"You've got to be kidding!" This is what my brain said to me this evening when I scanned FB (Facebook). I found a poll that asked if our schoolchildren should be allowed to watch a Presidential address to the nation's schoolchildren. Apparently schools are sending permission slips home for parents to allow their children to watch the address at school. Results of the poll earlier tonight showed about 2/3 of the people taking the poll voting "NO."
YGTBK.....
Points: Our schoolchildren have watched live coverage of September 11, 2001 devastation. They have watched "The Bachelor/Bachelorette" learning that true love may be found by going on a TV show and being in a contest to find a life-partner. (Where is the sanctity of marriage in that, I ask of the religious right wing and Sarah Palin???)
Do those in opposition fear their children may become thinkers in their own right? Under the Third Reich in Nazi Germany school content was censored and programmed to show that the Arians were supreme over all other races. Books were banned. How will our children learn about our democratic process and be able to DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES later in life if we don't allow them to have access to our President. It is all about our freedoms, people. One may argue that there should be the freedom to prevent them from watching this. With no disrespect...that is Neanderthal thinking.
I was in the fourth grade when John F. Kennedy was sworn in as President. My teacher walked her whole class to her nearby home so that we could watch live coverage of the Inauguration. My parents did not have to send a permission slip to school to allow this. My parents did not vote for JFK, but they sure did not raise a ruckus when I went home to tell them that I watched that special day on television. I still remember the sense of being pleased that I was able to witness a historic event. We discussed the election process, the formality and the responsibility of the Oath of Office. I felt like I was part of something that impacted all of America.
We have become a nation of self-satisfying and self-protecting people. Where is our concern for our fellow man? I think we have forgotten just how great our American way of life is...that was prescribed by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Think about it in a global way...outside your own little individual domain. If not for yourself, then for your children and theirs.
