Teaching political awareness

[pegkerr]

I have relied on National Public Radio for my news for years, and listen to it in the car. It's been harder the last three or four years, though. I don't like to have the girls hear all of it. The news has been so awful that I've been continually snapping it off lately (Next up: the severed head of American killed a month ago by Iraqi insurgents discovered in freezer in Saudi Arabia raid). Today I was trying to explain the bill the House of Representatives passed yesterday banning federal courts and the US Supreme Court from deciding whether a state must recognize same-sex unions legalized elsewhere. We went over the structure of the three branches of government again, and I tried to explain how this was a bill, not a law because the Senate hadn't voted on a companion action--and doubtless wouldn't--and how the checks and balance system worked, and why this bill would probably be declared unconstitutional if it became law. Delia was obviously out of her depth.

Fiona followed the explanation a little more easily. "Well, that's stupid," Fiona said.

I stopped her, because this something that I've been talking about with her a bit lately. I have passed on my political opinions to my children, but I have been realizing that they have simply been parroting my opinions back to me without really doing any analysis of their own. "Listen, Fiona, you're saying what you've heard me say, but you have to realize that there are mothers and fathers all over this country right now teaching their children that gay civil rights are wicked and wrong. And those children are right now telling their moms and dads that it's stupid for gays to want to marry, and I'm sure that their mommies and daddies are nodding their heads and agreeing."

"Well, it is stupid," she said.

Privately, I had to agree, but I went on doggedly: "You have to understand, honey, that there are many, many people who disagree with me. So you shouldn't just swallow my opinions undigested. I want you to learn how to listen to and read the news, and to think about it, and to form your own opinions. You have to realize that there are people all over this country who strongly disagree with each other on all matters of political topics. But it's all one country, so it's important that we learn how to work together. Like on the topic of abortion for example: I'm pro-choice, but there are people out there who are pro-life. But both of these sides on the abortion issue can agree that it's important to help people adopt children, to give children without parents a home, and to give couples who can't have a child biologically the chance to raise a child in a loving family." I glanced back at the two of them in the rear view mirror, staring back at me, their little snub noses sunburned, hair tangled from just coming out of the swimming pool. "You need to know that it's hard to work with others who disagree with you if you start with the assumption that they believe what they believe only because they're stupid. That's not going to win you any listeners."

"I want you to grow up to be good citizens who understand the part you have in helping run this country. To do that, you have to start to be informed. You may end up with very different opinions than your mommy and daddy someday" (here I winced, picturing them coming home at the age of 20 and telling us that really, the government doesn't have any business taxing people, and why do we need public schools anyway, when people would just be better off with vouchers, and honestly, shouldn't women be staying home with their children instead of working outside the home?). "I just want to know that whatever political opinions you eventually develop, you've thought them through carefully."

But how to do that? I wondered as I continued driving home. Both the paper and the radio contain such dreadful news; I don't want to overwhelm them. I thought about growing up myself, and how I came to learn about the world and develop political opinions. My family received Time when I was a kid, I realized, but we don't now since I generally read it at the office. Should I get a subscription of a news magazine or two for the girls to see? Sometimes the pictures are so damn grisly.

It's hard, trying to figure out how best to introduce the world, with all its terrors, and the messy process of governance, to my children.

Comments

[brithistorian.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you're doing a great job with the girls. I've always listened to NPR news (even the bad stories) with Dylan (who is 9 now) in the car with me. He knows that he's free to tune it out and ignore it if he wants, but that if he has any questions about anything he hears I'll be glad to answer them. He's surprised me with some of the stories he's chosen to pay attention to and the intelligent questions he's asked about them. I think that, even with the bad stories, radio news (especially from a trusted source like NPR) is better for children than TV news or news magazines. Radio news doesn't have the same shock value and footage on the evening news, and the kids can't get "caught up" in a horrifying picture the way they can in a news magazine - things keep moving.

[shusu.livejournal.com]

It was much easier with Linda Ellerbee and Walter Cronkite.

[ambar.livejournal.com]

I felt like I had a much better perspective on the world outside the US borders when I was living in a house with a subscription to _The Economist_. And they tend to be low on the gory-picture scale. FWIW.

