If you want to make a better life for yourself, if you have long-range goals, or if you reject collective ideologies such as socialism and Communism, Seattle Public Schools say you’re a racist.

Until this morning that was the shocking line on their web site, since removed but still visible in the Google cached copy, in which the school system defines what constitutes “cultural racism.” Funny, they seem to also think that only white people can be racist, as well.

Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers. — Seattle Public Schools

So Andrew Coulson wrote up a little guest column about it in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and the page quickly disappeared.

See if this sounds familiar: a government agency redefining a highly charged word to advance a particular ideology. … Um, note to the Seattle School Board and administration: George Orwell’s novel “1984″ was a cautionary tale, not a how-to book. And the folks trying to control people’s thoughts through state manipulation of the language — they were the bad guys. — Seattle Post-Intelligencer

As long as there is only one official system of schooling, for which everyone must pay, everyone will demand that it reflect their own views and reject views they oppose. In a pluralistic society, that’s just not possible. The inevitable result is an endless battle over the content of the curriculum.

The solution, as I point out in the P-I op-ed, is school choice. — Andrew Coulson

School choice would solve a whole lot of other problems as well, not least of which are the creationism-evolution debate and the overall decline of American educational standards — which are declining so far so fast, now, that the Department of Education has had to try to suppress the evidence of the decline.