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After reading her thought-provoking essay with pleasure, I am amazed by the vitriol being directed at Burleigh by so many readers. I will admit that she may have overreached in concluding that she and her husband were also targets of the silent hostility directed at the lone Vietnam vet who spoke out at the assembly, but that is the only place in the essay where her perceptions appeared to be biased or unreliable. After all, she was manifestly able to see through the not-so-subtle conservative ideological indoctrination at the Narrowsburg school to recognize the real good it did her son, both in his reading skills and in his innocent patriotism. As for the much-repeated criticism that it was wrong of her to try to discuss the war with her son, it sounded to me like the explanation she gave him was completely age-appropriate. It was simple and concrete, and - unlike what he was learning in school - it also had the considerable virtue of being true.
