Life lessons from Hannah Montana

I know, I know. Not the type of person you'd expect to learn life lessons from, but certainly better than Paris Hilton, Britney Spears or any of their ilk. As a program on the Disney Channel aimed primarily at your impressionable teenage girls, the show does a great job of trying to reverse, or at least balance out, some of the nasty images that teens are exposed to from the mass media. In songs like Nobody's Perfect, Make Some Noise, Old Blue Jeans, Life's What You Make Of It, and True Friend, pre-teenage and teenage girls (and anyone else who listens) can learn how important it is to be true to yourself, to repel the peer pressure, to stand up for what you believe in, that you can make a difference in the world, to cherish your friends, and to accept mistakes, learn from them and move on. These are the tings I want to instill in my kids. I love that my daughter, and even my youngest son, not yet 4, knows the lyrics to these songs and can sing along in the car. And, so far at least, the actors in the show seem to be as clean as the characters they portray.

The mass media is all about sensationalizing failures and either making fun of people who make mistakes, or promoting ridiculously unhealthy habits and body styles. Disney is still known as a family-friendly station (radio, TV, movies, music, electronics, communications, and entertainment in general) and I hope it stays that way. As they continue their migration from just trying to entertain the very young to older and older teens, I hope that their clean public image and reputation continues. Their wildly popular, and very chaste, High School Musical series is proof that, while sex does sell, you can still succeed by limiting those sales to those old enough to understand.

Another, earlier song called Who Said, talks about not letting other people dictate who or what you can be as a person. Another very important lesson, not only for our nation's youth, but for us "older generations" as well. We're not done living yet.

Rock on Disney!