Children, Adults, Future
In ‘ We’re Scaring Our Children to Death’, Peggy Noonan expresses the political and cultural problems that scare our children. The author explains that children have to be protected from certain things like terrorism, and for instance, the mass murders that took place at Virginia Tech. Noonan criticizes television shows for violent programs that open up children’s imaginations to a technical fantasy world. I believe that children very susceptible minds and will believe anything they see. This article is directed mostly to the media and also in some degree to parents whom careless what they’re children see or hear on the news or radio. Peggy Noonan compares and contrasts from when she was a child in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and the many duck-and-cover drills that they had to learn. “But now of days it’s a million duck-and-cover drills, a thousand alarms, a steady drumbeat of things to fear”, Noonan admits. Even if that era was boring as she says, it explains why the author would want to express her opinion on the matter. Firstly she had some degree of experience of being frightened as a kid and secondly she probably has kids of her own that she feels strongly subjected to protect against the media and politics.
Another sub-argument Noonan discusses is how more and more children are being prescribed antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. Can there be a connection with Noonan’s argument and these prescriptions? You’d might think so because when ABC did a child abduction special, reporter John Stossel asked children if they were scared of being abducted while they were sleeping. Many kids said yes because they were scared of the unknown and not knowing what’s going to happen while they’re asleep. The author would probably be very angry of this television special. Why would our media deliberately try to scare children? Is it to prepare for a tougher real world as they grow up? This world we live in is definitely an adult world. Our children are just a secondary thought. Noonan thinks we care too much about money, even ourselves rather than our kids.
This rhetorical situation really has no affect upon me. I remember my childhood and I can’t ever remember being ‘Scared to death’ of anything the media reported. While reading this article, I never really agreed with the author’s opinion. Children need to adapt to real world circumstances and why not ‘Scare them to death’, at least they will learn what’s going on with our ‘grown up’ world.
