Dear Dr. Boli: My daughter Lucretia keeps coming home with all these assignments about social justice and community engagement and public service, but she’s in the fourth grade. Shouldn’t she be learning, like, how to read and multiply and stuff? —Sincerely, A Concerned Father.

Dear Sir: Most parents do not understand how necessary it is for us to indoctrinate our children in our ideas of what is right and important at an early age. If we do not immerse them from the beginning in our current ideas of what is good and proper, they will have nothing to rebel against when they are teenagers, and their normal development into functioning adults will be stifled. Make sure your daughter pays attention to her assignments, and if you hear her snickering about what goobers her teachers are, you will know that those teachers are doing their job.

As for reading, the best way to teach a child to read is to read good books yourself and enjoy them. When children see that adults have great fun with books, but it requires decoding the printed characters on the pages, nothing will prevent them from cracking that code. Multiplying is why you have a calculator app on your phone.