Democrat Lawmakers Push Bill to Teach Children Difference Between Fake and Credible Media
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/02/09/democrat-lawmakers-push-bill-to-teach-children-difference-between-fake-and-credible-media/
McLachlan says, “lawmakers need to help school children identify fake news and disinformation, since many have access to Facebook, Twitter, and other sites where information is not always accurate.” McLachlan’s colleague Cutter elaborates to miss the point in an even more comically terrifying fashion saying, “We just want to give them the tools so they can figure it out and understand what makes a credible source and then they can form their own opinions about that information.” Lawmakers need to stay away from school children. I would argue strongly that we should homeschool and help each other fund tuition for private schools. Still, regarding public schools, even if we accept and understand that we are sending our kids to a government building to be educated by the government, those statements by McLachlan and Cutter are immensely flawed and miss the point.
Teachers and parents, through the education they provide to their children, should be arming them with everything they need to identify false information. By providing kids with a strong liberal arts education, they will understand history, philosophy, logic, and reason so that they can determine for themselves which information rings true and false. If kids are given a quality education, they will come out of it with that important instinct that all of us should have to stop and think for a moment, “hmm, I wonder if this is true in exactly the way it is being told to me?” We do not need big brother here (or big sisters as the case may be) to determine a “trustworthy index of sources” in typical leftist authoritarian, top-down fashion. We need a better liberal arts education.
The picture chosen for the article is heartbreaking enough. At the risk of sounding like I am “out of touch”, I see no reason why the kids in that picture, as young as they look, should have access to smart phones. No child that young should have a Facebook, Twitter, or online presence of any kind really. I and other 90’s kids can probably testify to the potential for damage, confusion and perhaps life-long struggles that arise from exposure to the Internet too early, and I did not have my first cell phone until age 15. Part of the problem with our society is that we have forgotten the dire need to protect children, to shelter them from the myriad terrible influences of society. This is not to say that they should be kept in a bubble. At the very least when they happen upon some crazy new thing they have never seen before that they do not understand and do not know how to reconcile with their current worldview, should not the parents be around to help with that process? Even if we cannot be everywhere with our children, could we at least try to limit their exposure to a bit less than the “fire hose method” of handing them a smart phone and sending them off to school?! This solution alone puts to bed the initial justification by McLachlan in the article. If they did not have access to the Internet via pocket-sized devices everywhere they went, big sister McLachlan would not be able to use that as a justification for increased top-down government influence on children.
We need to take back this culture folks. This need is shown most strongly in our schools. How can we expect to raise the next generation of Americans as a generation that will be able and willing to carry on the founding values of this nation if we are signing over that responsibility to politicians like McLachlan and Cutter? Take the pay cut, forgo the “benefits” of a dual-income household whenever possible, help each other financially to be able to do so, etc. so that our children can be brought up by their parents, not by the government. By banding together and forming groups at Churches and other local community centers we can reclaim this most important responsibility.
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