Children

A government that works for Wall Street and a war machine will sooner or later create schools that work for the same ends.

Here's a vicious cycle: rather than funding good schools, we fund the military and its recruiters. Then we lower the qualifications for teachers as long as the applicants have participated in wars. We funnel the same "Troops to Teachers" applicants into "public charter schools" too, even though we're paying them public dollars. And we move the whole program from the Department of Education to the Department of "Defense". That was President Barack Obama's idea. Do you like it? Pretty creative, huh? One step ahead of those teapartiers!

Hosni Mubarak will you please go now!
The time has come.
The time has come.
The time is now.
Just go.
Go.
Go!
I don't care how.
You can go by foot.
You can go by cow.
Hosni Mubarak will you please go now!
You can go on skates.
You can go on skis.
You can go in a hat.
But
Please go.
Please!
I don't care.
You can go
By bike.
You can go
On a Zike-Bike
If you like.
If you like
You can go
In an old blue shoe.
Just go, go, GO!
Please do, do, do, DO!
Hosni Mubarak
I don't care how.
Hosni Mubarak
Will you please
GO NOW!
You can go on stilts.
You can go by fish.
You can go in a Crunk-Car
If you wish.
If you wish
You may go
By lion's tale.
Or stamp yourself
And go by mail.
Hosni Mubarak
Don't you know
The time has come
To go, go, GO!
Get on your way!

Wesley, we've been teaching you a lot, and you're a great learner. But I'm not sure you don't have something to teach us as well. Your Mommy and I took you to Baltimore last weekend. We rode on a subway and you didn't want to get off. You could be happy riding the subway all day. Or an escalator. You could ride up and down escalators all day and be ecstatic. Anyone who came near those escalators would be infected with happiness. We went to a children's museum and a science museum. You could have stayed all day in any room of either of them and never grown the least bit bored. At the hotel you said you wanted to live there forever. But when we're at home you want to live here forever too. It's just that you're so thrilled with whatever fun thing you're doing, you don't much want it to end. The rest of us are usually planning ways to change where we are or what we're doing, rather than laughing with delight at our current activities. We should work on that.

By David Swanson

As long as we're going to dump most of our money into wars and the military and Wall Street and health insurance bailouts, students are going to have to go into debt to afford college. But it would cost the students less and the government less, if private companies were not permitted to act as middlemen profiting off public loans to students.

To Wesley Neil Swanson
From David Christopher Naylor Swanson
April 4, 2009

We took you to the doctor for an annual checkup a couple of days ago, Wesley, and you hadn't been since last year. He couldn't find anything wrong with you, and you now stand 37 inches tall and weigh 33 pounds, so you've fallen in both weight and height to more average for your age, whereas you started out big in both, and you've fallen more in weight because you're slimming out, you're finishing being a baby. You are, however, very interested in babies and sometimes like to pretend to be one or to take care of one.

You'd only seen this doctor once before, a year ago, but you were perfectly comfortable playing with him, at least with mommy and daddy there. But you're also comfortable at school now. You go two mornings a week, Wes. I take you, and mommy picks you up. At first you hated it, and mommy had to go with you. Now you look forward to seeing your teachers and friends. Now you're no longer afraid to play with new kids at playgrounds, and you're starting to be interested in actually playing things together with friends.

By David Swanson

Remember the great harm done to the moral core of our nation when, according to the excited news reports following Kenneth Starr's great work in life, children were asking their parents what oral sex was? Neither do I. But children can now ask their parents what torture is, how waterboarding works, and when exactly torture is a good thing. "Mommy, we're going to play enemy combatant. Can I have some pliers to pull out Geoffrey's fingernails?"