Education: the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgement, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life. Think about the ending words, for mature life. When there is no education, life does not mature or barely matures.

               Education has been on the news for a long time. There are people for education and there are people against education. For your information, I am for education, and I do not understand how anyone could be against it. It is said that people are not against it, they just don’t want certain material presented to the children. I agree and disagree. I would say to present it as age appropriate when presented. That brings in banning books (I just saw that art is being banned also).

               It is getting so bad that there are demonstrations on both sides. Remember, Hitler banned books and so has some Islam countries. Also remember, the first step to control people is to make them ignorant. We are attempting the first step, but I also see that people becoming ignorant have been slowly on the move for a long time.

               What I mean by slowly on the move for a long time is that for long-time parents are not involved in the education of their children. In my day my parent made sure I did my homework every day, she did what she could to help me, and attended the PTA meetings. I did the same for my child. There are PTAs and school board meetings for the parents to come to and help, or at least express their opinion, about the curriculums for the students. The meetings used to be crowded but not anymore.

               I have a problem with book-banning, but I have a bigger problem with parents gripping but they are not involved in the education of their own children. It seems that they want others to raise their children, educate their children, but they do not want verbal and physical discipline of the children. The children want to act as adults (so do the parents) but lack the training and understanding.

               People want kids and some get involved with them but far too many have them and leave them. Using my era of growing up, when an adult spoke, whatever I was doing immediately stopped, I paid attention, and I did it. Today, the children do what they want to do and will talk back. In my day, talking back, arguing, and not doing something was a death sentence (not really but close).

               Education is needed everywhere but when students cannot read about Rosa Parks and others, it is a sad day. There may not be an agreement on what is read but in it is at least general knowledge. I don’t understand politicians getting involved in this, it should be the parents. I had chores to do before and after school. At times I even held a job as well as what I had to do at home and then my homework. Today children have it easy and still complain. I was lucky to get six hours sleep but kids today get twice that.

               Everyone needs an education, but the parents need to get back into teaching their own kids. When no one can say, touch, or have anything to do with your child, then they cannot effectively be taught. When the teacher gets hurt in class because of the unruly child, then the child cannot be taught. When the parent does not have control of their child, then the child cannot be taught. Parents…let’s educate the children before it’s too late.