Writes E.J. Dickson — "your standard Brooklyn millennial lefty mom" — in Rolling Stone....
November 2, 2021
"I have always firmly believed that most of a parent’s energy should be invested in making sure your kid is healthy and happy and putting one foot in front of the other..."
"... the idea that they have to meet some bullshit level of achievement or hit the threshold for performative political awareness (i.e., the type of cutesy anecdotes of toddlers referring to RBG as a 'princess' that get thousands of likes on Resistance Twitter) has always been anathema to me. Trying to indoctrinate your child with a set of abstruse political values, at a time when parents should simply be encouraging kids to learn the basic building blocks of empathy and friendship, is pretty gross. And liberalism or conservatism aside, oftentimes aggressively copy-pasting your own politics onto your small child serves your own ego far more than it’s likely to benefit them...."
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There has to be a counter to the crap from the left, or we are lost. It may already be too late.
Trying to indoctrinate your child with a set of abstruse political values, at a time when parents should simply be encouraging kids to learn the basic building blocks of empathy and friendship
[Insert GIF of ice hockey players banging the handles of their sticks on the floor in loud approval]
Multiplication tables and reading would be nice too.
I agree that, "Trying to indoctrinate your child with a set of abstruse political values...is pretty gross." It's also probably ineffectual. Until about middle age, the strongest predictor of one's politics is his parents' politics. However, as we get older, our parents' politics become less predictive and the politics of our social environment more so. This also why concern about "indoctrination" in the school system is quite overblown. Teachers and school curricula don't seem to have much of any effect on the politics of the student. In fact, a student's peers likely have more influence on his politics than his teachers or coursework.
In spite of her obliviousness, E.J Dickson's article is not bad. She shows some dawning realization that political indoctrination of young kids is bad. Yet, 90% of her criticism is aimed at the 1% (at best) of the genre which is conservative. The actual problem is the mono-culture of leftism, which is current literature generally and kid's lit in particular. Even if the conservative works are ham-handed, they're too scarce to make much of a difference, other than to inject a different point of view into a tiny minority of kids. That's the kind of diversity which ought to be celebrated rather than stamped-out.
The good news is, my 16 year old granddaughter asked to borrow my copy of 1984. I couldn't find it, so Amazon is delivering her a copy for her own this Wednesday. The bad news is, I ordered it on Sunday, and it would normally be delivered by Tuesday. The supply chain situation is getting bad when Amazon drops days on delivery to Nashville.
Shorter version: Don't try to force ideas down kids' throats, unless of course they're the correct ones.
But will your local library be able to find a drag queen to read them at story hour?
Good art leaves it to the reader to draw their own conclusions, with hints the perspective you hope they will take, of course, hopefully not painfully obvious. I rarely watch any movie produced post about 2012, because of the obvious and heavy handed politics. Hollywood is politics for pretty people.
I like Poso, but this seems kind of poorly thought out. Stick with the good stuff that has worked for generations.
Wow, I need to get my hands on a copy so I can write about how terrible I already know it is.
Jordan Peterson has said that there is no more important thing to teach your toddler than to be socially acceptable to other children -- so that other children will willingly accept them as playmates. Once a social outcast, even at four or five, that behavior (rude, unable to share, wants to set the rules, won't accept loss graciously) will continue and make others hesitant to accept them. So let's get our kids to be politically steadfast, out of the mainstream without any ability to consider other POV -- that will really help your child develop and grow up in a society that accepts them.
Started the article.... seemed like a lot of “blah, blah, blah”.
Seriously? Rolling Stone gets up on one side of the bed regularly and sees only from that left side window as they look out on the world.
A few books trying to get into the hands of a few families is a weak, but initial attempt to offset decades of indoctrination by our public school system, teachers unions, and political hacks owning and corrupting our kids education. We're at the point where field trips to gay bars with small ones, and Drag Queen Happy Hour readings are the norm. I guess that would warm the heart and meet approval of a Brooklyn millennial mom, but for much of the rest of America, and for that matter, the world, it does not work. It is not acceptable. Given that our kids cannot add, read, write, or think for themselves, it's a bit disturbing.
Why is America suddenly so invested in what is being taught in our schools? Because after decades of political indoctrination, we're now able to see the final product writing and speaking in our media, working in our companies, taking over universities and mandating bizarre forms of curricula, and taking over the Democratic Party making it so bizarre as to make a nation just shake it's head in disbelief.
