Here are a few more questions for parents who claim to care about their children’s education: For Christmas, did you spend more on toys, video games, DVDs, electronic gizmos, etc. than you did on specific items of educational value? Which do you do with your child more often: spend $25 to go to the movies or spend the same on a book for your child? Which did you do with your child more often in 2008: go to a movie or go to a museum? When is the last time you took your child to an art gallery or a museum? Have you ever taken your child to either?
Do you spend more time watching mindless, fruitless, television with your child or reading with them? Do you spend money/time doing minor science experiments with your children? Have you taught or encouraged them to do word or math puzzles? If you have a computer, is it used more for your child to spend time on Facebook and YouTube or researching and reading?
My point should be obvious – if we are truly concerned about our children’s educational development, we do not leave same to others – we take it upon ourselves. What we as parents spend our time and money on, pursuant to our children, dictates just how much we value them.
I’m not remotely suggesting that I don’t enjoy movies, television, or even video games on occasion – but not to the exclusion of my continued educational development, even at my age. I am not saying I have all the answers. I’m certainly not saying I had all the answers as a parent. I am saying that we have an obligation to invest more in our children than Disney Channel, video games and DVDs. Our child’s ability to score high on a video game is not synonymous with scoring high in school.
I observe, listen and interact with persons and families from all walks of life. Some struggle day to day to keep a roof over their head and food on the table for their families.
I fear for the future of our country, not because of terrorist attacks or subversion as such, but because of the increasing educational divide of our children.
On the one hand, we have tens of millions of illegals flooding into our towns and cities who are uneducated and unskilled. These same illegals are having hundreds of thousands of babies every year. Their children, in uncharted numbers, will follow in the footprints of their parents, i.e., no marketable social skills, no marketable educational skills, no marketable linguistic skills and minimal marketable employment skills. As the job market tightens, what will these children do when they become adults? Acknowledging that some of them will defy the odds and succeed – what will the rest do? How will they contribute to our communities?
That said, on the other hand we have American children growing up who are sans the same marketable skills referenced pursuant to children of illegal aliens. None of these children are being taught to take advantage of, and embrace the wealth of, free educational opportunity that abounds in their own domiciles. The difference is that our children belong here. What will the competition for low-paying, low-skilled jobs be like 10 years from now?
It is up to us as parents to instill a love of education and learning in our children. If we do not, our children’s peers and the public schools will instill their own debauched agendas in our children – to our ultimate chagrin.
Life is about balance, and that balance must include the proper instruction of our children. They are America’s future. If we continue to allow television, toys, peers and government centers of agitprop, i.e., public schools, to do that which we should, the future of our nation is bleaker than we can begin to imagine.
It is time to take personal responsibility for our future by taking personal responsibility for those to whom the future will ultimately belong – our children. It is not about race, gender, or politics – it is about being responsible.
Next time, we will look at why public schools are bastions of failure, how they became that way, why they will never improve, and what we can do to take back our nation by taking back our family.
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Wayne Allyn Root