Problem #1: Messy Bedroom or Left-Wing Public School?
Teenagers are known for their messy bedrooms. Parents worry.
Why?
If a teenager does not share a room with a sibling, why do parents care? What is at stake here? Not much.
Parents send their children into the moral cesspool of the tax-funded, politically correct high school. Then they gripe about the kids’ messy rooms. The parents have their priorities scrambled.
Think about this.
To get her 16-year-old daughter Jessica to clean up, says Kathleen Jerrils of Newport News, Va., “I tried asking her, ‘What will your friends think when they see your room?’ The friends didn’t care.” She offered to repaint Jessica’s blue bedroom black, Jessica’s preference. But Jessica was reluctant to move out long enough to get the painting done. Ms. Jerrils offered to buy Jessica the pet rat she wanted. That motivated Jessica to try to clean up, but she says the task was so overwhelming that she became distracted, thinking, “This is going to take forever.” She still hasn’t gotten the rat.Jessica says the mess annoys her, too, especially when she is rushing to get ready for school and can only find one of the shoes she wants to wear. But she has other priorities. School often consumes 10 hours a day, followed by several hours of homework. She devotes hours more to extracurricular activities including academic, debate and speech competitions; school plays; and charity fund-raisers. After all that, “I don’t rank cleaning my room as something that I really need to get done,” she says.
Here is a decent girl whose parents send her into an indoctrination center that by law must use humanistic textbooks, which are written by Establishment leftists. The center also assigns hours of homework. But the parents are upset about her messy room.
Someone needs to tell the parents: “Get your child out of the public school.” But no one has this authority.
A messy room is the least of teenagers’ problems. Higher on the list is the poor judgment of their parents.
If you think I’m wrong, read this: The Children Trap.
Continue reading on online.wsj.com.
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Published on January 12, 2012. The original is here.