Day after MLK day, and I'm on my way to work, half asleep and thinking grumpily about what I have to accomplish today. But loud voices and crowds at the Metro (subway) station wake me up. Milling groups of young teens with their school names on jackets, hats or backpacks. Oh no! I forgot that this is the week we're inundated with parochial school children dragged to Washington D.C. by their priests, pastors, teachers or administrators to protest a woman's right to choose.
Most of these kids haven't the slightest interest in the subject of their trip to Washington. Listen in on their conversations and you hear the standard fare of 11-16 year olds. Who likes who. What Jenny bought at the mall. Will they be able to go to the Air and Space Museum? When they going to get their driver's license. What Ryan said to Courtney. Not a word about the "unborn" or dead babies. They're not here because of what they believe or care about. They're here because their school instructs them what to believe and obliges them to parade those beliefs.
I'm all for engaging children in politics. My children have learned about political issues since they were little. And they've accompanied us on protests: anti-war, anti-Bush, and yes, pro-choice marches. Parents paying attention to the issues, expressing their views to their children, and encouraging discussions of those views is part of democracy.
What I object to is the wholesale gathering of entire schools; classes canceled, pressure on for every child in that school to go to Washington and bolster what the leaders of the school's religion preach. (It must be extremely uncomfortable for a child who comes from a family that doesn't agree with that point of view!) And my bet is that if you ask any of these kids to discuss the issue, what you would get (after the blank stare) is a parroting of what they've been told. If you ask them about the 1000s of living children who go to bed hungry every night, who can't afford to go to the doctor, who have had their heat cut off because their parents couldn't pay the bills, who live in an endless procession of homeless shelters, and ask if we shouldn't be concentrating on those living, suffering children, these children here to protest abortion have no answer other than "we have to stop the murder of the innocent unborn!" When a whole school, a whole set of schools has but one opinion, discussion of differing ideas is not possible.
This goes for schools that are part of my religion also. I no more want my tax dollars supporting school-wide, unquestioning support of Israel than I want those dollars supporting anti-abortion zealotry.
And this is one reason why I fiercely oppose any voucher program or federal support of parochial schools. I really don't want to pay to have people indoctrinate children in school, even if they're indoctrinating them in something I agree with.