John Velez posted an interesting thing on the UFO UpDates List today and included a link to a site for ABC News4Kids. The post is titled, 'Teach your children well' - a line from a song by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - and in the post, John merely asks whether we think that the story about Aliens over at ABC News4Kids site is an attempt to condition our kids for disclosure or possible contact with aliens in the future.

Now this got me thinking - and we all know how dangerous that is - about our culture and other cultures in how our governments and we, deal with the education of our young.

In 1976, Canada adopted the Metric system, relinquishing our traditional Imperial system of measurement so we might get in step with the rest of the world. Suddenly, instead of miles we were supposed to think in kilometres, instead of gallons, we switched to litres and instead of pounds, we switched to kilograms. The people in our government who pushed through this program realized that we might have some difficulty with this but they were adamanant that future generations would take to the Metric system like fish to water because they would be taught the metric system in the schools.

On a personal basis, I think in Celsius for measuring how hot or cold it is outside and I think in kilometers for distance, but I still think in feet and inches when discussing how tall somebody is and I'm pretty sure that most of my friends in my age range think similarly. I was curious to see how my children and their friends think though and to that end, I conducted an impromptu question session asking them how far it was from home to school, how much they weighed, how tall they were and how much water they drank each day. I was shocked to discover that my youngest son - age 12 and his friends commented that their school was a half-mile away, they were 5 feet and various inches tall and their weights varied from 100 to 125 pounds. In otherwords, the government conditioning of the metric system wasn't taking hold as strong as one might think - yet. It is possible that because most of the educators were schooled in the Imperial system, they don't truly teach the metric system but I don't believe this is a serious issue.

However, there are other cultures, such as China where conditioning of the young was one of the doctrines of the Chinese Communist system and up until recently, China would have us believe that their young people were thoroughly indoctrinated and would never do something like lead a revolt in Tiannamen Square in support of democratic thinking. However, we all saw how wrong they were.

The piece about Aliens over at ABC News4Kids is interesting however and I even learned something new about a sighting in 329 B.C. The site is attractive, easy to navigate, is extremely factual, and does not offer any opinion on whether aliens and UFOs are real or not. In fact, it finishes with asking the viewer what they think and offering an opportunity to email ABC News4Kids with their thoughts about UFOs and Aliens.

All in all, I would say that the piece on Aliens is simply one news story that the site has put together and it is not some secret plan to condition our young, something that I now strongly believe couldn't be done by our government no matter how hard they try... but that's just my take on it!