Indoctrination

 "While America is focused on indoctrinating our children with rainbows & pronouns, our adversaries are training their children to be warriors." This was a conservative's tweet accompanied by video of some children assembling AK-47s in a classroom followed by a troop of camo-clad kids moving awkwardly through some martial arts demonstration. The gentleman who made the tweet is obviously afraid that when the invasion of our country begins by Russian-led communist troops the Wolverines won't be available. We will have to stave off the attack with rainbows and pronouns.

This little nugget of right wing fear came to me just a short time after flipping past Ender's Game on cable. If you're unfamiliar with the movie or the Orson Scott Card novel, it tells the story of an Earth preparing for an attack by an alien race by recruiting children to be the new wave of resistance. The United States Marine Corps has included the book on its recommended reading list for their recruits.

And get this, ladies and gentlemen: Mister Card's book has shown up not infrequently on several other lists, like that of banned books. The reason? Because of it's violence, language, and renouncing of religion. Not because it tells the story of indoctrinating youth into a death cult that would (spoiler alert) possibly bring about the end of a civilization. 

So we seem to have a bit of a paradox here. What should we be teaching our kids? Empathy? Compassion? How to field strip an automatic weapon? Well, the good news is that we seem to be able to manage both as a nation. While some of us are busy teaching kids to get in touch with their feelings, there seems to be no shortage of young men who are ready to go out locked and loaded to shoot up their own schools, shopping malls, and churches. The idjits with guns seem to be lacking the direction for their power extenders. Getting them to point in the direction of our enemies would probably be a good start. 

But who exactly are our enemies? That depends on whom you happen to be speaking with. It has been more than fifty years since the United States had a military draft, and yet somehow we continue to drum up enough volunteers to justify an annual defense budget of more than one hundred billion dollars. This year the government has designated five hundred eighty four million dollars to be used for education. With this vast discrepancy, there are still those who fear what might be done with a little bit of Social Emotional Learning. 

And maybe after they're finished with the touchy feely part, they can learn percentages like the difference between the military and education budgets. Or they can sit down and read a few chapters of Ender's Game. It's all a part of what we like to call "indoctrination."