This posh school in NYC has created a guide of words to retire and the new inclusive substitute words their staff should use. Sounds like a decent idea, except that it’s just putting a bandaid on the issue. Some examples of the terms are below and the full guide can be found here: Grace Inclusive Language Guide

Being respectful and sensitive towards others is wonderful, but how is assuming someone has a mom and a dad disrespectful? It is not! You might say it’s presumptions. I make many assumptions as well and I’m not bothered by someone correcting me. Note that I said correcting me, and not attacking me because I have a different opinion. The lines have started to blur between those two things for a while, but I try to still make the distinction. Instead, of making a certain vocabulary taboo why don’t we teach the staff to listen more closely and pick up cues in the students. I think that most teachers have a good idea of who their student’s are. Teachers have to go by the information given to the schools administrator’s as well as their own observations. Instead of asking the staff to walk on egg shells why not educate the child to feel confident enough to correct a staff member about their home arrangement or their personal preferences and so on. Yearly tuition at this school costs about $46,000. At $46K a year this school should be focused on molding young minds into respectful and confident members of society.

Maybe this has all been a plot to create a brand new language. It seems like everywhere you turn words are being banished. Every term offends someone. That’s just basic math — remember probabilities? I’m not on board with the whole anti-cancel culture movement, but I do dislike the phrase cancel culture. In other words, I don’t want to be associated with either side of the spectrum. I don’t mind using language that is respectful and inclusive. After all, we should all grow and learn as time passes. That includes adapting to your surroundings, as well as adapting language to changing times. With that said, I do have a problem with “inclusive” language that is created out of the guilt of white middle-upper class liberals. Instead of asking, “Lisa with the blue sweater, what marginalized population do you identify with?” why doesn’t the staff get to know Lisa and encourage her to do her best in school. It really shows that the person who came up adding “marginalized population” to this guide has probably never been the only black or brown kid in class just trying to do their work, but instead gets put up on display for the whole class to learn from them.

The student body at these schools: elementary, middle and high school are mostly white.