A trope of the times is that parents are super beings, good or evil, who shape us all our lives. We emulate them or revile them, but their effects and examples are with us always and influence us deeply, if only subconsciously. Consequently, conscientious modern parents take their duties fanatically.
As a student of real history, I know how false this image is. We are formed by all our experiences, children are educated by the adults around them, but parents are generally just more “big people.” Certainly in my own case I saw my parents as fine folks, with many traits to be adopted, but also just adults with an extra role as my parents. Joan’s family was prone to a little more hero worship of her father.
And never forget that in the not so distant past there were slaveowner parents, Nazi parents, witch-burning parents and on and on. Hardly the right kind of gods …
We are never slaves of the past, unless we choose to be so. We can pick and choose freely among role models. For the most part, we can escape and transform any past experiences to anything we want. Only those who want to wallow in victimhood use the past as an excuse for the present.
Because of all that, I am horrified by the intrusion of “parents’ rights” into education. As in most of our current culture, it seems that only the most ignorant and fanatic among us are so sure they are right that they will seek to disrupt what calm and normal people believe in, and which will allow a child to learn to function in society. “I know what is right for my children” is stupid, wrong, and has a touch of the slave holder. I cringe as these loudmouths take over our institutions.
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 