PC gone mad: The show-trial rhetoric that took down a charter-school founder

Readers ought not suppose that this lingo constitutes a kind of higher wisdom. The $10 words and long sentences give an impression of reflection and authority, but quite often they are the vehicle of flabby reasoning.

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For example, the writers of the petition seem oddly unfamiliar with how to construct a point. Follow, if you can, this passage accusing Wilson of being a white supremacist: “The article later reinforces the importance of this liberal education by stating such an education ‘empowers them to escape poverty and dependency.’” Um, just how is that hope offensive from the CEO of a charter school? The petitioners fail to make it clear in their composition that they consider this very liberal education to be a sham.

Or the petition claims that Wilson “dismisses certain ‘damaging characteristics of white supremacy culture’ such as ‘worship of the written word’ as means of justifying reduced intellectual expectations of students.” In English, the petitioners are suggesting that Wilson dismisses “worship of the written word,” one of the “damaging characteristics of white supremacy,” in order to reduce intellectual expectations. But what the petitioners intend to say, through the clunky use of scare quotes, is that Wilson dismisses the claim that worship of the written word is white supremacist. Again, the petitioners reveal an almost mysterious lack of concern with precision of expression and organization of thought—as if the terminology alone constitutes suasion. I doubt that people of this orientation are the ones who should be deciding who runs a network of educational institutions.

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