If you’ve listened to The Quake (105.7 FM) in the past year, you’ve heard the anti-litter public service announcements, brought to us by the Obion County Sheriff’s Department and featuring Obion County schoolchildren singing very off-key about why it’s important not to litter.

We get the message.

Litter isn’t just an eyesore; it pollutes our rivers and streams. If roadside litter catches fire, it can cost thousands of dollars in crop losses overnight.

But it’s what they are not saying that is truly the public service announcement.

How could anyone listen to these PSAs and think anything other than that music education in Obion County is sorely underfunded?

And if you are so lucky as to catch two or three of these showcases of youthful talent in a row, your body may well have willed itself infertile, horrified at the thought of contributing to an ever-growing epidemic of tone-deaf children in northwestern Tennessee.

This public service announcement does a disservice to its cause and to the listeners, who have become rather adept at changing the station at the first sign of children singing.

It’s time for a change — hopefully one in the anti-litter ad campaign, and not a permanent change of the pre-set radio stations in our cars.

Samantha Young is a senior Communications major from Lewisburg, who under most circumstances thinks children should be seen and heard.