When I was in elementary school in the Philadelphia Public School System, we sold things. 

No, not the illegal kind. It was school-sanctioned.

Several times a year, our homeroom teachers would hand out neatly folded pamphlets with beautiful photographs on the covers and inside pages. The back page had multi-colored columns. Those were for us for easier tabulation. Our task was to ask our neighbors, friends, family and extended friends and family to buy gourmet candy, jewelry, books, or anything else we were selling that month. We would get prizes based on how much we sold. The prize I remember most is a poster of a puppy.

We did this in the spirit of “supporting our school.” It reminded me of an old bumper sticker- It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the military has to hold a bake sale. We grew accustomed to the missions and didn’t really think about them. What is it this time? I remember our class collectively thinking, a few verbalizing out loud, as the teacher distributed the pamphlets. 

Some of us raised more than others, and most of us raised something.

Looking back on it decades later, I realized that the school made money and the company that contracted with the school made money, but we were just free labor, cogs in the machine. We didn’t know very much. The school made sure of that.

So, when I saw letters to the editor from fourth graders in a recent edition of the Methow Valley News, my first thought was, Isn’t that cute. According to the editor, this is an annual tradition for fourth graders to “express their thoughts on topics that are important to them.”

The first letter, published in the May 22 edition of MVN, reads, “I’m writing to you because something unfair that shouldn’t happen is happening right now in our schools. Our school does not have the funding it needs.” 

Mm. Pretty bold, I thought to myself. But maybe that’s how this child writes.

This child concludes, “I never expected this to happen, and I don’t think it could be much worse. Our school is still amazing, but it still needs the right amount of funding.”

I read the next letter, which also laments school budget cuts. The student writes, “I am disappointed and depressed and will probably hold a gigantic grudge against the government of our state.” 

At this point, I begin to wonder what’s going on. I believe in the Waldorf philosophy of not giving children problems they can’t control. Now, I’m reading the words of a 10-year-old who is “disappointed and depressed” by problems created by adults.

What she really should be concerned about is acing that next test and having fun with her friends.

The third letter has the unambiguous title, Not Fair. The child writes, “The government has stopped adequately funding some really fun things at our school.”

Adequately funding? Isn’t that adult-speak? 

She goes on, “This is not only happening at our school but lots of other programs around the state of Washington and other states.”

How does this child know that?

All three letters dealt exclusively with school budget cuts.

There were a few weeks hiatus until the drum beat again in the June 5 issue.

“Schools in Washington are having a budget crisis, and it impacts my friends and I.,” writes another fourth grader.

It’s not just the grammar that bothers me but the term “budget crisis.”

“Budget crisis” is adult-speak. The only crisis a fourth grader should reasonably experience is the drama that comes with fitting in with other fourth graders. 

The last letter was a little more upbeat. This one thanked the Public School Funding Alliance (PSFA) for supporting programs in her school. “Without PSFA, we would not have all of these amazing, special opportunities.”

When I was in elementary school, we didn’t know how we were funded. There was a general understanding that we were under-funded, but no one was “disappointed” or “depressed” about it. We were spared in that sense, even as we were encouraged to sell, sell, sell.

Since then, someone speculated that even more money could be raised if children became spokespersons for funding education. All of the letters in this project concerned school funding and banged the same drum. Coincidence?

They are, like we were, pawns.

Education funding is a challenging subject that requires understanding diverse points of view of how and why we got here. That is not even remotely evident from these letters. 

In comparison, a few letters down in the June 5 issue is a letter written by a high school student about a civic project she has been working on. The tone is entirely different- the letter came from her own research, her own thought processes. This is what we should be encouraging- critical thinking, not adult-speak that pushes an agenda.

There has been much written (and experienced) about ideology permeating our public schools, which are supposed to be neutral. Now it’s expressing itself in political ideology.

It’s disturbing not only because adults we trust are allowing this topic to affect our children’s mental health, but also because an experienced editor fell for this. A better project would have been to actually read MVN and write a letter to the editor, like adults do.

This issue reminds me of my friend in Phoenix who told me his sister pulled her twin daughters out of public school after teachers taught classes in union t-shirts. She hated the increasing amount of politics entering her children’s classroom and that was the straw that broke her camel’s back.

It’s interesting to observe how some political ideology is downright offensive and some is just invisible.

I am the founder and editor of Methow Valley Examiner, an online publication for locals, by locals. MVE explores stories beyond the headlines.

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