The final straw was this past year when parents all over the country got a good dose of what their kids teachers were actually teaching. And starting today in Virginia, the pushback is coming.
A few books from the right sneaking into the hands of kids? That's like the first drop of a vaccine dedicated to killing the disease that is progressivism. More meds to follow.
Lefty mom's profound insight. Pro - found.
And she got it into Rolling Stone. So much cooler than thou, Williamsburgers.
Marxism-Leninism classes will begin age 5 for healthy, happy daughter.
But there are also ways in which my husband and I, as parents, fall woefully short ... I am married to a straight man, for instance, with whom I do all of the disgusting things straight people do, such as say things like, “This is perfect Patagonia microfleece weather,”
you're embarrassed to to be 'married to a straight man'
you think that straight people say (disgusting) things about 'perfect Patagonia'
(Not Carhart... i suspect she doesn't know what Carhart IS)
my first thought was not “Wow, this is disgusting,” but “Wow, I need to get my hands on a copy so I can read it to my son and write about what happens.”
...and use my own son, Solomon, as a guinea pig of sorts to test it out.
...Besides, I thought, what harm could it do? He’s four years old. It’s not like reading him a parable about the dangers of socialism once
So, she's (ab)using her child, so she can write about warping him?
But, Don't Worry! She's pretty sure, that HER son, is
...is far too inherently empathetic to fall prey to any of the ideals espoused by the Brave Books series.
Then, she goes back to chastising her son because he used the "g" word
But, he fell asleeep
E.J. Dickson [is] "your standard Brooklyn millennial lefty mom"
Like everybody else who writes these lifestyle articles ...
Like I said, everybody is programmed. Parents and teachers already transmit their values and beliefs to children. If this seems like an escalation, it's because parents (or maybe more often grandparents) see how much of the programming goes the other way.
Is this really a significant thing? It seems like a fringe phenomenon that the writer latched onto in order to get published and ridicule those who disagree with her. The ways in which standard lefty parents and teachers program children go unexamined by the mainstream media.
Boy their headline contradicts with the extract Althouse quotes.
"Trying to indoctrinate your child . . . is pretty gross . . . serves your own ego far more than it’s likely to benefit them."
I see. Right when righties are pushing back, copying the progressive children's book strategy, lefties cry foul. You first, lefties.
I know what you mean. My mother gave me a children’s book called Frederick, about a mouse who refuses to work but just suns himself on rocks while his fellow mice are putting up provisions for winter, and he tells them he is storing up the light of the sun, etc. for all of them for winter days.
And poof! I ended up in grad school.
While I agree with Dickson, it's...interesting, as usual...that while he pretends his complaint is nonpartisan, he didn't make it until he had a Republican to get upset about.
You want to raise kids to be healthy, happy, strong and smart. The best way to do that is to marry well. The best kids books were published from 1955-1965.
How incredibly unaware...there is an entire line of votive candles to RBG, Obama, Fauci, etc., as if they were actual saints...
A couple of guys push back and that's a bad thing?
Btw, if you read Posobiec he is no radical...
It's always funny to read an article by someone with such a skewed perspective, thinking that they are in the mainstream. To them, people like Dan Crenshaw and Jack Posobiec are "right-wing extremists." They aren't. It's like someone who thinks the center of the solar system is not the Sun, but Saturn. They're that far off from reality. It's good to read something like that article every so often just to reinforce that.
To the Rolling Stone caption writer: Wouldn't the more accurate stale metaphor be "spoon feed" conservatism rather than "force down kid's throats"?
Once again Althouse and the Progressive world become outraged at something the Left has been doing for decades when the right begins to do it also.
It should be pretty easy to find a post where Althouse warned of the dangers of Heather has Two Mommies...right?
If only those books worked. The money my parents could have saved on Catholic schools.
There have been all sorts of politically/socially idealogical books aimed at children from the left for decades, and I don't know that I have ever seen any angst about it. The objection here is really that these books aren't pushing leftist ideology. As for the article, is it any surprise that a self-professed lefty Mom would show these books to her kid for 5 minutes and then proclaim that the kid was bored by them?
These books probably are kind of ham-fisted, but that is probably true of any book that tries to impart lessons to children about issues that only matter to adults.
The bigger problem I have with this article is that while I agree with the author that trying to push this stuff on kids is gross, the left has been unabashedly doing this for a long time. It is only when conservatives come late to this party, that the author decides to tell everyone that the party is lame.
