PLATFORM : What Kids ‘Tell’

Children often volunteer very personal information in regular classroom assignments. And if a child is seriously worried, it can be good for a teacher to know that and try to help. Under the state curriculum, 7th-grade science covers substance abuse. Sometimes my students write about such things as a parent who is alcoholic. This gives me a chance to talk with the student; I might tell him or her that alcoholism is a disease, and it’s not the child’s fault a parent is drinking.

What adults must understand is that they can’t base their thinking on the way things were; these kids must confront things about sexuality, substance abuse and violence that their parents didn’t have to deal with until they were adults.

I believe parents worried about our society are concentrating on the wrong targets. To me, the real culprits are the companies--the advertisers and the media and entertainment moguls--who have broken down the barrier between childhood and adulthood. For instance, showing pre-pubescent children in designer clothes and sexual poses, they try to empower kids to pressure their parents into spending money. This so-called market strategy has tremendously undermined America’s moral values, as well as the confidence in adult authority that children need.