Last week the Yamhill County Oregon Democrats held a bake sale. The proceeds from this sale go to purchase civics textbooks for our county's secondary schools. How about that. In the U.S.A., the country which is fond of bragging about our superiority, we have dropped the ball on nurturing our children into becoming citizens.
I have several ideas (fears) about why this has happened. The worst is that the money powers, the same ones who decide what is 'news' have decided that young people can be easily diverted from knowing what is really going. Their attentions can be drawn into a vapid pop culture full of useless celebrities who exhibit the behaviors of wealth which they themselves will never attain. Their youth spent in a dearth of knowledge about the political process at the most basic local level.
Yes, and money too is a problem. We know our state coffers are empty, our budgets being cut everywhere. Yet, I see "Smartboards" in every classroom, carts of laptops, whole rooms full of computers. Why is a decent civics textbook not as important as a computer?
I welcome comments.
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