What are we thinking?

At every age each of of finds things that are vitally important to our happiness and well being.  Did I get the 'cool' toy for Christmas?  Is the right guy asking me to prom?  Am I wearing the right label or am I having lunch with the right people who will catapult me to my next promotion? My trials and tribulations did not involve the basics of life.  I was not faced with issues that so many find themselves tackling at the moment.  The lack of affordable housing,or any housing for that matter, a lack of food, or good schools or even a safe place to live are not things I had to spend my time working through.  Mine was the American dream. Mine was the 'Leave it to Beaver' life, and among my chief concerns was that I provide a life as good or better than mine for my husband and daughter.

Now that I have been through the early superficial stages of acquisition of things, people and jobs, I have had time to reflect. I find it incredible that many of our children will not live as well or better than their parents and grandparents.  Our colleges and universities, while still attractive to foreign students, are finding the numbers of those students starting to drop. Part of the growing attraction is not the level of education, but the price tag.  We are in danger of becoming a second tier bargain school nation for those seeking higher education.  We are not cutting edge anymore.

And, our own home grown students...what are we thinking?   An educated populace is the cornerstone of our democracy and the building blocks of our Republic.  Paraphrasing from a favorite film, fat and stupid are not attractive traits for the offspring of a country that less than seventy-five years ago produced the greatest generation.  That generation was hungry for the ideals and tangible things a future without Facism, Socialism,  Communism and unknown 'isms' promised.  They were willing to put their lives in harm's way to make that future possible.  Today, school systems quibble over textbooks that provide alternatives to what has previously been accepted scientific and historic truisms.  We can all become emotional and caught up in the discourse, but it wasn't too long ago that popular wisdom taught that the earth was flat.  Even when proved wrong, it took a long time for the idea to become accepted. 

Our students, those just beginning school and those of us who have pledged to be life-long learners must be taught how to learn and how to discern. Students must be able to ask questions and have teachers and a school administration equipped to answer questions. Are our teachers truly educated to teach and then are they allowed to teach in an environment that truly encourages learning?  A lightening rod topic today is the discussion of creationism, intelligent design and the ideas promoted by Charles Darwin.  If a student is in a school in which creationism is the sole scientific explanation for the development of humankind a teacher, backed by administration, should be able to say that there are alternate theories.  Students should have the opportunity to either study these theories in tandem with the preferred theory, or given the information on how to research the theories on their own.  This is a very simplified example of the need for holistic teaching, but it sets the stage for a broader approach to the dissemination of information and ideas.

We do not live in a vacuum.  There are alternate ideas and theories for nearly every 'truism' known to us today.  We must have the curiosity, intellectual stamina and intestinal fortitude to seek other thoughts, consider them and either add them to our list of what we strongly suspect to be true, or discard them as a result of  knowledge based on study.  Our children must be given this opportunity.  We must rekindle the excitement of the search for knowledge and then we must talk about this knowledge with others.