Does the right wing exist for people in media anymore? Or is it all Progressive - Center Left - Far Right now?
I realize we're trying to drive clicks here, but the words we're exposed to become the thoughts we think and the words we utter.
It seems we're lab mice subjected to constant verbal torture to see what might happen.
And I'm not imagining any good outcomes.
Trying to indoctrinate your child with a set of abstruse political values, at a time when parents should simply be encouraging kids to learn the basic building blocks of empathy and friendship, is pretty gross.
Translation: "The other side is doing a much better job of this than we are!"
Readering writes, "If only those books worked. The money my parents could have saved on Catholic schools."
Given the tenor of your typical commentary, it's apparent the Catholic schools didn't work either.
@Clyde:
It's always funny to read an article by someone with such a skewed perspective, thinking that they are in the mainstream. To them, people like Dan Crenshaw and Jack Posobiec are "right-wing extremists." They aren't. It's like someone who thinks the center of the solar system is not the Sun, but Saturn. They're that far off from reality. It's good to read something like that article every so often just to reinforce that.
Every so often? Partisan hyperventilating about the opposition has been standard operating procedure for 30 years. Bush was never a far-right theocratic fascist, and Obama was never a far-left Communist-Islamist-Kenyan-Anticolonialist. I think the reasons for this are at least threefold: (1) The two major parties have become ideologically sorted and more polarized; (2) Both parties coalesced around a neoliberal consensus; and (3) The end of the Cold War.
Now do "Heather Has Two Mommies" ! Then do "Hazel's Theory of Evolution" !!
Give the kids some Kipling. A little Kipling never hurt anyone. And Kipling can be quite fun. What? You've never Kippled?
Back in the 90's, we sent our oldest son to Pre_K at a Baptist Church. During the 1st parent's meeting with the teacher, a nice, older woman from Belleville, IL. was asked by an anxious parent when she would start teaching the kids their ABC's and how high would they learn to count to? The teacher responded, My first goal is to get them all thru class with out any of them crying, then I'll consider other learning.
ALL political indoctrination of your children is wrong. Not to worry, they will get plenty of your own views just by living with you. It should be against the law to teach other than the 3R's to youngsters. Prove that the school system can stop the decline in education outcomes and actually teach kids to think independently and become lifetime learners and then we can talk about other educational goals.
Conservatism, in the present era, finds itself isolated and a little idiosyncratic from mainstream culture and yet, the principles of parental discretion, freedom of speech and the push against state approved books may still win the day.
J Farmer not to start a flame war but Obama is/was the leftist you said he wasn't. Besides trying to nationalize health care ( rather socialistic ) during his 2008 one of his campaign people, the odious Samantha Power floated the trial balloon of nationalizing 401K plans and convert them to government bonds with a guaranteed ( low) rate. The Leftist took the momentary defeat but that ballon wasn't done on a whim by her. Such a balloon needs the candidate's blessing.
Books like those are never very successful at molding minds. Too obvious and poorly written. You have to read things like “The Little Red Hen” and “Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel” and “If You give a Mouse a Cookie.” To instill proper conservative values.
Dickson is surely a liar. I don't doubt a single second that she is doing exactly the same thing with her children that Posobiec and Crenshaw say they are doing with theirs. This entire article sounds like political education bullshit in the same way as civility bullshit.
Now, I don't think politically indoctrinating your children is even effective- my parents were long-time Democrats, and I voted Republican before they did, though my father began voting for Republicans in 1988 and my mother followed in 2012. Now, my parents didn't really try to sway me politically at all, but had they done so, I probably would have resisted anyway. The "Fuck Joe Biden" chants suggests the left's indoctrination campaigns are starting to fail, too.
Yeah--leave the political indoctrination of the young uns to the pros at the local public school!
Whether you think that's right or not, that's what's likely to happen.
Ah, so she's a "culture reporter." I scrolled through the titles of her articles listed in Rolling Stone. I stopped after page 5. She seems to be more concerned about "anti-vaxxers*," QAnon, and what's happening on TikTok. It does not appear to me that she's at all interested about culture in "Fly-Over Country."
*In parentheses because people against getting the COVID vaccine are not necessarily against all vaccines.
