Other Columns by Kevin Fobbs
Kevin Fobbs Bio

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As school children leave hurriedly from their classrooms and the shadows of their school year melt into the background of their memories, parents must keep this summer as a reminder that a year ago we lost a great president, in Ronald Reagan and it is important for school students, parents and teachers to not only remember the legacy of this man, but more importantly, over the summer months help them to learn the truth of the impact he had on this nation and the world.

Why is this so important for the children of America to re-learn over the summer months? Well, as historians begin to evaluate and reevaluate the legacy of this man, the future historians of tomorrow are in the homes of our nation's elementary and junior high and high school students' today. These students need to be taught that the driving force in this real life drama was a plain speaking man, who was more than a celebrated hero on the Silver Screen from an age that only their parents and grandparents may completely remember.

But why summer? Well summer is when families spend more time together. Summer is filled with a lot of quality time as well as quantity time. We must use the time to mean more than just un-planned fun. Let's also mix in the fun with finding ways to honor a man who made all of us feel like we could do more, strive for more and touch the hearts of our fellow Americans because we all shared and embraced unselfish values like volunteerism?

Before school lets out for the summer, teachers have an excellent opportunity to help the parents develop reading assignments rich and replete with examples of patriotism, acts of valor, and movies with themes that will enable parents to help their children understand that Reagan helped us to embrace the belief that all of us had a right to be judged by our merit, by our initiative and by our achievement. Those were unique values that actually had been embraced 20 years before Reagan by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his famous and eloquent 1963 "I have A Dream" speech in Washington DC.

As I begin to outline my suggestions, let me first say that you have the ability to help make this an exciting and wonderful journey of discovery for your children and a way to hammer home some important values that your children will be able to share with their friends, and class mates when they return to school in the fall. Just imagine when the teacher asks students to write down what they did during their summer vacation, your child or children will write down proudly, how they learned about a man who was our president and how he helped Americans to recapture their belief in themselves again and that our best days are still ahead. But they will also be able to share the richness they and their family discovered about our nation and why freedom and the defense of it are so crucial:

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