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Oct. 7, the Colorado Supreme Court will convene in Salida, where high-school students will get to watch the proceedings and hear the oral arguments.
This seems educational and wholesome -- it's not as though the students will be exposed to lobbyists or state legislators -- but apparently not everyone is expected to agree. For my 16-year-old daughter Columbine to observe justice in action, I had to sign this note:
I understand that my son or daughter, _____________,
will be studying about a case that involves the subject of
'massage' and 'massage parlor.' I give my permission that
he or she may study a case of such a nature both in the
classroom, before the actual oral argument, and during the
actual Supreme Court session.
Bill Alderton called me. He has a son in the same grade,
and he's the county judge. What is this, needing
parental permission for students to study and watch a court
hearing? How can we ever hope that our kids will get an
education if the public schools are so gutless that,
whenever there's a chance that kids might be exposed to a
real issue, the schools feel compelled to ask parental
permission, just in case somebody might be
offended.
He has a point. Then I talked to Martha. Ed, you
always argue for parental empowerment. I think it's a good
idea to warn parents that their kids might be talking about
massage parlors in their civics class. There are good
parents who could find that offensive, and they ought to
have some say about what their children are exposed
to.
She has a point, too. The real problem is that the schools do offensive things all the time without asking your consent. I'd love to get permission slips like these:
Tomorrow, your child will bring home a student
handbook which starts with the solecism 'One criteria ...'
Do you give permission to have your child educated by
people who don't know singular from plural?
From time to time, your child will be presented with
drug-education awareness programs which purport to impart
'holistic refusal skills,' but which do not in fact teach
anything substantive. Do you wish to have your child waste
valuable classroom time in this foolish charade, time that
might otherwise be devoted to grammar and arithmetic, or do
you wish to have your child treated as a pariah?
This year, your child will study American history
from the Standard Eastern Seaboard Perspective: modern
America resulted from the westward spread of Bostonians,
who provided the only cultural influence worthy of study.
We will ignore the Spanish settlement of the Southwest,
exclude the corruption of the Gilded Age, omit the American
war against Filipino independence ...
But that never happens. The schools figure that nobody will be offended by stupidity, waste or propaganda, and so they never ask your permission to expose your impressionable child to those things. They do worry that somebody might find be offended if S-E-X should come up. Then there is a blizzard of permission slips.
If it were only the other way around, if large and vocal groups of parents showed up every time their children were exposed to mediocrity and incompetence, then we probably wouldn't be reading about declines in SAT scores and the decay of public schools.
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