Hillary and Brian

A few days in advance, we parents of kids at the UCLA Daycare got
a memo from the directors announcing the visit of Sen. Clinton and
the Mayor. "She will tour the center, read a story to the children
in Group 4 [the 16 4-year olds in Brian's class] and read a
statement on her position on preschool education. Mayor Villaraigosa
will also be attending this event. Although there is clearly political
content in this event, it will be treated by UCLA as the rental of
a venue, under the policy that as publicly owned space, UCLA must
provide all political parties and candidates with equal access.
Early Care and Education has chosen to participate in this event
because we believe that it will provide a positive public focus
on the importance of early care and education and on the high quality
of the early childhood program at UCLA.  We believe that the older
children [4-year olds like my son Brian] will have a personal experience
that will begin to make democratic elections and their understanding of
American government more real to them."

Some of this did turn out to be true. Sen. Clinton did read "Brown
Bear" at her photo op in my son's class:
(e.g., //www.meenophoto.com/hillaryav/content/Hillary_AV_002_large.html,
Brian is next to the blackboard, wearing the turquoise shirt).
At her campaign rally/press conference on the lawn outside, 
Sen. Clinton did mention universal child
care in two sentences. Most of the remaining twenty minutes concerned
Mayor Villaraigosa's endorsement. Too bad we probably won't get to find out
if UCLA would actually "rent the venue" to Mit Romney, for example.

As far as the 4-year-olds learning about American government, that is
quite a reach.  Brian asked me a lot
of questions the evening before. here's the most he could get out of it:

Some lady wants to be "boss" of everyone in the country.
Brian said this would be really fun, since he enjoys
telling other kids what to do, all the time.
However, he now understands that to become boss, she is going to give
presents to all the families. but--amazingly--she DOESN'T HAVE
ANY of her own! So she's going to need to take some more from us,
since we already have enough. (I had to SHOW him HOW MUCH is the
portion she will be taking, by dividing up our groceries into
two slightly unequal piles on the sidewalk.)
"But that's not FAIR!" was all he could say, loudly, over and over.
He still hasn't learned that this 
observation--even when accurate--rarely settles anything.
In spite of my reassurances, he spent the rest of the evening
worried that Mrs. Clinton was going to come to our house when we're
out, to take his yellow metal dumptruck. He spent a suprisingly
calm 5 minutes the next day sitting within slapping distance of the
Senator. He never even mentioned
the dumptruck during their heavily photographed circle time. 
I'm not sure if I was relieved or disappointed.

Matt Malkan, proud parent and citizen