We also shouldn't teach our kids that "politics" is a dirty word

I've never met anybody who says they're pro-"indoctrination," have you? Indeed, over the years we've all seen stories about classrooms with teachers who've spouted their political views or punished a kid for his beliefs or for wearing a particular message on a shirt, and everytime it happens -- regardless of whether the offender is conservative or liberal -- it is, indeed, infuriating. The job of teachers -- in a public school, at least -- is to help teach kids how to think for themselves, not to tell them what to think.

That's why -- although I think the reaction by conservative protestors was a bit...OK, actually way, over-the-top -- I do agree on a certain level that those kids at that South Jersey elementary school singing that song about Obama was a mistake. Today, it inspired a Daily News op-ed by local 1210-The Big Talker radio host Dom Giordano on what he sees as a growing issue of indoctrination:

There's a growing trend in this country in which indoctrination is being disguised as education. Children, at home and in the classroom, are being used as pawns by grown-ups trying to advance their own political beliefs and agendas.

There are disturbing examples on both sides of the political fence. Recently, a YouTube video showed second-graders from the B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington Township, N.J., who were directed by an unidentified teacher to sing a song praising President Obama.

So far, OK, sort of. Giordano goes on to give some example to prove his theory that this is part of a trend:

At Ted Kennedy's funeral, some of the Kennedy grandkids used the occasion to promote health-care reform. In Atlanta, middle-school kids at the Ron Clark Academy were on CNN recently singing a song about health-care reform set to the Miley Cyrus song "Party in the USA." Their lyrics said, "Obama says everyone needs health care now."

Why are kids being used to advance political agendas and policy positions?

Whoa -- wait a minute! What did the Kennedy grandkids speaking up about healthcare have to do with "indoctrination"? Indeed, I learned in the course of writing this that right-wingers were apoplectic this summer because these kids, including 11-year-old Edward Kennedy III (top), got up there and pleaded for the cause that their late grandfather believed in, including universal healthcare. This falls under the category of indoctrination? Why can't we be glad as a nation that there's an 11-year-old who's interested in making the world a better place as opposed to doing what most 11-year-old boys do, which is sitting around watching "Full House" reruns on Nickelodeon until you finally kick them outside to play?

But Giordano -- in order to prove his point about indoctrination (which methinks is really a point about Obama, but I digress..) -- thinks that it's a bad idea for parents to involve their kids in their own political activities, bringing them to rallies and asking them to hold signs or wear T-shirts with political slogans.

I've seen parents bring kids as young as 3 or 4 to the "Tea Parties," and have them carry signs that say things like "Stop stealing my future."

To all of these misguided grown-ups, I say: Stop stealing your children's childhoods.

These parents and educators aren't raising children - they're raising lemmings. Impressionable children are being turned into the "innocent civilians" in our political and cultural wars.

Right on! And while he's at it, Giordano should have ripped into all those parents who drag their little children to Mass every week, indoctrinating them and stealing their innocence by making little kids think about complicated things like Heaven and sin and Holy Communion. Have you ever seen small children being asked to recite the Lord's Prayer -- like, um, lemmings? -- when they're too young to know what the words even mean? And you know what's even worse! Baseball. The other day, the camera panned the crowd and I saw a baby who couldn't have been more than six months old, dressed by his parents in a Phillies jersey! How many dads drag their sons to games of their favorite team, instead of letting the poor innocent kid wait until he grows up so he can decide which team to root for, without being indoctrinated.

OK, the point I'm making here is not to bash Catholicism or (heaven forbid) baseball, but it's interesting how we assign a Norman Rockwell, apple-pie aura to American families involved in those activities. But we view politics as something dirty, something we need to hide from the kids like it's the latest issue of Hustler, an activity that robs children of their innocence -- even at the same time we pay lip service to America's participatory democracy and also fret about why so few 18-year-olds actually vote.

Whether it's a Tea Party or an anti-war protest, isn't it a good thing for parents to show their kids there are things in the wider world to be passionate about? At a time when we worry so much about apathy and about families who don't do things together, this strikes me as an odd thing about which to be concerned. I think actual indoctrination is pretty rare in America -- I'm more alarmed about young people who don't care about issues at all, and that, unfortunately, is much, much too common.