I was amazed to listen to NPR Morning Edition this morning and hear two back to back reports which sum up how far down the wrong track humanity has gone. It wasn't what you may think. They weren't stories about people dying in war, or about poverty, not the recession either - no, they were stories about mothers.
More to the point they were frightening tales of how mothers are forced, expected and pushed into abandoning their children in pursuit of selfish desires.
The first story was called "French Preschools Aim To Please Toddlers, Moms" by Eleanor Beardsley. For a solid five minutes it extolled the virtues of France's national policy of universal, full day preschool beginning at age 3!
Up front in the story the French system was held up as the successful model by which Obama should base his American universal preschool program, one he has spoken of many times in speeches. The one that makes my mama heart cringe.
It goes without saying homeschooling is virtually non-existent in Europe. While government control may yield excellent social services, universal health care, limited corporate control and less poverty the government in these countries completely control the education of each child - and what the government says, goes.
So when the French government tells every French mother to put her petit infant in school, all day, there seems little getting around that. It's not just government control what's more dangerous is the cultural pressure and expectation to do it. People rise up against government and no one does that better then the French but who do you raise up against, or with, when the idea to rob a mother of her child, that young, is so excepted?
Many mothers in the news story explained how they were unsure about putting their children into all day preschool. One mother said that there were a lot of tears that first month before her son got use to it. The first month? That poor wee babe! How soul crushing that must have been!
It's all rationalized by the fact that the children "learn so much." They come reciting cute little nursery rhymes - in French, which I still think sounds cool even if you are French. But seriously, can that justify universal 3 year-old torture?
Oh, little Marie, 'er soul ezz dead but she learned 'er l'tterz!
So they want to do that here, in America? Literally over my dead body, which brings me to the next story I heard on NPR entitled "It's A Boy: War Reporter's Baby Shower In Baghdad" by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro and I hope you're sitting down for this one.
This was a heart warming (not!) tale of some really liberated, educated women. You know the kind that don't let their dang reproductive abilities get in the way of their careers. International war reporter? No prob! Just get pregnant in a war zone, pop it out and come back to war a year later, leaving the child with....well, they never really explained that part.
When will the world learn that mothers raising their children, interacting with them, teaching them especially at a young age is not just a divine calling but a basic responsibility to all of humanity. Small children do best when mom is simply THERE for them and shuffling them away for her own selfish desires or for some lofty educational ideal is criminal!
The irony is really smart preschoolers do not become really smart adolescents in France or anywhere else and children who are abandoned by their mothers become exactly the same kind of unhappy, insecure, disgruntled adults who start wars.
