Coney Island principal Greta Hawkins apparently doesn’t care for America.
For the second time in three years Hawkins has banned patriotic music planned for end of the year ceremonies at Public School 90 for trivial reasons, the New York Daily News reports.
Most recently Hawkins put the kibosh on pre-k graduation ceremonies scheduled for June 19 because she contends teachers at the school didn’t clear their plan with her.
“Teachers said that they had planned to start the end-of-year ceremony for the school’s 54 pre-K students with kids marching into an assembly carrying flags while ‘Stand Up for the Red, White and Blue,’ played over the public address system,” the news site reports.
“But the program struck a sour note with Hawkins, staffers said, who barred both the flags and the tune from the upcoming ceremony. Teachers at the school said they don’t know what they will do for the ceremony now.”
The cancelation is the second at P.S. 90 since Hawkins took over as principal in 2009. In 2012, Hawkins, 49, killed plans for kindergarten students to sing “God Bless America” by Lee Greenwood “because she objected to the lyrics,” which she found “too aggressive,” the News reports.
It seems obvious that Hawkins has a problem with patriotism, and is using her position as principal to extinguish any efforts by the school’s teachers to invoke American pride in students. At least that seems to be the conclusion the school’s teachers are coming to.
Despite Hawkins’ claim that she acted because organizers didn’t ask her permission, “staffers said their principal’s history of banning patriotic music from school events suggests that her motivations might have been something else entirely,” according to the Daily News.
Nobody should need permission to celebrate the greatest country in the world.
It’s not clear whether Hawkins’ behavior stems from a personal ideological opposition to American exceptionalism, an oversensitivity to political correctness, or something else. But what is certain is that the anti-America, shame-on-us mentality of liberal progressives is becoming increasingly common in public schools.
This episode at P.S. 90 illustrates exactly why it’s critically important for parents and taxpayers to closely monitor local education officials to ensure students receive a balanced education untainted by those who engrain their personal political views into school culture.
Hawkins can hate America all she wants – that’s a right granted to her as a citizen of this nation – but she has no right to block innocent children from expressing their pride in America.
This woman should be removed from her position immediately.
