PCC looks to shield children from bloody historical events
Photo by Marta Kierkus
Following years of attempting to neuter popular entertainment properties, the watchdog group known as the Parents Censorship Council (PCC) is now attempting to actively censor history for its objectionable content.
Since 1989, the PCC has been known to advocate for the censorship of entertainment products, mostly through pressuring television broadcasters and film studios to stop and/or limit the production of content that the council claims to be harmful to children.
However, PCC founder Gorth Tilman III recently decided to move the organization in a new direction and is now looking to sanitize educational texts, particularly those that cover the study of history.
The public was made aware of the organization’s new direction on Wednesday, when the PCC released a news statement on their official website that outlines an extensive condemnation of traditional historians and their depiction of violence.
“Somebody has to think of the children,” said Ellen Lovejoy, chief media correspondent for the PCC. “History is full of events that depict scenes of gruesome, over-the-top violence and human suffering that are not appropriate for developing minds. Just the other day, my 11-year-old daughter told me she was learning about mustard gas attacks in World War I, and that made me sick.”
Outside of its usual kind of toothless public condemnation, the PCC is actively looking to fix the so-called problem by laying out plans to write and publish its own series of revisionist history textbooks. In these planned PCC-approved texts, all mentions of violence and brutality will be heavily re-written or omitted entirely in the hopes of producing “wholesome, family-friendly education.”
For example, instead of depicting World War II as a string of bloody, self-destructive conflicts between world powers, the PCC-approved texts will instead feature a short section detailing an intense game of chess between Winston Churchill and “mean old Mr. Hitler.” The same kind of treatment will be given to the prolonged dynastic conflicts of the War of the Roses, which will be re-interpreted as a hop-scotch tournament between the members of the House York and House Lancaster.
“Finally, there will be a line of history textbooks that stress responsible family values,” said Lovejoy. “When these books hit the shelves, our children will no longer have to be burdened with the knowledge of horrible historical events such as the Holocaust, the Bubonic Plague, and the American slave trade.”
Despite the fact that the PCC has invested quite a lot of money in developing its own brand of history texts, a number of traditional historians remain skeptical of the practicality of this project.
“It will definitely be challenging to omit such large portions of important historical events,” said University of Ottawa history professor Mark Jacobs. “By my estimate, if you were to remove all the violence, death, and human suffering from a traditional 800-page history textbook, you would probably be left with just enough content to fill a small pamphlet.”
Regardless, the PCC is confident in its decision to move forward with the project, as its members believe their organization stands a good chance of removing the moral indecency from the pages of history.
