Should We Tell Our Boys the Complete Truth?

I have an aunt who declined to review my book Cool Heroes for Boys on Amazon because the first chapter, on a young George Washington caught in the throes of the Battle of the Monongahela in the French and Indian War, noted that Native American warriors scalped many of those they killed and even captured (yes, did this to the living). She thought it was too bloody for boys to know.

Another person (Mark Taaffe) gave me one star in an Amazon review for: “Such naked disingenuous advertising for this book. Alan Turing may have been brave and courageous as deemed by ADULTS. I bought this book for pre adolescent BOYS. BOYS do not need to know that Alan preferred MEN as sexual partners. I can not give this book to the BOYS. Zero Stars.”

I respect my aunt and I respect Taaffe, because they read the book. I have been attacked by many (these tend to be on the far-left) who did not.

However, I disagree.

As a boy, I wanted to know the truth. I was excited by the real details of pioneers, heroes of the West, soldiers, explorers, and more. I felt cheated and became disinterested by half-truths or lies by omission. When I found the truth I was changed, grown up a little, and more worldly. I saw things clearer and understood human nature and history better. This better prepared me for life.

Hiding the truth, often for political reasons, is what academics on the left now do.

And Taffee’s disagreement is deadening.

Censorship is now heavily practiced by the left’s academies, social-media companies, and the media outlets, but he is censoring from the right.

Taffee is flabbergasted that I’d include in Cool Heroes for Boys the fact that the British government castrated Alan Turing for the crime of being gay. They did this after he’d been celebrated as a hero of WWII for helping to break the German Enigma cypher and thereby saving a lot of lives. There is nothing graphic in this chapter on Turing. The chapter merely notes he was gay and convicted for being so. It does note, however, that Turing was chemically castrated and then killed himself. The story goes that he injected cyanide into an apple and bit the apple (a symbol of knowledge).

In my opinion, boys need to know the truth to grow into courageous men! Bias is slain in this way. That is what Cool Heroes for Boys does. But this Amazon reviewer thinks boys can’t handle the truth. My son appreciates it. This and many other true stories in the book led to awesome conversations that opened his mind—and, anyway, he sees a lot worse (and often one-sided) stuff on South Park.

We can try to hide parts of the truth from our boys. We may even succeed for a while. But then they’ll go to college or will be influenced by their peers as they are taught other things that are not true; and, as this happens, they won’t know enough to reject false narratives. They’ll be ripe for indoctrination. They will not have the foundations in critical thinking to handle to one-sided narratives that are now so often pushed in institutions that we once thought of as teaching “higher learning.”