Teach Your Children Well

There was quite the kerfuffle among my group of neighbors recently. Most of the people in this area are working parents, having fallen into the two income trap that ensnared many of the people from my generation and background. Someone’s child had come home from preschool, and casually started chanting “Black Lives Matter!” over and over while playing a game. It was discovered that the child’s preschool teacher had been discussing the “murder” of a black man by police in class. Many of the people in this area are reflexive neoliberals or Romney conservatives, without putting too much thought into specifics of policies or potential outcomes. Although they would probably claim mild support for BLM if grilled on it in public, their child joining the woke movement before they even reached school age was a cause for some uncomfortable discussion.

As most political conversations go in the suburban groups that I am involved in, there was a lot of dancing around the topic, with great care given to never uttering the actual word “black,” and always referring to the events of summer 2020 in only the vaguest of terms. The actual BLM movement itself was of course never criticized, for fear of sparking an actual conversation that would require people putting their ideological cards on the table. Instead, the concern was over children being “politicized” at this age. Everyone expressed the feeling that children this age were “too young” to learn about things like this, and that having deep conversations with them would be too upsetting and confusing.

I normally do not wade into the awkward political discussions in the neighborhood unless asked directly, so in this case I merely pointed out that if you do not teach your children about the world, the current state of our society, our history and life in general, then someone else will do it for you. This was met with halfhearted agreement and the thought didn’t really appear to register. Thinking on this later, I became curious about the phenomenon I have experienced with parents my age in which it is believed that heavy subjects involving social phenomenon are “too much” for children. Being a parent places you in a prime position to influence the generations after you, through both conversation and action. To defer that to some future date, and turn it into an ideological version of the “birds and the bees” talk, is to abdicate your responsibility to both your ancestors and your descendants.

Popular media portrayals of parents as well-meaning incompetents, combined with the nihilism of society in general, have led many to a parenting style that is only surface deep. This in turn has led to children seeking knowledge about the world around them from television, YouTube and teachers instead of family members and neighbors that would have better intentions for them. Conversations with children that touch on life philosophy, and how to approach interactions with others, should be able to start at any age. In my experience, kids genuinely enjoy deep conversations, gravitate to someone who has something interesting to say, and can tell when the adult is holding back or dumbing things down for them. If children are able to view you as an elder as well as a parent, and as someone who is able to provide satisfying and honest answers, they begin to come to you on their own with surprisingly deep questions. The profound effect you are able to have on them is magnified through them to the rest of their peers, and can have a surprisingly large impact.

This may be common sense to most of us, but is a profoundly alien concept to many others. As the cliché goes, nature abhors a vacuum. Ideological and spiritual vacuums in young children are easily filled by those who would seek to destroy everything good that came before us and will follow after us. We have the responsibility to equip those around us, young and old both, with the concepts and tools to fend off the current attack on our way of life. The alternative is to leave ourselves open to the horror of the very people we nurture being turned against us.

-By Dixie Anon

Identity Dixie Guest

O I’m a good old rebel, now that’s just what I am. For this “fair land of freedom” I do not care at all. I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won, And I don’t want no pardon for anything I done.