Children's President?

One can question the wisdom of bringing hundreds of children into the Waterfront Hall in Belfast to celebrate President Obama.

One should question it.

However,  those of us who believe in  the principle that “Parents are the first and principal teachers of  their children” have to bow to the decision of parents to do it. But because there are plenty of examples of children being shielded off from politicians who were the elected representatives of the people and  were trying to bring a peaceful settlement to our politics,   now we have to work out the reason why children should be brought out of school and into a gathering where praise would be given without question to a man who has more power than he needs and, many people believe, less responsibility than  needed to use it wisely.

At present  torture is  being used not just secretly, shamefacedly, but as a normal part of information gathering by governments. We have abandoned the principle that a person is innocent until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt. We have approved the principle that if anyone anywhere  is deemed a threat to  another state’s  security – not by what he or she has done but by what he or she may do – a government making that judgement  without public trial and proof, can send in a missile controlled from a thousand miles away and destroy  a neighbourhood. In Beirut ? Belfast ?  Larne?   Tubbercurry ?

What we have agreed to would have been beyond belief only a few short years ago. But that we have assented to all this and much more is undeniable after the Waterfront scandal. A new and sinister word to make people  forget  Watergate : Waterfront.

From now on they  can say , We have Waterfronted our children………….

We have been lectured about integrating our schools. Religiously of course. Washington governments racially integrated their schools because they had to, not because they coolly decided that was the humane thing to do. Washington governments have created more wars than  even a British administration could do  in so  short a time. The fact that they lost  the wars did not deter them from creating more. Meanwhile  we do not know how many of their  own people are hungry and even starving , because they will not tell us. They will however send a President here to tell us  how the world should work – or whether it should work - and how we should create peace by the simple means of changing our own way of life , not  uttering even a word about how governments work. The presidential speech could well have been made in a world in which all governments, except one, do  wrong and in which it is the duty of children to make a new world out of one that  adults have already ruined and show all the signs of ruining again.

A new meaning for the Biblical saying  “And a child shall lead them…”, now according to the Waterfront bible children are  expected to lead them because the adults have given over  responsibility t o them. Without power of course. That  is sacred and strictly controlled.

Greater  reason for wonder than the event  itself -  a Pied Piper event - in the Waterfront Hall  was the approval of it by educators and parents. We may be depressed by much of what governments do, but even more can we be depressed by how many people approve of it.

Schools can hardly complain though if  educationalists cease to be recognised as  teachers of political reality. Or moral politics.