Our local Catholic school sent everyone home for 2 days. You'll never guess why.

The big news here in Portland, Oregon, is that a high school baseball player used a “racial hate speech” slur during a pregame, player-only huddle.

The slur itself has been kept from the public lest we all die of shock. I’m sure none of us has ever heard such a word.

Naturally, the media was called in, so the student leaders got to practice their TV interview skills.

One interesting thing about the incident: It happened at a prominent Catholic school in town, Central Catholic.

Unforced error

The reaction of the Central Catholic administration was the other interesting thing. Check this out:

• The baseball team immediately canceled and forfeited the game they were playing.
• Then, they forfeited the next day’s game as well.
• The entire baseball team was then marched onto a stage at a special school assembly and made to publicly apologize to their classmates.
• Then, they sent everyone home for the next two days, for COVID-style “remote learning.” (That’s right, not the baseball player who said the slur, but the WHOLE SCHOOL was sent home.)
• They did this so that faculty and staff could prepare “to respond to their students' needs” when they were allowed back into the building.

Which meant that another couple of days would be spent processing the trauma and psychological suffering they’d been put through.

This all occurred even though the only students who actually heard the “racial hate speech” slur were the players on the baseball team.

Heaven help us

Central Catholic is a typical Catholic high school. Its students are good at sports. It has solid extracurriculars. It is considered a notch above the local public high schools in educational standards.

Historically, all Catholic schools were known for a certain traditionalism regarding student behavior and teaching philosophy.

If you wanted your child to have an education tainted by the latest social trends and political ideologies, you sent them to public school.

If you wanted a more classical education, with a more disciplined and rigorous approach, you sent them to a Catholic school.

But that’s no longer the case, apparently. Even a public high school wouldn’t shut down its entire campus for two days over one baseball player saying one bad word.

In the beginning was ... the Word

I’m going to take a wild guess and predict that the “racial hate speech” slur was probably based on a common derogatory derivative of the antiquated term "negro" — as further appropriated and transformed by hip-hop culture. Because of hip-hop's massive popularity, this "soft A" variant has become a more-or-less neutral form of address among young people of all races.

Our entertainment industry has bombarded young people with this word for decades, making it sound funny and cool. And then our academic communities act like it’s the gravest sin to repeat it.

Obviously, it is not a word that should be used at school. It's vulgar and still retains some of its capacity to degrade and insult. But a two-day shutdown of the entire student body? With a school-wide assembly? And the local media alerted? And almost an entire week lost processing the trauma?

How about the administration has a stern talk with the baseball player? In private?

Truant believers

But that would be too easy. Never mind that the kid’s high school career will be ruined by this obvious overreaction. What was important was allowing the administration to advertise its moral superiority.

The student body was also inspired to take advantage of this educational opportunity. A week after the initial controversy, students walked out of class in protest. “Not enough has been done!” they claimed, as they assembled outside to loiter in the street and watch TikTok videos on their phones.

Naturally, the media was called in, so the student leaders got to practice their TV interview skills.

This is what is being taught at Catholic school these days. Complain. Protest. Disrupt. And above all, don’t go to class and learn anything.

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Mater DEI

One thing this controversy demonstrates is that a Catholic school is no longer a protection from woke ideology. It is, in fact, almost a guarantee of it.

So what are parents to do if they want their kids at a genuinely Christian school? Like a school where there aren’t Pride flags and sex manuals in every classroom. Where kids are not diagnosed with ADHD or toxic masculinity. Where America is not constantly slandered and vilified by radical leftist textbooks.

There are still some authentically Christian schools in Portland. I’m assuming they are authentic because they are small, they are self-contained, and they keep to themselves.

You would barely know these schools exist if you didn’t go looking for them. They dare not draw attention to themselves, lest our “social justice” local government — or our politicized media — invent some reason to attack them.

Bad education

So what was Central Catholic really up to during the racial slur controversy?

It was virtue signaling. Pretending it is more righteous than you are or I am, by wasting everybody’s time with performative outrage.

And this happened in Oregon, which famously ranks near the bottom of every national educational metric. In Portland, most parents’ choice of schools is: bad, worse, or terrible.

That is, until you realize there are a few actual Christian schools around. Just don’t tell anyone where they are!