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Kids and TV shows
Aug. 4th, 2003 02:51 pmThis isn't going to be a diatribe against letting kids watch too much tv.
The title for this entry comes from a strange synchronicity that's occured, and it gives me a chance to say something I've wanted to say for a while. Don't lie to children.
Just over a week ago, I talked about the kids I'm tutoring. Well, the 13 year old girl and I had a very good talk this week during her lesson. Let me emphasize that I am teaching something, not just shooting the breeze here.
She came in dressed for softball and admitted that she'd left her work at home. I had brought some information about the Civil War that my father had sent me for her, though, and we discussed how it put the fictional work into context for her. We also picked out the other books that she'd read off of her summer reading list.
Her fear at taking the exams has been the only completely unguarded emotion that I've seen from her, until I showed her those three little pages. Anger flared as she said, "That's more than my social studies teacher ever gave me."
It all came pouring out then. She hungers for facts. It bothers her that the Gettysburg address was mentioned but not quoted, that she's never read the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights even though they spent most of the school year covering the Revolutionary War and its immediate aftermath.
The week before she'd asked me why a ten year old would feel that he had enough education and farm skills to look for work to help his family. Her follow-up question was "What could a ten year old do?"
I answered from my own stories. I fixed dinner for a family of four and did all the laundry and ironing as well from the time I was ten until I went to boarding school at fifteen. My mother had raised rabbits for meat (during World War II rabbits weren't on the ration books so it was a very popular supplemental meat). My father had held down the hogs for slaughter, helped with plowing, weeding, and harvesting, gathered eggs, and milked the cow (I have it on good authority this cow had a mean disposition and used to growl at him). My grandmother had been a field hand in the cotton fields from the time she was five.
This urban girl thought a minute, and said, "That wasn't Civil War time, that was in the twentieth century." She started talking about what children could do and what they weren't allowed to do now. She wanted to know why her teachers wouldn't give her facts. Why did her summer reading list have things on World War II and the suffragettes but only from a teenager's point of view? With the exception of Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank, there wasn't anything that was non-fiction, and she was fed up with it.
I'm bringing her printouts of the Gettysburg Address, Ain't I a Woman, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. We've already discussed what books she'll borrow from me during her first semester at school. All will be history books at her request.
How does this relate to TV? Well, over at TWoP we've been having a discussion of the Stargate SG-1 episode Learning Curve. It snatches a happy ending out of stupidity at least partially because the stupidity is committed by the star of the show.
Anyone who's interested in the debate should go read the SG-1 topic there. Suffice it to say that I get very angry at anyone who decides that his version of fun is superior to my version of fun. More than that, the idea that children can't make their own decisions has always been abhorrent to me (all right, Daddy or Mommy has a better job 2000 miles away, the kid should have to pack and move. But I also think that the kid should have the reasons explained to him/her and have some prior knowledge that it's a possibility.).
So, rant over. Anyone who can suggest the best ways to provide my little historian with facts (she doesn't have a computer at home) that she won't get at school, please let me know. It was so good to see passion, even a negative one, on her face.
The title for this entry comes from a strange synchronicity that's occured, and it gives me a chance to say something I've wanted to say for a while. Don't lie to children.
Just over a week ago, I talked about the kids I'm tutoring. Well, the 13 year old girl and I had a very good talk this week during her lesson. Let me emphasize that I am teaching something, not just shooting the breeze here.
She came in dressed for softball and admitted that she'd left her work at home. I had brought some information about the Civil War that my father had sent me for her, though, and we discussed how it put the fictional work into context for her. We also picked out the other books that she'd read off of her summer reading list.
Her fear at taking the exams has been the only completely unguarded emotion that I've seen from her, until I showed her those three little pages. Anger flared as she said, "That's more than my social studies teacher ever gave me."
It all came pouring out then. She hungers for facts. It bothers her that the Gettysburg address was mentioned but not quoted, that she's never read the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights even though they spent most of the school year covering the Revolutionary War and its immediate aftermath.
The week before she'd asked me why a ten year old would feel that he had enough education and farm skills to look for work to help his family. Her follow-up question was "What could a ten year old do?"
I answered from my own stories. I fixed dinner for a family of four and did all the laundry and ironing as well from the time I was ten until I went to boarding school at fifteen. My mother had raised rabbits for meat (during World War II rabbits weren't on the ration books so it was a very popular supplemental meat). My father had held down the hogs for slaughter, helped with plowing, weeding, and harvesting, gathered eggs, and milked the cow (I have it on good authority this cow had a mean disposition and used to growl at him). My grandmother had been a field hand in the cotton fields from the time she was five.
This urban girl thought a minute, and said, "That wasn't Civil War time, that was in the twentieth century." She started talking about what children could do and what they weren't allowed to do now. She wanted to know why her teachers wouldn't give her facts. Why did her summer reading list have things on World War II and the suffragettes but only from a teenager's point of view? With the exception of Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank, there wasn't anything that was non-fiction, and she was fed up with it.
I'm bringing her printouts of the Gettysburg Address, Ain't I a Woman, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. We've already discussed what books she'll borrow from me during her first semester at school. All will be history books at her request.
How does this relate to TV? Well, over at TWoP we've been having a discussion of the Stargate SG-1 episode Learning Curve. It snatches a happy ending out of stupidity at least partially because the stupidity is committed by the star of the show.
Anyone who's interested in the debate should go read the SG-1 topic there. Suffice it to say that I get very angry at anyone who decides that his version of fun is superior to my version of fun. More than that, the idea that children can't make their own decisions has always been abhorrent to me (all right, Daddy or Mommy has a better job 2000 miles away, the kid should have to pack and move. But I also think that the kid should have the reasons explained to him/her and have some prior knowledge that it's a possibility.).
So, rant over. Anyone who can suggest the best ways to provide my little historian with facts (she doesn't have a computer at home) that she won't get at school, please let me know. It was so good to see passion, even a negative one, on her face.
