Literacy

Brad DeLong evidently has taught his kids critical thinking skills.

Are we sure that this is a real Bush-Cheney advertisement? The Eleven-Year-Old saw it first, and her immediate conclusion was that some Democratic hacker had gotten into the Bush-Cheney website. The mainstream Democratic politicians — Gore, Dean, Gephardt, Kerry — come across as angry, yes, but as angry for good reasons: they talk about very bad things that George W. Bush has done. And then come the shots of Hitler: completely unexpected and grossly inappropriate for the context, the (intended) message that Kerry supporters compare Bush to HItler doesn't come through to her at all; what does come through is that (a) Democrats make cogent points that (b) the Bush campaign thinks are somehow reminiscent of Hitler.

The Eleven-Year-Old has a very good point.

The Talmud tells us that we must teach our children three things: the Torah, a profession, and how to swim. Rabbi Jonathan ben Ephraim says that in the modern world, we must also teach them critical media literacy.