WaPo Highlights Kids Used to Push Green Agenda, Fails to Question Propriety of Tactic`

.
Have you ever read a newspaper article and walked away stunned that the writer seemed to be totally oblivious to the real story or left some significant questions unasked?

Conservative readers of the June 9 Washington Post could understandably answer yes to the aforementioned question after reading the front page story "Early Lesson in Eco-Activism Comes From Economics Book."

Writer Daniel de Vise begins:

Casting about for a cause, the Young Activist Club at Piney Branch Elementary settled on something close at hand: the hundreds of polystyrene trays and plastic utensils discarded daily in the school cafeteria.

Back up the train. An elementary school has politically motivated extracurricular clubs?

But young children are highly impressionable and the the political activism they would engender most certainly would be guided by the political views of their parents and teachers. As de Vise admits, Takoma Park is one of the area's "most socially conscious" (read: liberal/progressive in politics) communities.

But if the community at-large is pretty liberal, why on Earth isn't the push for eliminating styrofoam from the school's cafeteria the province of the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA)?

De Vise doesn't seem curious on that point, nor does he seem interested in probing how much the students understand about cost-benefit analysis.

Instead, de Vise opts to dutifully transcribe quotes from the little kids who are no doubt egged on by their teachers... [snip]

I'm not expecting a newspaper reporter to ask these difficult questions of impresionable 8-year-olds, but they are legitimate questions for the adults who are using the kids as "socially conscious" political props...

READ MORE