At the holidays, it's traditional to count your blessings. This essay in the Houston Chronicle reminds us that, whatever its flaws, America remains a bulwark of freedom, a blessing, and a shining ideal. The author, a Cuban mother, is pained when her five-year-old son returns from school singing the praises of five Cuban spies imprisoned in America for espionage. When she visits the classroom - in a state-run school, of course - she finds the teacher distributing plastic guns and encouraging the children to "shoot imperialism." This article gains even greater force from the fact that her son's father, a well-known Cuban dissident, is serving an 18-year sentence in a Cuban prison for his democratic activism. The mother is forced to walk a delicate line, between ensuring that her son honors his father's sacrifice and steering clear of activity that would invite dangerous attention from school officials who function as arms of a police state.
"In Cuba, the price of education is indoctrination," by Claudia Marquez Linares, Houston Chronicle, December 11, 2003
