As I listened to the morning news today I was struck by something I heard. I have a bumper sticker on my car that says if you are not appalled you're not paying attention. I have had this for years and have not yet found a reason to remove it. I have come to believe that anyone can say anything on the television, the internet or the news paper (among other places) and it then has credibility. It doesn't matter if you are an athlete, CEO, president, congressional seat holder, actor or any of the other possible positions that give you the real or artificial position of "expert" I believe that most of the time the speaker believes what they are saying. I saw a movie one time where the speaker said you can get anyone to believe anything if you say it with authority. Today when the news media's driving force is ratings not necessarily truth, anything is fair game.
So today, how do you raise "valued" teenagers? By valued I mean not that we value them but that they develop values. One value is to tell the truth. Truth is too frequently an elusive quality today. In schools we are really no longer teaching critical thinking. This does not meant that this never happens but it is not the norm in public school. What this means is the students are not encouraged to question and inquire about what something means. As parents this is something we might consider encouraging in our children. So when the dinner table discussion goes to whatever is currently the big issue in the news or whatever you might encourage your children to explore the topic further. After they have done so, or you do it together, talk about the range of possibilities. What is truth and what is someones opinion. We could also do this with advertising. They can develop the ability to look critically at advertising. To determine when a photo has been air brushed, when a claim in not realistic and why.
I used to get emails about horrific dangers and would forward them to my daughters - DANGER- DANGER PAY ATTENTION! one or both would look them up and at times let me know they were a hoax. Help your children know when and how to question. Help them to evaluate truth telling in the media. This is pretty important. For those of you already doing this congratulations. For the others experiment with this. Sherri
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