Author’s Note:  The Gray Dog has been blessed and honored to be married to a professional educator who put her students and subject matter first. While there are thousands more like her, they are sadly a minority within their profession.  I know that she will not take offense at this post, and I hope that the other classroom professionals that share her integrity and commitment will understand that the following opinion is directed at their institution and not them personally.  You know who you are.  As background, please read Bill Faith’s contribution, “The Media Stripped Naked”, and my first response “Re: The Media Stripped Naked. Part 1”.

In case you missed it the first time and/or don’t want to read the first posts, let me simply state my thesis:  The media, like government, panders to its constituents.  Neither conservative talk shows nor liberal newspapers would continue to exist if they were not providing their customers a product that satisfied their political predispositions.  Likewise, conservatives and liberals are both capable of being easily led to false or misleading conclusions because of their willingness to accept the written and spoken words of their media idols.  In an effort to be “fair and balanced” to our liberal bone heads friends, I first cite the following flight of fancy that appeared on the WSJ online Opinion Journal last week.  “The Fertility Gap” by Arthur C. Brooks, makes the argument that Republicans are procreating at a higher rate the Democrats.  Brook’s questionable mathematics attempts to quantify that Republicans currently enjoy a 41% birth rate advantage over the Democrats.  Add to that the presumption that “about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents” and voila! You can rest comfortable knowing that Republicans will continue to hold power for all eternity.

A rather non-committal BLOG, Half Sigma, responds with much more impressive math to refute Brook’s claim.  After wading through charts, means and standard deviations, the conclusion reached is, “The trend in the United States is that poor, religious, and stupid people are having more children, while rich, secular, and smart people are having fewer children.”  I’m not sure that either definition describes conservatives or liberals.  Maybe both groups are the result of a mixed marriage. 

The commonality of the two arguments is that the “acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.”  Opposing sides are led to the same conclusion that children will automatically carry on the family political banner.  Partisans all regale in the brilliant analysis of their preferred position while being led down the same primrose path of whimsy.  Unfortunately, it is a path liberals may travel with relative ease and comfort, while conservatives will discover the road to be fraught with peril.

In fact, the very conservatives who send their children to Sunday School, monitor the movies and television they watch, and restrict the types of computer games and internet access available to them, happily send them off each day to the liberal indoctrination camps we call the public school system.  What?

Yes, while we whine about the loss of prayer in school, and bemoan the latest folly of the ACLU, we willingly incarcerate our children each day with one of the most powerful liberal lobby groups in the country, the NEA.  Opting for soccer practice instead of the school board meeting or dance class in lieu of the parent-teacher conference, we leave the education of our most valuable resources in the unbridled hands of the very liberal forces we reject.  Maybe, we need to go back to school. 

As a precocious child of four, I entered Kindergarten in 1956.  Over the years my parents would typically ask, “What did you learn in school today?”   A typical response might range from recounting the adventures of “Dick and Jane” to the amazing factoid that the sun was really a star!  My fear is that a child entering Kindergarten in 2006 will soon respond to the same question with concern that Jack wasn’t using protection with Jill and the earth will soon self-destruct from global warming caused by carbon emissions. 

Of course, we baby boomers are afflicted by our training.  As Ann Coulter describes, we revere teachers as having “absolute moral authority.”  We are afflicted by the argument that “there are good teachers”, much the same way as we respond to “good Muslims” and “good liberals.” 
We hesitate to fire into a crowd of priest to stop a pedophile, we don’t dare criticize a mother whose son was lost in battle, nor do we dare challenge a teacher when confronted with the rare exception that is heralded as nothing less than the second coming of Christ.

There are many remedies that some can do and many can not.  Run for your school board, attend school board meetings, attend parent-teacher conferences, meet with principals, discover which are the good teachers, consider private schools if you can, home school if you must, but more than anything, talk to your children! 

Education today, envelopes far more that the traditional Three R’s.  Today, parents must do more than prepare our children for the work place.  We must prepare them to protect their very existence. History, Religion, Culture, Language, Politics and Family are the basis for Duty, Honor and Country.  If we can take the time to give this vital gift, we may yet preserve a future for the next generation in the same manner our parents preserved ours.  If we fail, history will see us as the “Least Generation.” That’s unimaginable.

Contributed by The Gray Dog on August 28, 2006 at 09:28 PM in Bill Faith, Current Affairs, Politics, R J Del Vecchio, Religion, The Gray Dog | Permalink

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