I must answer Angela Summers' letter "The future of America," dated Nov. 2. She is the grandmother who believed she was doing something wonderful for her grandchildren by taking them into the voting booth with her when she voted. If she had stopped there that would have been a great experience in educating her grandchildren about their future civic responsibilities.
I realize how difficult it is to restrain ourselves when we believe something so strongly, but where children are concerned we have no choice but to restrain ourselves. When Mrs. Summers chose to complain about President Obama in such severe and absolute terms and put Mitt Romney on that pedestal as if he has no faults, I believe this is how adults sensitize children to propaganda and indoctrination and fill their minds with fear of their government and the beginning of the breakdown of their belief in democracy. This is how we begin the closing of our children's minds to the truth. We have certainly lost our way in America when we believe that filling the heads and hearts of our future generations with our prejudices suffice as education.
Children who have been subjected to this kind of treatment have been stripped of their innocence and their future usefulness to humanity. This is the beginning of America's mental illness. We as adults have no right to take a child's freedom of his/her thoughts from him/her. This is what makes them who they are, how and if they find truth, know and understand who they are, are able to find their life's work and hopefully contribute something beautiful to humanity.
We have no right to interfere in this process by short-circuiting their thinking. It is so much higher to offer them experiences that open channels of discovery for them.
Michal K. DiClemente
Parkersburg
