What are kids learning about free speech?
By: Dierdre Glenn Paul
Your Turn
Guest columnist
...... Many adults seem to have forgotten that our children are intently watching and learning how to be fully human from us. Worse still is the fact that so few of us seem to care or ask the centrally importation question: What in the actual hell is our bad behavior teaching the children we claim to love?
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Whether it's an Englewood [NJ] Hospital surgeon allegedly celebrating Charlie Kirk's assassination in front of patients and staff alike, politicians and pundits blaming the victim for his own killing, or workers in every sector being suspended and fired for gleefully watching and sharing Online clips of Kirk's slaying in real time, one thing is crystal-clear: Many adults have obviously lost their way and believe that they Have no role to play in handing off a better world to our children.
..... Yes, I understand how some might be won over by logically-flawed arguments that these grotesque celebrations of murder and thoughtless words (cast as protested free speech) are case-sensitive, meaning we get to collectively decide who's worthy of our compassion and who isn't. Wrong. God is the only one who gets to decide that.
..... Let's not conflate free speech with puerile and macabre words and deeds, both signifying a callous disregard for human life. And mind you, they're coming from some of the same people who have hissy fits about plastic bag use because of what it will do to the world we leave our children. Come on. Stop it - that's bizarre.
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To acknowledge that Kirk's killing was tragic or to show compassion for his widow and two very young children doesn't negate the sting of his harsh and regrettable remarks about MLK Jr., former first lady Michelle Obama, George Floyd and the civil rights movement, writ large. Nothing changes the fact that those comments were hurtful and thoughtless. I'm not here to sugarcoat them or make claims hat they weren't that bad.
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Yet most of us don't know whether Kirk's positions on these issues and a host of others evolved over time, as he was still in his teens and 20s when he put some of them out for public consumption. how many of us made similarly irresponsible comments when we were younger?
..... There may be a difference between Kirk's experience and our own, however. Many of us didn't grow up in a world where everything - including murder - is captured on video. We'll never know whether his thoughts changed with chem and maturity. and for those who wish to fiercely protect their current right to free expression, should Charlie have been killed for exercising his?
What is our bad behavior showing our kids?
..... So let's return to the question that we began with. What in the actual hell is our bad behavior teaching the children we claim to love?
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Here's a list of the top five lessons:
* We're teaching our children that we simply eliminate the people we disagree with.
* We're teaching our children that free speech is my right but not yours.
* We're teaching our children that we don't intellectually push back on talk deemed racist and/or biased. Instead, we kill it dead and forever lose the opportunity to educate and possibly even help the "other" change for the better in the process.
* We're teaching our children - as we have in some many other ways - that human life has no value.
* We're teaching our children that it's wrong to see another;s humanity and it's weak to extend any degree of compassion and empathy to those with whom we passionately disagree.
..... And if we continue down this wayward pat, we'll end up with children who grow up to mirror back at us the aberrant spectacle that we've become.
..... Dierdre Glenn Paul is a professor of education at Montclair State University.