As for raising children according to a political ideology, I was more concerned about raising them to be responsible and productive members of society. My son once told me that he felt he had been raised in the '50s. (My two children were raised in the '80s and '90s.) If they acted up in the line at Hardee's - we went home without getting anything. I read them books that I read when I was young, probably because I was too cheap to buy new ones. One is now a moderate Republican and the other is a moderate Democrat. We did not push politics on our kids.
Maybe along with Disney, there's a Kipling copyright issue. If so that's ok, the same lessons can be found in say Aesop's Fables. The very copybooks that Kipling referenced, I daresay.
That's why they're known as "eternal verities."
@cubanbob:
J Farmer not to start a flame war but Obama is/was the leftist you said he wasn't. Besides trying to nationalize health care ( rather socialistic ) during his 2008...
There was no such attempt to "nationalize health care." Obama was a Clintonite New Democrat. His signature domestic achievement was a huge subsidy to the private health insurance industry. His campaign was lavishly funded by Wall Street. Some of his most persistent and consistent critics were from the leftwing, like Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Cornel West, etc.
I live in Minneapolis. A very progressive city. Could be worse. At present it's still livable.
I have friends who live outstate. Have known them since childhood. Classic liberals. Very open-mined. Their grandkids are taught to hate both Trump and Republicans in their public school. And no, it's not in the official curriculum, but their school teachers teach it nonetheless. Casually. As is done in college classes by politically zealous professors all across the land. Keep in mind this is happening in very red-state, rural Minnesota.
But my friends find it humorous as opposed to threatening. As free-range parents and former gymnastics coaches, they know most kids aren't stupid forever. But they also feel the school is straying from its mandate, which politics aside, is troubling. And they do have a point.
J Farmer not to start a flame war but Obama is/was the leftist you said he wasn't.
Well, he did pass a healthcare bill in order to find out what was in it.
Other than that, I think we have to imagine what he would have supported if he had Democratic majorities in Congress for his eight years.
Don't you think Bernie would have put his latest spending bill to a vote decades earlier if he could have? And would Obama have signed it into law?
Perhaps the real guessing game is this: Where would Obama have told his own caucus "no" if they controlled the legislature?
His signature domestic achievement was a huge subsidy to the private health insurance industry. His campaign was lavishly funded by Wall Street.
Nice of you to observe this. The "health insurance industry" has been living off the administrative organization ploy for years. Real health insurance is/has not been in place for 40 years. Instead, the companies sold their services in processing claims, which employers paid. It has done well for them but Hillary and Pelosi sold them on a better business model. Hillary did it by attacking them and learning that they could beat her in public. So, the Democrats decided, like Lyndon Johnson, that it was better to have them inside the tent pissing out. The Pelosi/Reid bill sold out to the insurance industry by enlarging the model. Now, Uncle Sam would be paying the bills while they did their claims processing. Mandatory enrollment was the attraction. 100$ participation was the plan.
But the unions and other Democrat groups did not go along. Employer plans were better and unions had spent years negotiating fat health plans. So, Obama and his team (actually he had little to do with it) came up with a guarantee to the insurance participants. Congress would pay for any losses.
Then the rollout was a disaster. And they lost Congress.
My teen son is friends with several other teen boys who have grown up together attending Waldorf/Montessori/arts schools, whose parents are all very liberal, and whose *mothers* in particular take great pride in raising "feminist" sons.
From what my kid tells me about their conversations and what these boys *really* think about what the orthodoxy they've been taught.. etc....well, all I can say is that the very typical dynamic of the Kids resisting the establishment still might sometimes apply when the establishment is pagan/progressive/pink-hat and rainbow-wearing....
@Kevin:
Other than that, I think we have to imagine what he would have supported if he had Democratic majorities in Congress for his eight years.
Sure. We can judge Obama by what he said and did or we can judge him by what we think he might have said or did in an alternate universe. I prefer the former.
Even when Obama enjoyed high approval ratings, a Democratic majority in the House, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, his actions were bland, center-left neoliberalism. He was working in the interests of the financial industry against the more leftwing members of his own party.
Obama described his political worldview in a book called The Audacity of Hope. The policy prescriptions he advocated could've been written by Gary Hart in '88. And with just a little tweaking you'd have Bush's "compassionate conservatism." The reason there was so much continuity from Clinton to Bush to Obama was because they were much more similar than dissimilar. IF you opposed the neoliberal consensus in 1992, your only choice for president was Ross Perot. In 2000, it was Pat Buchanan or Ralph Nader.
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