Opposite Points of View

When I was in the third or fourth grade at Winchester Elementary School in Detroit, MI., I had a social studies class. We got to the point where the teacher (I can't remember her name) started to teach about the founding of Utah. She said that mormon missionaries would go to farmers all over the country and ask to marry their daughters. If they had to they kidnapped girls and locked them in the Salt Lake City Tempple. The girls would escape by jumping out the temple window into the Great salt Lake and swimming away.
I was horrified by this story. I knew it wasn't true, but did the rest of the kids in my class? When I got home from school, I told my mother what she had said. The next day my mom went to my school. She asked to talk to the principle. I was brought in and the teacher was brought in. The teacher said she woould make sure the class knew the story was not true but a rumor that had gone around. My mother was satisfied, the principle was satisfied and the teacher talked to the class the next period we had.
What reminded me of this story are the actions the parents are having about the president addressing the students on the first day of school. Many have called their school and threatened to not allow their children to attend if President Obama was going to speak to the children. Many school districts are not going to play the broadcast. The claim is that Obama is going to brainwash the children.
What?!? How does a broadcast that lasts for about 1/2 hour brainwash our children? What happened to discussing things that the child is exposed to at home - like what I did with my mother and the mormon rumor? In our discussion I learned how my mother felt and the action she took. She didn't threaten to keep me out of that classroom because the teacher didn't teach the way she wanted her to.
What happened to showing respect for the President of the United States? Is respect going to go the way of the dinosaurs - mired down in tar and opinion? I did not like President Bush, but if he was going to speak with my children in school, I wouold have been pleased. There is not one thing that he could have said that would have brainwashed my children. Whether I liked him or not, I respected that the majority of the people voted him in office.
I feel sorry for the children whose parents will not allow them to experience things that are different from their own points of view. Maybe it's too much to ask parents to guide at home, to make sure their children go to church, know where the parents stand on moral issues and can approach the parents with questions.
When I was a kid in church we had a saying, "We are in the world, not of the world." Some people won't allow their children to be in the world.