Owning It

So there’s a bit of a hub-bub these days around the speech that President Obama has planned for school-aged children across the country tomorrow. If you’ve read the transcript of the prepared speech, you’ve seen that the message there is one that emphasizes the value of education and the importance of taking personal responsibility. And anyone who has peeked at my blog for any amount of time would recognize this whole “personal responsibility” thing is a big issue for me. So perhaps it’s not a big surprise that I am hugely in favor of planting this seed early and often.

And as much as I try to jam my fingers into my hears and hum “la la la la” to block out the clamoring of the close-minded (dare I say ignorant?) masses who are protesting against the president of our country using his position to get this important message out there, I can’t ignore it.  But I do think the cartoon above pretty much says it all.

So instead of beating that dead horse — Fox news is evil, the Republican party needs to reign in the right-wing “extremist” nut jobs, blah, blah, blah — I’ve decided to ponder a slightly different angle.  People have been talking about whether or not it’s appropriate for any discussions with even the possibility of a political undertone to take place in the classroom.  (I wasn’t aware that the whole “stay in school,” and “take responsibility” message was exclusively the domain of the Democratic, or even the Socialist party, but whatever.)

All this did get me to thinking about whether or not I’d be comfortable with a conservative Republican elementary school teacher for my boys.  And after some serious contemplation, I believe I would.  If.

If that teacher was thoughtful.  Critical.  Supportive.  Intelligent. Open minded.

It turns out that it’s the thoughtlessness of the current protests that really gets my goat.  My problem isn’t with people who have differing points of views; it’s simply the complete lack of critical thinking that I can’t tolerate.

I actually enjoy speaking with people who don’t simply parrot back my same views.  I mean, I know what I think.  If I just wanted to hear my thoughts, well I’d read my own blog (which I do, but that’s not the point).   It’s like the conversations between the 7 and 8 year old girls that I got to hear during our multi-family camping trip this weekend.  At the campfire, one girl turned to the other and said, “Let’s talk about all the reasons we don’t like the cartoon show Arthur.”  The other girl responded eagerly, and off they went.  This same thing plays out frequently in adult conversations as well.  It’s a little more subtle, but think about how often like-minded grown ups get together to talk about how dreamy Barack Obama is…

What I’d hope to get from the teachers who help to shape the minds of my two young children is simply that they have the capacity to encourage my boys to try to think things through on their own.  That’s no small order; in fact, that’s harder than simply teaching rote skills, memorizing facts and multiplication tables and the like.  It requires, in part, that kids learn to own their own thoughts and world view.  It calls for … oh, what’s the term?  That’s right:  personal responsibility.

Now remind me, who was it that was suggesting that we start spreading that message to the kids as part of a televised speech to school children?  Barry something…

image from:  http://wagist.com/images/political/education.jpg