[jbru.livejournal.com]

I make no pretenses about raising children. I suspect I'd be good at it, but I have no intention finding out and am glad there are good people out there (you included!) taking care of that.

You might try finding some news web sites that provide the kind of coverage you're looking for. It should be fairly easy to do something like turning off image loading on a browser and reading over the news with the girls. (I find that the BBC's web site seems to be fairly light on the images in general and so not as much of the grisly shows up there (or is well hidden if it does).)

[jemyl.livejournal.com]

I agree with shusu! At the same time I think that you are doing a great job with your girls. I also want to warn you that nomatter what you do they will grow up to have their own opinions and likely many will be different from yours when they are adults and get off on their own.

I have two girls whom I raised. They are now just about opposites politically, religiously and just about every other way. I have been pleasantly surprised sometimes to find the little ways in which they are like me. One of them, for example, absolutely hates when writers missuse their, there, and they're, which is one of my pet pieves too. I can spell fairly well, but still make errors and often don't use spellchecker for blogging and comments. I think that spellcheckers are only as good as one's usage anyway.

Your girls sound delightful. Parenting today is so difficult with all of the grit and gore of wars and all coming into our living rooms on the news. I happen to agree with you on the gay issue. One of my daughters supports gay marriages and one is absolutely scandalized by it. She cannot figure out how to tell her children what that man is doing kissing that other man. I had trouble not saying the obvious. Love is not gender specific! Nevertheless, if I ever hope to have my grandchildren come to stay with me when they get a bit older for any time at all, I will just listen and observe for a bit.

[liadan-m.livejournal.com]

I grew up on NPR and I'm none the worse for wear. Actually, I think listing to NPR helped immensely in me forming my own opinions. While, yes, I do have many of the same political opinions as my parents, I'm more liberal. My brother is much more concervitive and we grew up on the same radio diet of NPR sprinkled occationally with the local news (imho, much more gory and depressing than NPR). NPR teaches people to question, and has had an extreamely positive effect in that my friends and I who listen to NPR are much more aware of the nation and the world than your average college student. We are some of the few to realise there is a world outside the ivory towers.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Radio is good in many ways. It has no pictures, and pictures can make grusome news worse. The lack of pictures also means that you have to listen to content rather than be wooed by thee images of politicians and other speakers.

I grew up on a diet of BBC news radio, and I don't think the reports of unpleasent things scarred me at all.

Children can cope with a lot given a supportive family. My parents grew up with bombs being dropped on them and they coped fine!

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

(Note: Came by via a FOAF listing).

As the parent of a note-quite-six year old son and a three-and-a-half year old daughter, I'd say you're doing well indeed.

One thought for you: to determine if you're being parroted, you might engage our daughter(s) in a discussion where (one of) you takes the opposing viewpoint. It would be a good opportunity to get deeper into the issue, as well as to develop a discussion style. (Preferably one that avoids unsupported judgments such as "that's stupid" :-)

I admit, my kids have so far shown little desire to know about government and politics, though they have been exposed to the gay marriage issue pretty heavily as the result of a pair of our friends (who live in Pennsylvania) wishing they could marry (at least in part, I infer, for the sake of their new daughter).

But when my kids are more interested in Nightline and less in Arthur, we'll be ready for them. I hope.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I spend too much time explaining to people who are old enough to know better that my Republican parents and grandparents are neither stupid nor evil, that they do, in fact, care about the poor and do concrete things to show it, that they don't adore GWB or march in lockstep with the Republican party platform any more than registered Democrats love every Democrat and are unable to think for themselves past the Democratic party platform. Sometimes -- as with gay marriage -- political differences come from wanting to accomplish substantially different things. But other times they come from wanting to accomplish the same thing in substantially different ways, and I get really tired of having to tell people in their 20s and 30s that there really is such a thing as a caring Republican.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

Flood?

[alisgray.livejournal.com]

tragedy, I think, is the right term. mass suicide is more specific.

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

I ran into the whole issue of having to explain what was on the radio with my daughter (now 14, then considerably younger) during the whole Bill-Monica thing. That was interesting, but not anywhere near as bad as severed heads.

