11-Year-Old Docked Points For Not Bashing Trump

I've been getting upset about this kind of situation for the better part of three decades. But not for the reasons you might think.

First of all, kudos to the dad for taking note of the inappropriate questions on the vocabulary assignment and going directly to the teacher and the school to take care of it.

My wife and I raised four children to adulthood, and did a moderately successful job of it. We followed three primary principles in doing it:

1. They aren't "ours". We dedicated them to God when they were born. As such, they were in our care for several years, but they belonged to Him. We did our best to raise them with Biblical standards and principles.

2. It was our job to train and raise them in the way they should live. That included the responsibility to see them educated. For that reason, we did NOT turn over our responsibility for our children to the Public Schools. We followed the Laws of our State and saw to it that they attended the local PS. We allowed that the School would present the information and data required by the curriculum, but we never surrendered responsibility for our children's upbringing to the Schools. That responsibility was ours.

3. Therefore, we remained active participants in their education all the way up to their College Graduations. We attended School Functions and Activities. We were Designated Drivers for Field Trips. We were present for Parent-Teacher Conferences. We helped with a lot of School Projects. I was a Member of the School Board for fifteen years. Etc. etc. etc.

In doing all that, we, by default, DIDN'T spend a lot of time in front of the television set. That's probably the biggest waste of time that we didn't do. But there were a lot of other things we didn't do, a lot of sacrifices we made, to ensure that our kids were raised as right as we could raise them. And ALWAYS with the realization that the responsibility was ours, not the School's.

In almost forty years of interfacing with Public Schools, Faculty and Staff, we found the vast majority of Teachers are dedicated to their Students and their jobs. We ran into a few incompetents, a few who were burned out and beyond their prime, and, yes, a few who had agendas that didn't align with ours. But they were a tiny minority, and not a threat to us or our children. Why? Because our children were our responsibility and under our care, not the School's.

Before we blame the Schools for the problems with 'our' children, remember:

Children's values and attitudes are developed almost exclusively by what they observe their parents doing and saying.

Children's basic personalities and values are already formed by the time they're four/five/six years old.

If the Public School can "undo" and "reprogram" a child in six to eight hours a day, five days a week, nine months a year, when the Parent(s) have that same child for the first, most formative, four to five years of life, and all the remaining hours of the days, weeks, and months of the year for the rest of that child's life until adulthood, I submit the Parent(s) didn't do their job effectively. But it's always easier to blame someone or something else.

The more people that catch this type of behavior and take action to stamp it out the more progress we will make in balancing the political atmosphere in this country. This starts with the children. Give them the truth and the whole truth without emotion and biased opinion added. It's difficult enough to see whats really going on without someone throwing propaganda in our faces in the process And children are the most vulnerable to this stuff.

While stationed at NSB Bangor, in Washington State:
__I had to speak to a teacher and explain that teaching my daughter spiking old growth timber with 10 inch cast iron spikes was not "valid" political speech because an owls life is not "just as important" as a human's life.
__I affirmed that she was correct; the only reason anyone would join the military (particularly me) is because they are "evil, crazy killers" and that the defense budget "stole food from the mouths of thousands of American children each year, who died of hunger. I let her know that I was currently working on an op plan that would result in the death of all she knew and loved, but my CO wouldn't approve the plan until I ensured that 100% of all children under the age of 10 in Kitsap County starved to death BEFORE, the Toys for Tots drive could distribute the toys. We were going to keep the toys and play with them ourselves.