“Teach Your Children”, by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, as presented on #RadioFreeAmerika, Cliff Notes To A Revolution
Michael Arlen
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(Script:) "Mike Check: Testing. 1, 2, "(feedback) - (theme song) Cue montage of rhythmic helicopter blades, teletype machines & Morse Code. (40's radio announcer voice:) "We interrupt this podcast to bring you a report from Radio Free Amerika; where blasts from the past still ring true, and the music has a message." Tagline: "This is #RadioFreeAmerika"
Story: “Teach Your Children Well” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
There’s a lot of folklore behind the meaning and the purpose of this song. I find it fitting that it debuted on an album entitled: "Deja Vu." Because it's more than just a song about the generation gap between young and old; and how both groups don't always understand each other. It's a cautionary tale of how we're bound to repeat the mistakes of the past if we don't do our best to "teach our children well."
(Without these teachings being taught, there can be no common ground upon which we might meet when fears drive us apart.) The "counter-melody" to the 2nd verse corroborates this: "Can you hear and/ Do you care and Can you see YOU / Must be free to Teach YOUR children / To believe and Make a world that / We can live in.”
The song was written when America was reeling from years of civil disobedience over an "unnecessary" war. And while there's lip-service that more meaning was ascribed to the song after it was written. I am informed and believe that song was written after Nash saw a photo of a child in Central Park with a hand grenade and a look of evil on his face.
It gives me a chill of "deja vu" when I recognize that it was penned in a time (nearly 50 years ago), much like today, when the world was in pieces and our country was almost equally divided..parents and children going separate ways.
The song speaks a universal truth and is a clarion call: In the first verse it is directed to parents to teach their kids to be kind...and to understand the why's of our values. And, in the second, it is for our children to remind us of what we taught them, lest we forget and fall into slumber.
? Michael Arlen Dec 17, 2016
To hear the song, click on this link: https://youtu.be/EkaKwXddT_I