[kayre]

I've had similar qualms about how much I influence my daughter. One thing gave me a serendipitous opportunity to talk about how our opinions can be swayed-- I pointed out the power of music to suck us into singing along with sentiments that we don't agree with. (One of the catchiest recent country songs is "Beer For My Horses," which actually champions vigilante justice. Peter Paul & Mary have a very singable song opposing nuclear power... etc.)

Overall, though, I don't think you need to worry. They'll hit adolescence, and start challenging assumptions -- and thanks to the groundwork you've laid, they'll THINK while they're doing it, instead of just following the crowd.

[baylorsr.livejournal.com]

I listen to NPR quite a lot myself, and of the news venues, I think it's the one least likely to be distressing to the young while still informing them. The biggest thing: It doesn't have pictures. Also, it doesn't repeat itself. We keep the office television on Headline News when the Senate isn't in session, and some days I just have to turn it off. Every 15 minutes, here we go again: children burned to death in India, hostage beheaded in Iraq, prisoners tortured in American POW camps, and then, hey, Brittany's getting married again! All with footage. And with NPR, they're going to learn something about debate and differences of opinion as different people are interviewed.

It sounds to me like you're doing a great job with them. They're pretty young, if my memory serves, to be working out social justice issues on their own; wait until they're 12 or 13 and they'll have their own opinions on everything.

[mkathryn.livejournal.com]

In my never-had-kids experience, just that you're concerned that your daughters are parroting you is probably enough for now. You seem to be a pretty open-minded individual, and when you girls are ready to think more comprehensively about politics they will be free in the knowledge that you don't mind if they aren't lock-step with your own views. I think a lot of kids who spend their childhoods repeating their parents just don't ever want to think another way because they are scared that they will be wrong if they disagree.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I think you're doing great.

I had somewhat of the same prob with my daughter, or I thought it was a prob, until I realized I'd been explaining the POV of her classmates (we live in a very conservative area of Orange County, and the private school the kids are in, with its extremely high academic thrust, was mostly LDS in those days, though now it's a blend of everything) and their views all along. Plus there are conservative family members--who, like mrissa's family will feel differently on this or that subject.

So thought my daughter has finally chosen (at least now, at 23) to be a Christian radical, she isn't a lockstep sneerer at people with more conservative views. I'm doing the same with my son.

Another note: when I teach current events at school, I keep the kids away from parroting their parents' views, and instead ask them to tell me what the article is saying, who the sources of the data are (they always begin with "they", but I keep them digging until they locate the source) and the most important questions: "What is the article trying to convince you of, and do you believe it?"

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

and the most important questions: "What is the article trying to convince you of, and do you believe it?"

Yes, I never had a teacher who asked that question till my freshman year in college. My kids have had grade-school teachers who took that approach. Hallelujah!

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Speaking from the vantage point of a parent of older kids (21, 20, 17, and 13), I'd say that, like pretty much everything else, at least as much depends on the person the kid is as on anything you do. This is something that a lot of parents have trouble accepting, but I don't see you as one of them! Some kids will never want to do more than parrot their parents' views. Some will question everything from the get-go. Some will be uninterested in politics and social issues in general. Some will take their parents' views and carry them to a radical extreme, and some will go to the opposite extreme. And so on . . .

My personal opinion is that what works best for a mixed group (4 being twice as mixed as 2) is discussing things freely with another intelligent adult (or more than one) in front of the kids, without insisting that they participate or forbidding them to do so; having a variety of sources of info available as they grow up; and, as you clearly do, answering their questions honestly from one's own viewpoint but telling them that others have a different viewpoint. If the two (or more) intelligent adults occasionally disagree or even *gasp* change their minds, all the better!

P.S. I'm afraid that I'm more inclined than you to simply agree when one of my kids says, "That's stupid." They almost never mean that the person is stupid, but that the idea or approach is a stupid way to handle the issue or situation, as in "stupid: marked by or resulting from unreasoned thinking or acting" (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate, 10th ed.).

