Should we explain to our children what is happening?
I recognize, dear readers, before starting, that my passion for information, the fruit of my passion for my profession as a journalist, significantly influences my perspective on whether we should explain to our children the news. But beyond my "professional deformation", I think it's worth it to spend a little time reflecting on how we should face this issue.
Perhaps in another time, when children's childhood was totally alien to the world of adults, it was easier keep children away from today, disguise it, even turn it around. He was masterfully won by the devoted Jewish father of that epic movie, Life is Beautiful. But if we stop to look at the environment that surrounds our children, it is practically impossible that they do not know that something is happening. Different is that they find out what is happening or understand what is happening.
They live in an interconnected world where there is not a single screen, the television in the living room, but a myriad of devices all connected to the Internet. They are not regular readers of digital newspapers, but they do have a good time in social networks and on YouTube. And there, what is news, stands out. So to think that they do not know that something is happening is to fall into the error of not understanding in the world in which they live.
When what happens, what is news, has, in addition, a greater draft, is translated in the streets, in the form of demonstrations, flags, chants, tension ... And the children of this also find out.
If we start from the assumption that it is very difficult for our children to be oblivious to what the world offers them, we must move on with the next question. Is it necessary that we help them to interpret or is it enough with what they capture? They will have captured a series of impulses that they will try to decode with the information, still insufficient, that they have.
They do not know many subjects, they do not have historical perspective and they can not correctly use critical thinking about realities they do not know. The problem is that they will always draw their own place composition, even if it is wrong. It is in the nature of man to try to give rational explanation to the events that surround him. It's almost an instinct for survival.
A generation ago, children gradually acquired the necessary tools to deconstruct and understand reality. They achieved this thanks to a long process of "media socialization" that parents were rarely aware of and that has been completely lost. It consisted in old domestic customs, such as watching television news in the family, sharing newspapers and magazines in that common living space called "living room" and swallowing hours of radio in the car because, until the very old ones arrived walkman, the children and teenagers did not listen to what they wanted.
It is not that we now need to register our children in an accelerated current course, but, for the amount of information they receive, I think it is fundamental to help them understand the world around them, explain how they should contextualize it, give them the keys that allow them to go forming his moral, which is nothing other than distinguishing what is right from what is wrong.
