what do these people expect?
everyone enters this world at once a citizen with rights, duties and such as well as obligations to the state and the parents. There’s no choice in the matter though let’s be clear. There’s not some magic fairy that shows up in the womb and gives you and accurate unbiased description of each country state or republic and then provides you the option to come into the world already aligned with a place and people of our choosing. We all just have to hit the ground running. And no time is wasted in providing mandated education paid for by the state. And while that is a right nice gift, but if the that education is so hampered by agenda and fear of unemployment that the faculty dare not impart any useful wisdom at all, then it can be somewhat self defeating. but no worries by the age of 5, sometimes earlier by choice, you’ll be put into public schools most likely. Oh yes one can choose to homeschool, but let’s face it… how many parents have that time? much less the patience, skill, and will to do it… i think a survey of how many more children enter public school vs. homeschoolers can answer that, as if we don’t know already. Many people become indignant when ideas like this are presented. ”Well if you don’t like it here go somewhere else!” is a pretty common retort with about as much logic as it has compassion. These are the people who fail to realize the obvious point that the wish or will alone isn’t enough. And as fair as they’d like to make everything in this candy cane world to seem, no one provides you with a way to opt out of a system that you never signed into. A system you were signed into…at birth. Then pushed through 13 years of established educational rhetoric sanitized by years of fear on the part of faculty trying to come to grips with what was ok and what wasn’t to teach/say/discuss/etc. This isn’t preparing you to make a choice at the moment you turn 18 to say “ok i like this” or “no thanks let me try another country”. Nor will you ever be prompted with such an offer.
i’m rambling i see…
meanwhile back at the ranch
as you progress through school
you are forced to realize that a lot of cautious cradle reality
crafted by your parents to “protect” you was just fantasy
there is no tooth fairy, santa claus, easter bunny
leprechauns, or the like
that you dog didn’t run away, that it was buried in the backyard
that even though you had to memorize the pledge of allegiance
that bit about “…and to the republic for which it stands…”
blows over the heads of most people on the street ready to tell you
that we’ve always been a democracy
“No… no weapons of mass destruction here, they’ve gotta be somewhere”
at a certain point:
“that’s just how it is”
“no sense worrying over what you can’t change”
“why should i care, american idol is on!”
these things don’t cut it anymore