|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Concurrent with the fact that Jefferson’s wall of
separation between church and state is in
serious disrepair comes a new report. Secular and religious values
that played an important role in the last presidential election are wending
their way into the arena of education.
Whether we like it or not, the
same politically moralistic dichotomies that have developed of late on the
national level are seeping down to our localities and are informing our
students with mental wounds that our educators will be hard put to heal. And
this primarily because of the infusion of parental value systems into the
educational mix. For instance, last November an
11-year-old student in Loudoun County was given a Veterans Day assignment by
his teacher that involved writing a letter to a Marine in Iraq. As reported
in the Washington Post, the student, Yishai Asido, refused to do so and told
the teacher that he wished “all Americans were dead and that American
soldiers should die. Marines might as well die, as far as I’m
concerned.” As a result of the boy’s
outburst, school officials notified federal investigators, who came to the house
of Acido’s parents, questioned them intensely and asked his mother if she was
teaching her child “anti-American values.” Note that neither the
investigators nor the school authorities questioned the teacher’s assignment,
but rather the alleged values that were being taught to a boy by his parents.
As a result of the shootings at Columbine and the events of 9/11, the whole
notion of free speech or the freedom to dissent has been called into question
– even to the point that voiced opposition to the war in Iraq has now become
an “anti-American” value subject to federal investigation. Detestable though Acido’s
pronouncements might seem, the fact is that they represent the simplistic
dissent of a young boy who has every right to take his country to task for
what he considers an unjust war. On the other hand, are we doing ourselves a
disservice if we are willing to chalk up such blatant ad hominem attacks to
the boy’s rambunctious nature, as his mother did? At the other end of the
spectrum are those more conservative parents who would question the propriety
of granting such open-ended vocal leeway to their children. In a recent edition of the
Daily Press, a picture accompanying an article on home schooling depicted a
mother at a blackboard, on which was written: “Obedience is doing what I am
asked with a submissive attitude. Submissive (to) authority.” On the same day there appeared
a poll indicating that more than one in three high school students think that
censorship of newspapers is a good idea and that the First Amendment goes too
far in terms of the rights of expression it assures. Furthermore, that there
is even discussion of replacing the teaching of evolution with creationism
attests to the strong influence of conservative parental values on public
school curricula. Clearly we are at odds with
ourselves when it comes to raising children. But when something so basic to
our political freedom as the First Amendment lies at the heart of this
divisive debate, we should perhaps wonder where on earth we’re headed. Should we, like Acido’s
parents, respect the right of our children to dissent and to voice that
dissent, or should we emphasize submission to authority and give only a
glancing nod to the First Amendment? Do we accept the notion that we should
encourage our children to question authority, or are we willing to risk the
possibility that submission to parental authority will be extended to
submission to authority on any level?
Perhaps the answer is to remove
parents from the equation completely and leave the task of education and
value enhancement to the public schools. Yet there we run a risk too, as
recent stories about the untenable disparity in Williamsburg-James City
schools between blacks and whites relative to test scores and dropout rates
indicate. As Gazette editor Rusty Carter recently pointed out, there is a
desperate need for parental involvement with students in the case of
single-parent black families. I might add that there is a desperate need for
educated parental involvement as well. Reality’s bottom line tells us
that in the grand concoction that is education parental guidance is a prime
ingredient. The recipe goes awry, however, when an inculcation of subjective political or religious values overrides
or beclouds the objective teaching of reading, math, foreign languages or
science in the home or in the classroom. There is nothing more
profitable that a parent can do for a child than to develop in him or her a
desire to learn, to explore differing points of view and to provide a milieu
where a true mastery of material can take place. Perhaps then such extremes
as wishing death to the Marines or opting for creationism and the censorship
of newspapers will fade from the scene.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
lewleadbeater.com Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved
email: LWL@lewleadbeater.com |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||