Teach Your Children

There is that song by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young which contains these prophetic words:

Teach your children well...
And feed them on your dreams,
The one they picks, the one you'll know by.

If the reports are true, of Palestinian kids being taught to hate and kill Jews through 'Sesame Street'-type TV shows, that nation is setting itself up for disaster. It is like raising a nation of "Jack the Rippers" and thinking they will be loyal and obedient citizens.

Hitler did it in a nation stunned and apathetic after WWI. He also created the SS, one of the most despised organizations in the world at the time. Like Ozymandius, only rubble remains of Hitler's dreams.

Teaching children to hate is almost the ultimate evil. It spreads the sickness of racial and cultural bigotry by replacing a child's natural curiosity with fear. It is not unique to any nation. There are too many examples in the good old USA for us to point fingers at any other country. What we can do as a vast community of webloggers is to cast light into dark corners where these cockroaches are hiding.

In today's world of weblogs, such evil deeds are impossible to hide. They invite their own destruction from aroused public opinion and occasionally, retribution from armed forces.

On the home front, you might give your kids a hug and teach them how to recognize good people.

It's a start anyway.

Comments

[Linda]

I just want to go home and give my kid a hug now on general principle. I just about lost my breakfst, reading that report.

It would be interesting to juxtapose this evil brainwashing campaign with Israeli children's programming. I'll bet the differences are vast.

[Beth]

Rodgers and Hammerstein said it so well in their lyrics from "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught (from South Pacific). . .

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

My take: teachers can be our inspiration and our nemesis.

[David]

Thanks for those lyrics, Beth.

Teachers are, for a time, the guardians of our children's well being and sanity.

As with any guardians, it is important to watch their actions and what values they teach.