Learning About Government

 How much do your children understand about who, what and how their government works? While governments internal workings can be confusing it is still important to understand the basics.

 What are the local government offices and how are they filled? Do you have a City Commissioner or a County Commisioner? Is your sherrif elected or appointed? Do you have an elected District Attorney and Judges? In the county that I live in those are all elected positons. These officials are concious of who put them into office and make sure that they are available to solve problems and answer questions. We have set in on many Commisioner meetings and voiced our concerns or agreement with the issues they were discussing.  We can call our commissioners and while we alomst never get talk to them immediately we do leave voice mails for them and the get back to us in a reasonable amount of time with the answers. We sat with our local District Attorney and he explained his duties and responsibilities. You can attend court cases and observe how they are handled. Our Sherrif vowed to always have a listed phone number incase any of us wanted to talk to him.

 This is important on many different levels. Having one on one contact with these officials helps our children to learn that they are just people. They may be irritating or great. But in the end they are just people like every one else; not some geat power that can be scary to approach. By talking to them in a direct face to face discussion you can get a feel of whether they are honest or someone you want out of office.

 The same approach may be applied to the state and federal government levels. These officials are availabe to be contacted. They should answer your questions, although the answers may not be what you wanted to hear.

 Government officials are our employees. We hire them and we pay their salaries. As our employees it is important that we keep track of who they are, what they are doing and how they are doing it. Help your child be ready for this very adult responsibility!