we protect children from reality
we're embarrassed and can't 
explain and feel powerless, so we protect them 
from what they will in turn perpetuate by inheritance. 
this may be evolutionarily advantageous, as nature finds the most easeful course, not looking for trouble. 
but our system itself is trouble.
the good people are inured to a corrupt, warlike government. they give up and focus on more gratifying pursuits, or money, or drugs. bad people do the same, with greater harm to others.
the best we could do is to tell the children about this constructed reality
so that they may see it as a construct and to seek something life-affirming, to recognize lies and propaganda even with the recognition that in all likelihood they too will be powerless to change the killing aspects of the system. we've come to ally with indoctrination and propaganda as the path of least resistance in a land where everything is controlled by money and power, where we are not respected or heard except as units to be manipulated for money or power.
but if we would give children the chance to grow their instinct rather than to conform, if we could be real with them about power and corruption even before they can understand, because if they don't have the basic tools of instinct, they will face a life of misunderstanding, as victims or perpetrators of power, and corruption.
i regret i can't articulate better. i just feel a massive denial going on, a steady desperate drift toward annihilation. and i know neither soccer nor computer games nor more propaganda will ease the angst.
i thought of this talking to my friend with his two kids. i kept glancing at their silent open faces, seeing how they drink in information like plants drink water and nutrients and sun, or whatever else we put in the environment. i saw, unless i'm mistaken, a simple hunger for reality.