I found the picture in my Facebook feed, one of those things that gets passed around. What you see below is my response to it.
Excuse me for pointing this out, but those kids in that painting from long ago are the ones who grew up and are running this country now. So, maybe reciting the Pledge of Allegiance wasn't quite the magic spell so many would like it to be.
And let's think about a few more things. It's likely those kids parents were the people who won World War II. They had things like the G.I. Bill to get them off to a good start, buy a home, an education.
They were living in a country with strong unions, so they had a shot at a good paying job with benefits. America was one of the few industrialized nations with an intact industrial base after the war - we were yet to find ourselves in competition with other countries, and we weren't yet in a race to the bottom with jobs being shipped overseas.
The rich paid their fair share, and the pay gap between the shop floor and the executive suite was a lot smaller. There were thousands of businesses across the country in communities of all sizes, instead of a handful of giant corporations dominating the economy - and the attention of our politicians.
There was a revolution going on in science - a pay off from all that war research spending, and a government that supported science. It was also a benefit from all those G.I. Bill college graduates who were able to unlock their talents and put them to work.
Medicine was undergoing a revolution. Antibiotics were curing once deadly infections. Vaccines were stopping disease in its tracks - this is when the scourge of polio was being ended.
There was no talk radio like there is today - the Fairness Doctrine insured all views got treated with respect. They didn't have multiple cable tv channels, the internet or social media - most people were watching the same shows, hearing the same news. It might have been a bubble by today's standards, but it was a bubble big enough for everyone…
...who was white, that is. No way of knowing from that picture, but a class room full of blond blue-eyed kids might just be one of those 'separate-but-equal' schools from the age of segregation. Sports and movie stars were still largely white.
And, those sweet little girls were expected to grow up to be wives and mothers - and if they went to work, they could expect to be paid less then men, and not worry about getting too far in management.
Odds are those kids were also doing "duck and cover" drills to be ready for atomic attack, and worrying about communists lurking everywhere. The cold war was raging and people were worried about a missile gap. America was building up a nuclear arsenal in the hope that Mutually Assured Destruction was so terrible, no one would dare push 'the button' first.
But a lot of people remember those times fondly - because they were children then. Grown ups were looking after them, making them feel safe. Those kids weren't worried about having to go to work, having enough money for retirement, or all the thousands of things adults have to deal with. At least, not the ones in that picture.
If the world seems like a nastier place today to you, maybe it's because you're no longer a child. No one is hiding the bad things from you, no one is going to "make it all better". If you don't like what you see around you, remember this: the world is made by the people who show up for the job. It's a job that's never finished, and it's one that can't be done alone. We're all in this together, one way or another.