimer] informed parents in an email Friday morning that the traditional holiday traditions will continue this year. Discussions will be held with families before a long-term decision is made, she wrote.
"I realize we're still learning more about each other. Still, I hope your early takeaways will be that my top desires are to provide an effective learning environment inclusive of all of our students and that I will always listen and engage with the school community I serve. The Halloween parade has historically resulted in a few students opting out and staying home for religious or cultural reasons. Therefore, I was striving to create an option that every student could enjoy," Lattimer wrote.
To all the "parents and community members" who made this possible, we offer our sincerest commendations:
This may seem like a small, even inconsequential victory. It's not. Wokeness wins in increments; it is a deliberative, purposeful ideology, one that moves forward slowly yet inexorably. Cancelling Halloween is what happens today; cancelling all celebrations of any kind is what happens next year; something even worse comes the year after.
By fighting back, the process in this case was brought to a temporary halt. It's a meaningful success, and it should not go unnoticed.
Nor should parents—in Princeton or elsewhere—be content to stop here. Keep fighting. Don't surrender to the woke machine.
