It’s hard to tell anymore whether a story is true or fake. For example, Tommaso De Benedetti impersonated well know world figures to announce the deaths of Pope Benedict, Fidel Castro and Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar. Benedetti said he perpetuated the hoax to show how gullible and weak the media are.

The media may be weak and gullible because they are graduates of New York City schools. When I first heard that more than 50 “loaded-words” were being banned from tests, I thought it was a joke. I’ve since learned that it’s not. I shouldn’t be surprised about anything done in government schools these days. The more ridiculous something sounds, the more it’s likely to be true.

The story of the banned words goes like this:

Divorce. Dinosaurs, Birthdays. Religion. Halloween. Christmas. Television. These are a few of the 50-plus words and references the New York City Department of Education is hoping to ban from the city’s standardized tests.

As the story got out, one of the arguments about the banned list is that it’s been going on for some time. This is the fifth year for such a list in New York. It’s being done elsewhere as well. California avoids the use of the word “weed” on tests and Florida avoids phrases that use the words “Hurricane” or “Wildfires.” We don’t want to traumatize the little darlings.

You may recall George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four and the memory hole. The memory hole is a slot into which government officials deposit politically inconvenient documents and records to be destroyed. Over time, the memories of such things will be forgotten and minds will be reshaped.

Nineteen Eighty-Four’s protagonist Winston Smith, who works in the Ministry of Truth, is routinely assigned the task of revising old newspaper articles in order to serve the propaganda interests of the government.

Today, it’s about dinosaur, divorce, pepperoni, hurricanes, birthdays, and television and tomorrow it will be constitution, republic, law, morality, limited government, freedom, liberty God — I forgot it’s already banned — right, wrong, good, and bad.

Most parents have no idea what their children are learning and not learning in their local government schools. Our nation’s government schools — yes, government schools — are indoctrination factories where they learn to love Big Brother.

Whoever controls the schools rules the world!