Published: December 1, 2006

Teach Your Parents Well

With muffled TV sounds emanating from another room, Larry Reese and his 12-year-old daughter, Lakeetha, sit together at the kitchen table in their North Miami home, their heads bent over a civics textbook. The small living-and-dining area is tidy, if somewhat sparsely decorated, with harsh overhead lighting and an empty fish tank against one wall. Lakeetha, just back from cheerleading practice, is wearing shorts and a T-shirt, her hair in neat cornrows.

“‘Legislature,’” she reads aloud from her vocabulary list.

“They make the laws,” Reese offers in a slightly weary but patient voice. “Like Florida has the...