[dancingwriter.livejournal.com]

We listen to NPR with our son whenever we go somewhere in the car--so during the academic year, that means Morning Edition every morning on the way to school. Over the course of last year, he became progressively more attentive to the news. If something was particularly upsetting (although he is 13, he is extremely sensitive), he always had my permission to turn the radio off. He has realized that most of the people in our rural Georgia county do not share our very liberal political opinions--but since we are also Pagan, he has always known that we are different from the majority, so that doesn't bother him. (In fact, he seems to be rather proud of the fact that our family is rather eccentric!) It took a lot of talking, but I think he does now realize that just because a certain opinion (such as the belief that the government has the right to tell people whom they can or cannot marry) seems absolutely boneheaded to us, that same opinion can still be held by good, well-intentioned people--and that many of our family members, favorite teachers, etc., do fall into that category. I know that he has absorbed our political opinions to a huge extent, but I believe they are also his own--and in some instances, he's even more radical than I am! Frankly, I am thankful that he is able to grow up in a family where he doesn't feel isolated by his political and religious views, as I was. (Oh, the dinner-table arguments my father and I used to have about Nixon and Vietnam! We long ago acquired the sense to stop talking politics, but I have a friend, who's nearly 50, and that's *still* the dynamic she has with her father.)

Whew--I'm sorry, I shouldn't have written so much about my family in your journal. (Thanks for letting me!) I guess I just wanted to show (not tell!) that in my opinion it sounds like you are doing a fabulous job with your girls, and they are very very lucky to have such a thoughtful, conscientious parent.

Oh, and Time used to (probably still does) publish a version of the magazine for kids--IIRC, it's called _Time for Kids_. My son's reading class in elementary school used to get it.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

That's right, I'd forgotten Time for Kids. I'd forgotten it; it wasn't around when I was a kid. I might look into that.

[corinnethewise.livejournal.com]

You are a very cool mom and a very cool person. One thing I must give my parents props for is that they had a similar attitude raising me, despite being (gasp) republicans. They taught me that it was okay to have different views and that we should respect everyone's right to have an opinion. Of course now they have an uber-liberal gay daughter, so they might be regretting those teachings in the future.

[morganmalfoy.livejournal.com]

Well, it is very difficult for kids to think for themselves on issues where they've only been exposed to one point of view. I'm not saying you should listen to Rush Limbaugh and NPR, but maybe you could explain some arguments people have with different political issues. Talk about how most people want the same thing, happy families, affordable healthcare for everyone, etc, but have different approaches to solving the same problem.

-M

[boxofdelights]

My kids' elementary school gets class subscriptions to Time For Kids. "Uncontroversial" seems to be one of its criteria for "suitable for children". Only once in six years has the teacher sent home a note explaining that they didn't discuss TFK in class this week because they thought parents would prefer to be in charge of the discussion with their own kids; the article in question was on U.S. soldiers being sent to Iraq.

My daughter's current-events questions come more from the magazine covers in the grocery store checkout aisles. The last two weeks brought "Does Mary-Kate have a disease?" and "Who is Martha Stewart and what did she do wrong?" which both led to interesting discussions even though I couldn't quite answer either question!

The best way I have found to teach respect for points of view I disagree with is to point out people whom we like and respect who have very different beliefs about right and wrong. Even though I tend to choose friends whose ethical beliefs are compatible with mine, most of our relatives and neighbors are Christian and much more politically conservative than we are, so this is pretty easy.

[pameladean]

I think you're keeping a pretty good balance. I do wonder if, now that you've explained in detail that it isn't productive to regard one's opponents as simply stupid, it might be comforting to have home and its environs as a place where one is allowed to say that opposing gay marriage, or whatever other nonsense is being discussed, is stupid, just for the relief factor. It's nice to be able to express a non-nuanced heartfelt opinion in a safe venue.

I'll also add, from personal experience, that not pushing things too much is really wise. I was permanently, and I do mean that, traumatized by a sixth-grade teacher who had really hoped for eighth-graders (we were his first class after his training was all done) and decided to just behave as if were were eighth-graders. So he had us watching the evening news and reading newspapers during the Viet Nam war. After a point I just refused to do either and then I got to be harangued for being an irresponsible citizen. I was eleven and I knew the world was a big bad place and I deeply resented being robbed of what I knew perfectly well was the last peace of my childhood. It sounds to me as if, unlike my teacher, you're going at a reasonable pace.

Pamela