P. I. G.

If you heard of a high school course called "Participation in Government" or PIG, what would you expect the students to study? Even getting away from the obvious jokes about the relationship between swine and leadership on high, wouldn’t you figure that children would be taught about the legislative and judiciary branches of government? Maybe a bit about the executive level? And maybe even get to see those entities in action?

However, here in ever so liberal NYS, that is just not the case. While some attention is given to state and national government, the focus seems more toward teaching our fledgling citizens how to find all the handy sources of pork at the personal level that government has to offer. Thus, rather toting high schoolers down to Albany to sit in the balcony above the Senate chambers to watch government in action, they are forced to head over to the county building to find out how to sign up for government benefits. WIC, Medicaid, Food Stamps, you name it and the kids have to get a signature in the department that doles it out. The rationale is that they may need these some day.

It seems to me that what they really need is to learn how the leaders they elect (if they are not too lazy to vote) do the leading.
We took Becky to some very meaningful farm meetings, including the one that disbanded our milk cooperative, to gather information for this course. However, she has never been allowed to make her required reports on these meetings. Her class is just too busy learning that it is smarter to sell your home and rent rather than acquiring equity. Arrggghhhh.

I tip my hat to everyone who reads this who either home schools now, or has already raised, bright, well-prepared, capable, offspring by schooling them themselves. It seems like we spend most of our teaching time with our children counteracting the junk they are taught in school.

I guess they should just call the course "People Slavishly Dependent on Government" and get it over with.