Your Local High School, part 1

While a few of us have been entertained by Sargon the Magnificent's pop culture study of the symbolism of the Tarot (*), we, as activists, should instead study symbolism as it appears in The Real World. To this end, I direct your attention to Your Local High School.

I went to my local high school today. It boasts a public area where triumphal shields celebrating the following categories:

Semper Cum Laude
Valedictorian
Artistic Merit
Student President
Year Book Editor
Student of the Year

Traditionally, in Vimy-Ridge-Canada, the valedictorian is the student in the graduating class with the highest marks. But not here. No valedictorian appears on the academic Semper Cum Laude listing. Neither does the Student of the Year. And neither the Student President nor the Year Book Editor appear in there either. So, there is only one award for academic excellence. The rest celebrate a diversity of non-academic virtues such as popularity, artisticness, popularity, journalism, and more popularity.

Upon another wall was are picture portraits of exceptional students. Food has been thrown on the pictures in the past, repeatedly. Dried bits are stuck into the indentations in the painted concrete block. The pictures have that greasy sheen that glass gets when it is smeared. One picture, actually the one solitary female person of color with an academic distinction, has what looks like a bullet impact in it. (But that cannot be ... the Main Stream Media would have reported the discharge of firearms in any Toronto School). The exceptional students are not academic, except for two. The rest are artists, atheletes, or have no mention at all. Just names, pictures, and greasy glass.

Around the central court of the school are the flags of the world. All the same size, with no distinction. It is hard to find the Canadian flag in the multi-cultural forest of nations, which also includes Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Freedom and Responsibility: this is what is written above wall as you enter the principal's administration center, which is as separate from the school as a keep from the castle. It overlooks the common square like a tower does a moat and ditch. To enter the principals office (including lounge, fully equipped private kitchen, library, subordiante offices for lesser vice-principals, and cloakroom) you must climb a winding set of stairs with your right hand firmly on the guardrail. This place could resist a determined assault from the forces of reason.

What is this place saying? I am sure that we would all have our own interpretation of what is going on in this place. Diversity speaks of many voices. And the voice that says that this place is a politically correct palace that is passive aggressive to engineering, mathematics, and science would be shouted down as, oh, take your pick: racist, bigoted, or mean. For a woman or a person of color to come out of this school with a positive future in engineering, mathematics, or science would be a miracle worthy of the forbidden Jesus. Instead, this place churns out journalists, social workers, and socialists. And that is the purpose of this place, as surely as Sauron crafted the Dark Tower as a place to forge weapons of dialogue to overcome the invisible white privilege of Gondor.

I suggest you take yourself into the public places that your tax dollars have built, and take a look to see who has control over them, be they the Hobbits of the Shire, or the Socialists of Sauron. Take pictures. Share them on the internet.

this blend of mixed imagery (Stalin and Sauron, indeed!) to be continued ...

I, Fenris Badwulf, wrote this at both DustMyBroom and Mitchieville.