Lumps

Why is the phrase “dead and gone” something that we should be careful about saying in our classrooms?  This came up in our art class today, and I’m really curious.  Please be patient with me as I perhaps say some things that may be contentious.  I'm really examining my own biases and seeing where they may or may not come into conflict with someone else's.  Here we go:

1)    Kids know that things die, and are generally fascinated by death, decay, where our bodies go, and all those sorts of things.  Death is all over the media, and we are fooling ourselves if we think that they aren’t exposed to it. 

2)    What role does the teacher play in “protecting” our students?  What are we protecting them from?  For me, I think it’s incredibly important to examine my own biases to see what I think kids should be protected from.  Mostly, physical harm, emotional abuse, and hunger.  But ideas, like death, and gender, and gasp –sexuality, if and when appropriate- are not ideas that we need to protect kids from.  We need to give them tools to think critically about them.  Of course, this is all dependant on school policy.

3)    What happens if a child that you are truly, deeply listening to (as we are learning that we are supposed to do) wants to know about a subject that you personally don’t believe is appropriate for that age?  Is it your job as a human adult to decide what’s appropriate?  As a teacher?  Do we just get out of it because “we can’t talk about it in schools because we might offend someone?”  Does that mean that we never talk about the difficult issues?  (In my opinion, yes.  We don’t talk about difficult issues in our society because as liberals we are all so terribly afraid to offend anyone with our less than PC views, and nothing ever gets solved.)

4)  I feel like there is a great deal of discussion about the wonder of childhood, and the brilliance of all kids, but really, kids come from all sorts of places and it isn’t all wonderful.  Being told what to do, when to eat, how to wear your clothes, when to wash, etc. etc. is hard, and some kids chafe under it and can’t wait to grow up.  How do we as teachers accept that it isn’t all apples and rosy cheeks, nor are all kids poor and disadvantaged and minorities.