A letter from Rhino Times Reader “Professor”
I recently learned of a story from earlier this year and find myself needing to defend a 10-year-old’s proposal for a $5,000 electric-vehicle rebate. Not because I support EVs but because of how a NC elected representative chose to respond when a fourth grader did something we should be encouraging every young American to do: learn about an issue, form an opinion, write to his representative and respectfully make his case.
Ten-year-old Christian Mango wrote to Rep. Virginia Foxx suggesting a $5,000 federal rebate for people who purchase an electric vehicle. Rep. Foxx was perfectly entitled to disagree. She could have explained why she believes such a subsidy would be poor public policy. She could have thanked Christian for taking the time to write and encouraged him to keep learning about the issue.
Instead, she went after his teacher.
Foxx told the fourth grader to ask his teacher to explain “propaganda” to him and suggested that his teachers were more interested in “indoctrinating” him than providing a good education. (Note: the teacher didn’t suggest what the subject of his letter should be about)
Think about that for a moment. A 10-year-old wrote a letter to his congresswoman expressing an opinion about public policy, and the response from a member of Congress was essentially to tell him that his teachers had brainwashed him. That isn’t how we teach children about representative government. It is how we teach them to be afraid of expressing an opinion that challenges someone in power.
And let’s be clear: Christian didn’t demand that Foxx agree with him. He didn’t insult her. He didn’t threaten her. He didn’t even send her an angry political rant. He apparently did exactly what we tell young people they should do, participate in our democracy.
If Rep. Foxx believes the EV rebate is bad policy, she should make that case. Explain the cost. Explain the alternatives. Explain the national debt. Give the child an opportunity to learn something from the disagreement. But attacking the teacher who apparently encouraged students to research an issue and participate in civic discourse crosses a very different line.
There is something especially troubling about an adult in a position of political power using that power to lecture a 10-year-old about “indoctrination” simply because the child reached a conclusion she didn’t like.
We constantly hear politicians say that America’s children are our future. If that’s true, perhaps we should encourage them to write their representatives rather than teach them that their representatives might ridicule their teachers when they do.
Let’s hope for change this mid-term and elect leaders who know how to be the adults in the room versus showing kids how ugly they can be to push an agenda based on conspiracy theories and misinformation.
