What Kind of World are we Leaving to our Children?

The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I came across this quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer several years ago.  As a father, grandfather, teacher, and teacher educator, this quote haunts me more each time I read it.  I am concerned that we are leaving our children an ethical tsunami. 

I was awarded a Fulbright Lecturer Award to Estonia during the 2000 Fall Semester.  A year later, we brought a group of Estonian students with one of their professors to Maryville College to visit our public schools.  On the first morning, I met with the students before they were taken to the schools, and they seemed very nervous.  As I quizzed the students, one student finally asked, “Will we see any guns?”  How do people from other countries view us? ...as drunken cowboys shooting everyone who makes them mad?

Thirty years ago I had never dreamed that our children would be facing the following issues:

• Many of our children do not want to go to school because they are afraid that they may be shot and killed.
• We have children as young as 12 years-old who are kidnapped from our communities and forced into the sexual slavery world. This human trafficking is happening in our country and communities and is not isolated to third world countries.
• We live in a society where many advocate that we arm first-grade teachers to stop the slaughter of children in our schools.
• I never thought I would live to see the day that we would need more than one armed guard to protect our children. This is not Iraq, Pakistan, or Afghanistan but the United States. Are we becoming the land of the enslaved to fear instead of the land of the free?
• It is quite troubling how often in our local paper I read stories of children who have been sexually abused by family members.
• We do not seemed to be appalled that many children who live in poor families do not have adequate healthcare.

Children have become a liability instead of a blessing.

I return to the quote, “The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”  Savannah, Victoria, Daniel, and Isabella, I must confess that I have let you down.  I request that somehow you may find the grace to forgive me.  

Bless you my children,

Dr. Terry L. Simpson

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