Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Tuesday Slice: A platform built on the needs of children

I am so glad that Berkeley Breathed has resurrected Bloom County.  I follow him on Facebook, and look forward to his almost-daily offerings.  This Sunday's full-color post continued the theme of Opus running for President, based on his "wedge issue" of "two spaces after a period".  The joke, of course, is how some issues on which candidates build their platforms are really non-issues, smokescreens to avoid things that really matter, stirring the pot to garner votes.

My career lends itself to a very biased lens--I currently work in an elementary school for a district that promotes being "kidcentric."  I've taught in a Title I school, and worked in a disciplinary setting for over a decade.  After reading the Bloom County strip, I started musing about political platforms.  What if a politician built his/her platform on what was best for the children in our country?

It's not too hard to connect the dots between children's welfare and familiar national issues:

  • Production and availability of healthy food
  • Healthcare
  • Parental leave policies
  • Minimum wage
  • Education 
  • Environment 
  • International diplomacy (think about our children going to war as adults)
I'm sure you could add more to this list.  Just think about it. What if we truly started viewing our political decisions not on how they affect us voters here and now, but how they affect our children, now and in the future?

Is it too simplistic...or the biased lens we all need to look through?  The way I see it, what's good for children, is good for us all.

2 comments:

  1. Its easy to say that we put kids first. Its surprisingly hard to do it. I'm lucky enough to work in a school that fights to put them first every day, even when the world around us doesn't seem to. It makes the fight difficult, but the dividends are always worth it.

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  2. Sadly, Congress can't seem to do this. But we can, in our schools and classrooms, and do so in our own way.

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