Gratuitous Domestic Posting (TM) - Subversive Parenting Division

So the Missus signed up the Llama-ettes to do a session of Vacation Bible School at the Baptist Church around the corner from our house this week. (largely, I suspect, in order to get them out of her hair while she sets up her classroom for the start of school).

Apparently, this Church's VBS is much more hard-core than the one held earlier in the summer at our own Palie House O' Worship. Last evening, the Six Year Old said to me, "Dad, did you know that in Africa a child dies every fifteen seconds because of bad water?"

Ermmmmm......

It turns out that this Church is involved in something called Watering Malawi, a charity that seeks to build irrigation infrastructure in that country which, despite bordering one of the largest fresh-water lakes in the world, suffers chronic drought problems. It seems a legit cause. Apparently, the strategy of the VBS is to get the kiddies' collective attention by exposing them to the seriousness of the issue, something our own VBS program emphatically does not do.

Mind you, I'm not complaining. It's a big, bad, nasty world and sooner or later the children have to become aware of this. Nonetheless, I couldn't resist a little homily of my own, pointing out that helping people in Africa wasn't always so easy as collecting loose change to buy things. I touched on P.J. O'Rourke's emphasis on the need to promote rule of law, property rights and education. I noted the rampant problems associated with incompenent and corrupt governments. I also spoke briefly of those regimes that deliberately keep various parts of their own populations in poverty (or worse) for various political reasons.

I hope the gels don't repeat too much of this, lest they be burnt at the stake. Nonetheless, I believe it's better for them to begin to grasp that these are complicated issues now than it is for them to develop bumper-sticker mentalities about them and to have to unlearn such simplistic (and wrong-headed) thinking later on.

Ain't I a stinker?