Enlightenment

Just think! Little kids ready for the First Grade this year will be ready to vote in the November 2020 presidential election. Looking back, those old enough to vote on November 5, 2008 had their growing years during the Bill Clinton administrations.
There’s currently interest in education, as it pertains to civic affairs. I watch people on C-Span who, right and left, deplore the ignorance of youngsters when it comes to social science.
It almost seems as though school boards are reluctant to lay out a curriculum for fear it will offend someone. If you think I joke, consider the recent criticism over using Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” in English classes. And we don’t even have to venture into the murky territory of sex education. If the very term “Darwinism” is mentioned on a playground, children may take sides without ever having studied what the theory of evolution is. Yet on the evening news, some of their parents may be nodding in approval when their Congresspersons espouse more emphasis on Science in the Classroom.
What percentage of the population, grown or still growing, can fill in the names and capitals of the 50 states? And who can give more than the barest details about past US Presidents? George Washington couldn’t tell a lie. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. What about Andrew Jackson or Andrew Johnson? Or Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt?