I have a pet peeve. Political Correctness

After a journey through the internet, I found Mr. Philip Atkinson who expresses my views almost down to a T. I do not believe that the invention of the wheel needs to be duplicated, so I will simply link to his article here.

Please note the lack of political correctness in this article. I think the use of he/she is redundant. If I am giving an example, why do I need to include both genders? If people are dumb enough to think, "Since she wrote about a male, and I am female, this must not apply to me," I pity their ignorance.

I do believe that people deserve respect and that this respect should be expressed by choice of words.

I also believe that one's speech should not be hurtful to others.

But when P.C. drives people to stop telling the truth for truth's sake – something is WRONG!

When a child gets an assignment in school and fails to meet the standards by a long shot, I do not think that it serves this child to praise his work. What is wrong with telling a smart but lazy child "You have not applied yourself, you could have done a lot better?" Why praise the fact that he did anything at all? Where is the challenge? How should this child realize that his lack of effort just was not good enough? How can he learn to compete in the real world?

What is it with this "Everybody is a winner?" No! There is only one winner. And children need to learn this truth. They go through their early lives – the time where they are molded and prepared for adulthood – thinking that no matter how you apply yourself, you're always "special." After graduation from high school the young man goes into the adult world, which is cutthroat, and wonders why he fails, why others are promoted ahead of him, why his grades in college are near failing, or why he can't get a job at all.

He gets discouraged and gives up, starts to party, get into drugs – the world is doing him wrong; he's a failure, why should he try anymore? He never learned that there is only one winner, there is only one who is second best… and the rest – are losers or in the "also appearing" category.

I learned early on that I was destined to become a loser. As a young child I was never picked for dodge ball, I was never the best in my class, I was never chosen for special tasks… I was always the outsider. Tough lesson! It hurt! And I realized that even though I did not have the commonly preferred qualities (athletic, charming, outgoing, pretty, cute, funny), I needed to make a mark for myself. I learned that even though I was not a winner, I could make myself valuable by supporting the winners. Consequentially, I became the coach's assistant. I was physically strong, so I learned to give assistance to the athletes when they learned new moves on the uneven bars etc. I made myself being needed.

Eventually I became a winner. My early childhood experiences taught me that if you can't succeed one way, create your own path and win at a game that nobody knows exists – yet.

I learned to do my job faster than anyone else did; I learned to see where assistance was needed and give it willingly; I learned to make myself valuable. I learned to never stop learning. And most of all, I learned to think for myself! Just recently, a client of mine said to me "You are one of those unknown, invisible people without whom the world would stop turning." I take that as a compliment.

Had I been raised with political correctness, and had I been praised for just showing up, I would have fell through the cracks and never wisened up. I would not have been motivated to find that road less traveled, I would not have developed the courage to be different and to make good use of the talents that God gave me. Granted, my talents were of no use to me as a child. They did not make me popular, they did not give me any kind of status in my young society, but they led me to success in adulthood.

Definition as presented by Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Political correctness, politically correct, and P.C. are terms that commonly refer, sometimes mockingly, to a social movement which was characterized by its supporters' efforts to redress, primarily by the use of language, real or alleged discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or other criteria. The purpose behind this is to prevent the exclusion of people from greater society based merely upon perceived differences or a handicap that can be overcome. Through repeated use of politically correct terms, its advocates hope to change people's thought processes from containing biases to being more accepting of differences. Political correctness is usually applied to terms describing race or ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and disability status (physical or mental). It is also used by some to refer to those who support for such political policies as affirmative action and multi-lingual education; extremist support of environmentalism and opposition to capitalism are often regarded as politically correct as well.