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I had two daughters in grade school then, and I'd just finished co-writing a book about cocaine (The White Stuff, published by Dell in 1985, and long out of print).
While researching the book, I learned plenty of chemistry and biology, and also discovered that American medicine is best understood as a branch of sociology -- i.e., this year's fad miracle drug is next year's scourge of humanity.
So I figured my kids would learn quite a bit in drug
education,
but when I asked them what they'd learned,
they couldn't come up with anything of subtance. They
didn't know upper from downer from bender from twister, an
analgesic from an antihistamine.
At the next meeting of the local school board, I pointed out that I'd written the book on cocaine, and mentioned that my kids seemed to be learning precisely nothing in D.A.R.E. -- they didn't even know what the initials stood for. So why was the school wasting time on it?
The board turned to the elementary principal, who said
the program was imparting holistic refusal skills,
whatever that means.
Even if President Obama provides political
indoctrination
rather than a stay in school and do
your homework
homily, so what?
Do they think he has laser eyes and mysterious powers
that can be transmitted electronically, so that
grade-schoolers will march home next Tuesday singing
Solidarity Forever,
The Internationale
and
Joe Hill's Pie in the Sky
?
If Obama did have such awesome persuasive powers, wouldn't he deploy them to convert Republican senators to the cause of health-care reform? Or to convince the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan to lay down arms?
And if schoolchildren were indeed that susceptible to instant indoctrination, why must their teachers spend hour after hour, day after day, week upon week, on the multiplication table, the parts of speech, the states and their capitals, etc.?
But I suppose there are reasons for right-thinkers to worry. If kids start reading, they could grow up knowing better than to take talk-radio seriously.
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