Economic education for kids, Tea Party style

By some marketing accident, a complementary copy of Bloomberg Businessweek arrived this week in the mail. With a shudder, my wife read me the following (from the 'Fun' section of the 'Companies & Industries section that was describing a variety of summer camps for kids):

Tampa Liberty School, hosted by Tea Party affiliate group The 912 Project, teaches [sic] 8-to-12-year-olds "the principles of liberty, free markets and limited government." Jeff Lukens, 53, whose day job is at an auto auction firm, will run this year's session. The first lesson will teach the campers the difference between European tyranny and freedom in America: After walking into a room that's "kind of dark and gray and austere ... [and being made] to sit down, be quiet and do what they're told ... we tell them, there's this other place you can go to called the New World," says Lukens. Once they've crossed an obstacle course representing the Atlantic, the campers arrive in America. "It's colorful, it's bright, it's cheery -- they get over there and we pop confetti in the air and it's a party," says Lukens. The kids later clean up the mess, so that they know "with freedom comes responsibility." Other lessons teach campers about the gold standard and that "our rights come from God, not from government," he says.

As Noam Chomsky likes to say, comment is superfluous.

RH