Closed Minds Want to Prevent Kids from Hearing President's School Speech

Tomorrow, President Obama will address the nation's school kids in a televised speech. Some parents are up in arms over this, and some school districts have caved into their demand to prevent the kids from hearing him. They fear he will use this platform to twist their young minds toward a public option in health care, toward a socialist/communist/fascist outlook. This is further evidence of the closing of the American mind and proof positive that some people shouldn't have children.

The fact is Ronald Reagan addressed schoolchildren in 1998, and during that talk, he stressed the need for tax cuts (an issue at the top of every second-grader's agenda). In 1991, George Bush the Elder asked schoolchildren to write him and tell him how they could help him achieve his goals (apparently, he needed the help of 8-year-olds to sort out that "vision thing.") And his son sat reading My Pet Goat to some kids in Florida while the World Trade Center and the Pentagon burned almost exactly 8 years ago. Where was the fussing during these events?

What is particularly disturbing is the general unwillingness of some parents to let their kids hear certain things or read certain materials. It isn't just not letting the President of the United States, Leader of the Free World and America's Commander-in-Chief tell third-graders to stay in school, study and do the assigned homework. It's not wanting the little dears exposed to facts, ideas or even fantasies that don't jibe with what Mom and Dad are teaching at home. Any child who hasn't read Lord of the Flies by age 14 is missing something quite profound. The biology of human reproduction may best be taught at a fundamental level at home, but just how many parents know the difference between gametes and zygotes? At some stage, the kids have to learn stuff that is beyond what they get at home because Mom and Dad just don't know enough.

Worse is the way in which the closed minds are treating the president and his message as if he were a child molester, insisting that he keep his dirty thoughts away from the children. A father of two himself, just what is he likely to say that will offend? He has spoken on education before, and he has never told kids to rise up and throw off the shackles of capitalist oppression. Instead, he has stated that his own journey to the White House could never have happened had he not buckled down and hit the books. Do they fear education? They have had their kids at home for 5 or 6 years at least, and they worry that a single speech by Mr. Obama will convert their children to an ideology they despise? He's quite a talker, but no one is that good.

Unfortunately, it appears that there are a few factors at work here that one would like to deny but can't. First, race is undoubtedly part of the problem. The birth certificate nonsense is part of this; there are those who simple refuse to accept a black president. Then, there are those who refuse to accept the collapse of conservatism in the US. They can't quite believe that, after the loss of the two towers in Manhattan, two wars in Central Asia, New Orleans and the budget surplus, Americans don't take the rightist cause seriously. Finally, there are people who quite simply don't want to hear anything and don't want their kids to hear anything from anyone that upsets their beliefs and ideological bent (and this is just as true of the far left as the reactionary right).

Above all, these opponents of Mr. Obama have forgotten one very important thing about schoolchildren. They are quite happy to take time off from their usual routine to watch someone on TV, but more often than not, they will be screwing around too much to actually absorb what they are being told. The best defense for those who fear an Obama indoctrination session is a child's basic inability to pay attention for any length of time. It's hard to convert someone who isn't listening.

© Copyright 2009 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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