Harold Horstmann
Lohman
Dear Editor:
I call your readers' attention to a 3/11/2019 article by Dr. Susan Berry: "Study: Social and Emotional Learning, the 'New-Age Nanny State''' (https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/11/study-social-and-emotional-learning-the-new-age-nanny-state/).
Quotes from the article: "A new study released Monday finds the most popular education topic today is social and emotional learning (SEL), which amounts to the "psychological training of children starting at a young age. The Boston-based, privately funded Pioneer Institute published the study, "Social-Emotional Learning: K-12 Education as New-Age Nanny State," which asserts SEL is the latest panacea in a long line of so-called progressive "education reforms" that only serves to distract from the fact that American public school children are failing academically."
"Proponents of SEL say school should be including social-emotional concepts, i.e., values, character traits, mindsets, and behaviors, in every core K-12 subject. But, who decides which "values" and "character traits" are the desirable ones? It's one thing to direct your own moral, ethical, and emotional development or that of your children," Robbins said. "But having a government vendor or unqualified public school officials implement an SEL curriculum based on coffee-table psychology is quite another."
"Parents who actively battled against the Common Core standards in their states knew well the federally-incentivized reform opened the doors to SEL and competency-based education (CBE) both highly regarded by Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as well as the U.S. Department of Education."
I would suggest your readers access the following websites for a comparison of what our government schools seem to be imitating:
https://alphahistory.com/nazigermany/children-in-nazi-germany/
https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nazi-germany/nazi-education/.
Of course the end goals are different, but the results are the same in that bureaucrats are defining the curriculum of your children for their questionable goals, not your children's usable skills for a happy and successful life.
I, in no way, am saying that our government can be compared to Hitler's, but remember the name of the Nazi party: The National Socialist German Workers' Party and we now have the Democrats openly campaigning as socialists.
God protect our innocent and vulnerable children.
Parental responsibility
Sue Bower
Jefferson City
Dear Editor:
They say you can judge the tree by the kind of fruit it produces. We judge the parents by their children, employers by their employees, students by their teachers, children by their friends, countries by their citizens. But where does the initial responsibility lay? Parents stand up, for the initial responsibility is yours, but the very first responsibility rests with the mother.
What does the mother want for the child? A "home" with two parents, a stable family life, to be able to provide for the child, to have a belief system in place by which to instruct your child in the challenging lifetime of becoming a good man/woman? I have heard women boast of having somebody's child out of wedlock in the "hopes" of securing for herself a better "lifestyle" - not a boast of having a loving husband and home in which to raise a loved child. Women, think before you do. What kind of woman are you? A risk-taker? What would you do if you had a child outside of marriage? Are you securing a future for your child? What will your reputation be? We women are ultimately responsible because we are the ones at risk of having a child we cannot enrich and care for.
Parental responsibility comes next. It is so easy to do things for our children. It takes less time, and with children, there is no "free" time for parents, so I hope you know what you are getting into. Teach them that there is no "easy out." Hard work brings success. Teach them everything, from sewing on a button to filling a tire with air to mowing to cleaning to school work to friendship to minding their parents, to respecting their elders and people in authority. Teach them well, my children. They will emulate you.
Akin to this:
Drivers are responsible for their roads and cars - pay the taxes, the upkeep and the insurance. Parents are responsible for
1) schools: be involved;
2) realistic dreams: don't live vicariously through your children: they aren't going to be pros or stars. Get real and don't waste money on traveling teams, don't set them up for failure;
3) teach them what really matters: hard work, getting respect for what they do well, learning from failure, doing for themselves, learning as much as they can, and having faith.
Then we will all be proud of each other.