Nancy Pelosi

One of my son's teachers lost it yesterday. Evidently, as part of a current event student reader, there was a question asked about the first woman Speaker of the United States House of Representatives that the majority of the fifth grade class could not answer because they had not a clue as to the woman referenced. The teacher was astounded that the kids don't watch the news and loudly suggested they begin doing so that very evening.
Well, I told Scott about Nancy Pelosi, but I don't think the impression I gave him was what the teacher would have expected. I wasn't warm fuzzy about the fact that this congress' composition might signal an advancement in civil rights in that for the first time we have a woman second in line to the presidency. Not did I proudly note that a Catholic grandmother has risen to this height of authority in our government. I flatly told him those things. I also let him know that she isn't Pro-Life. We discussed the implications of a private individual ignorantly being pro-choice as opposed to a person in power ignorantly fostering pro-choice legislation. Her being Catholic and pro-choice didn't make sense to him.
After we spoke, I thought about the fact that most of the kids in his class don't watch the news. My first thought was that they were mindlessly watching some Nickelodeon show at the time, but then I began thinking about Scott's lack of awareness. When he was born I would have probably pegged fourth grade as the year I would have wanted to begin heightening his exposure to televised world news events, yet I haven't even begun to do so in fifth grade. The greatest reason for that has to be the 9/11 attacks. He was in kindergarten when they occurred.
I used to be a news junkie. I watched the news whenever I could and I'd jump back and forth between the news magazine shows regularly every evening - Dan Rathers often danced between the other networks' couples (Jane Pauley and Stone Phillips/Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs). I couldn't get enough. Within a day of 9/11, I got my fill. It was too raw; too real. It all became too much.
The impact, for me, was that news no longer just reported information; it transmitted pain. Even during the crisis of Katrina, I didn't watch. I'd listen to and read reports, but not watch the nightly or magazine news programs. It isn't that I can't - that it is too much of an emotional burden - I've just had enough. So, with that perspective in mind, doesn't it seem that a person of that mindset would not be overly eager to sit her child down to watch the news? And, continuing down that path, might not other parents, consciously or unconsciously, be doing the same? I remember Scott's kindergarten teacher remarking that not one child in his class had brought the events of 9/11 up in class, not one. That is noteworthy in that Scott's class members were extremely gregarious - it seemed like the kids in Scott's class discussed amongst each other everything that was discussed or done outside of class. His teacher was prepared for damage control, yet never had to handle anything related to 9/11. That being the case, it makes sense that parents who sheltered their young and extremely impressionable children from the news/pain of those days might not be eager to now sully those same kids. Makes sense to me. Peace.