For today&#8217;s eighth-graders, barely in their teens and years away from casting a ballot, this presidential election probably won&#8217;t be the most important of their lifetimes.</p><p>Think about that. They may have 20 or more presidential contests ahead of them.</p><p>So it&#8217;s important for teachers to remember that their charge is to prepare children for the long haul. Teach them how to think critically, and give them an understanding of the system they&#8217;ll be using the rest of their lives as voting citizens.</p><p>And certainly don&#8217;t try to steer them toward one party or another, toward John McCain or Barack Obama.</p><p>Consider the news last week out of the Urban Community Leadership Academy, a Kansas City charter school. It suspended one of its teachers, rightfully, after 10 students performed a drill-team routine praising all things Obama. Although the video apparently was made outside regular classroom hours, the academy is taxpayer-funded, and state law forbids advocating for a candidate using school resources.</p><p>The irony is, the episode heaped more unfavorable labels onto Obama. The video played incessantly on YouTube, and those unfamiliar with African-American fraternity traditions saw it as a Hitler-type indoctrination. The routine was a politicized use of a black cultural art form, not a subversive plot.</p><p>And pity the teacher who holds a mock election. Good luck keeping it from degenerating into a popularity contest between the kids representing the different candidates. Or from angering parents when their little one comes home spouting the rhetoric of the candidate they oppose.</p><p>The superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas is onto something this year by discouraging mock elections in classrooms, following trends in parochial schools nationally.</p><p>Some assumed that the recent e-mail from Superintendent Kathleen O&#8217;Hara meant the diocese feared youths might lean toward the charismatic Democrat &#8212; and inadvertently support views counter to church teachings.</p><p>That&#8217;s not a crazy assertion, but we&#8217;re talking parochial schools here, not public &#8212; they have the right to promote church doctrine. And anyway, O&#8217;Hara didn&#8217;t go that far.</p><p>She merely sees the foibles posed by mock elections. She notes that the focus too often falls on who won, rather than the role of a voter in society.</p><p>&#8220;The whole point of having the mock election is to prepare kids for the responsibility and duty of when they are older,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I think we can do that in a different way, rather than have schools have to justify or explain whatever the results are.&#8221;</p><p>Schools will do well in the following weeks to stick to that formula: Voting = Citizenship.</p><p>Political wags note that if you want to be revolted by the level of ignorance in society, attend a political rally. Any rally, Democratic or Republican, will do. It&#8217;s a numbers game; gather that many people together under the banner of politics and the simplistic, rote and utterly ridiculous criteria many use to decide their vote are stunning. And depressing.</p><p>Some adults will be casting ballots solely because Obama is the wrong color, or the right one. Because Sarah Palin is pretty and adept with a firearm. Or because McCain is a war hero. Others will vote against Obama solely because they are gullible enough to believe that his &#8220;foreign-sounding&#8221; name makes him suspicious.</p><p>The key is to teach our students at an early age how to learn about the issues and where the candidates stand, giving them a rational basis for choice.</p><p>Imagine the society we could form if everyone in school today became a critically thinking voter. That&#8217;s a solid objective for teachers.