Viva la Revolution

When it comes to the nation's children, parents are not pulling their weight. Numerous studies have shown how important it is for parents to be involved in raising their children. Whether it is the dietary habits of their children, the physical fitness of their children, or the academic achievement of their children, statistics show that parents are failing not just their children, they are failing the nation as well. As we have been told repeatedly, children are a national resource. The economy, and by extension the nation requires an abundance of educated and industrious citizens. We cannot have educated and industrious citizens if our schools do not produce them. Schools cannot produce them if parents do not provide the raw material, i.e. healthy, inquisitive, well motivated children. Too many parents are shirking their responsibility and failing to produce such children.

A break through study done by the Harvard Family Research Project determined that parents play an important role in their child's academic performance. Too many parents, however, are not performing well in that role. What can be done? How can we as a nation change the way parents raise their children? This is the problem vexing the modern progressive. We cannot yet intrude on a parent's right to raise their child as they see fit. Another way has to be found. The solution is to make children a communal resource. If children are a communal resource, the community has an interest in how they are raised and educated. Parents have a duty to the community to raise their children correctly. An uneducated, maladjusted child is every one's problem, or so we are told. Therefore the community is obliged to act when individuals fail in meeting their obligation to raise their children properly.

The advent of economic and social casuistry made possible by the modern obsession with statistics has made even the most personal behavior a matter of public concern. While lip service is paid to the right of parents to raise their children as they see fit, in practice there is no such right. A parent who neglects to monitor their child's diet or make sure their child not only attends school, but does her schoolwork diligently is failing society. Society cannot be expected to stand idly by while parents neglect their children. Our nation and its economy is at stake.

In an editorial this morning in the Dallas Morning News, Florencia Velasco Fortner, CEO of The Council of Spanish Speaking Organizations (Concilio) argues that the solution is to "revolutionize what is happening at home." We need to change how parents are tending to their children. To avoid the morass of social issues and the argument over the reach of government, she resorts to the modern method of objectivity by framing the issue in terms of economics. We are urged to "invest" in children, and in so doing we are offered the promise of economic reward. But no matter how the subject is framed, we are dealing with perhaps the most personal of all issues, the raising of our children.

Many parents are not good parents. Some are downright bad parents. This has always been the case. What is new is that how you raise your children is no longer your business. It has become society's business. Because it has become society's business, it has become the government's business. Fortner and her colleagues cannot tell you how to raise your children. Society cannot tell you how to raise your children. But the government can. And that is what this is all about. To the progressive mind, all issues are social issues and all social issues are ultimately political issues. Fortner cannot tell you how to raise your child, so she would have the government do it.

The issue of children can be couched in terms of society but without the ability to compel, society is a poor tool to affect change. Sure, you can talk about educating parents and getting them involved. You can talk about changing the way society approaches the issue.  But what if that is not enough? What if parents don't respond  to your coaxing and encouragement? What if nothing changes? Do you walk away? Or do you try and push parents aside to clear the road for progress?

Fortner and those like her belabor the obvious when they assert that parents need to be involved in the education of their children. But how do we get parents to become involved? The answer Fortner gives it that we need to "revolutionize what is happening at home". We need to overthrow the parents and install a new regime that will actively work with children from the bedroom to the school room. Those parents sympathetic, or at least indifferent to the revolution will be "engaged" in the education process. Parents who do not pass muster will be relieved of duty.

Seventy percent of a school aged child's time is spent outside of the classroom. In too many cases, it is argued that that time is spent unproductively due to negligent or downright poor parenting. To the progressive mind, this must not be allowed to continue. If parents are unable or unwilling to see to their child's educational development, then society must step in.

As society moves ever forward there is less and less space left to the individual. Health, hygiene, diet, even thoughts have become matters of public concern. It was inevitable that some would conclude that the raising of the next generation of Americans cannot be left to the haphazard care of parents. There is too much at stake. The dominion of parents over their children's development must be replaced and a new order ushered in where society's needs, whatever they may happen to be at the moment, take precedent.The future cannot be left to chance.