"Halloween" Returned to NYC Schools

No, we're not going to say sanity returned to New York City educators, rather they were caught with their pants down and backtracked quickly as the idiocy of what they were doing became public.

As you'll recall, NY's education department banned certain inflammatory words from its standardized tests. You know, incendiary powder kegs like "Halloween," "birthday," "dinosaur," and "computer." They were banned because simply seeing these words on paper would reduce a child's fragile psyche to the equivalent of a quivering bowl of Jell-O.

Parents, though, had more common sense than those teaching their children (naturally) and raised a ruckus over the ban. Ridiculed and mocked for their stupidity -- and it was a stupid decision -- education department officials folded like the cliched house of cards and said, "On second thought, never mind."

“After reconsidering our message to test publishers and the reaction from parents, we will revise our guidance and eliminate the list of words to avoid on tests."

Although test publishers are advised to "be sensitive to student backgrounds," there will be no words banned. While this is a victory for common sense, the advocates of asininity are always hard at work devising new ares of outrage so we must always be vigilant to their machinations.