Since They Started It

By now you've heard of a select segment of society who have waged war against President Obama speaking to school children in America this week. The White House has reported the speech – to be shown on C-SPAN and educational stations – will focus upon "the importance of education, the importance of staying in school, how we want to improve our education system and why it's so important for the country." Fundamentalist conservative parents in America have taken to a separate belief of the expected language and purpose of the conversation.

If nutter parents want to react like ostriches with their heads in the sand about the importance of education and communal living, far be it for me to impede on their irresponsible parenting. I would however like to talk to them about what former President George W. Bush, along with David Vitter (R-La.), did with the No Child Left Behind Act . The Act has a myriad of faults but the most illustrious for me is the attachment of an aggressive military recruitment tool. The Act requires high schools to provide United States military recruiters with the names and contact information of all juniors and seniors enrolled in United States public schools. Schools that fail to comply risk losing their NCLB funding. While students are granted the option of opting out via a form, not all school districts know about the option and/or have the form available.

When comparing documented historical recounts of Hilter and socialism, I would suggest that giving away youth's contact information in an effort to indoctrinate them into the world of civil unrest and the notion that there is such a thing as a winnable war is far more heinous than the individual who came from modest beginnings and is concerned about the wages of a high school graduate or less falling more than 30% over the last forty years and said wages are not enough to live above the poverty line, let alone compete with foreign market employees. As he has learned, attention to education is a strong indicator of social class and future success. I suspect high school civics classes would support me on this one.

*The photo is from the camp in Terezin in the Czech Republic. It was once a military camp that the Nazis took over during World War II. I toured the camp during a recent trip to Europe.