An Education

About two weeks ago, something came up about the pledge of allegiance. Zadie knew the whole thing, she said! Wow! we said. Let's hear it!

All three of us said, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation..."

and then two of us fell silent and waited. One continued, "under God, indivisible..."

Huh. We thought. They still do that.

In the most unsurprised and least passionate voices we could muster, we mentioned that not everyone believes in God, and those who do don't all believe in the same one, and that some who DO believe in the same one don't think he has the same name, and isn't it funny how everyone in her classroom says "under God."

Not just everyone in her classroom -- the whole school! The principal comes on over the P.A. At first she thought the speaker was a heater! What a surprise!

Yes, quite!

You know, we said, we think you can and should say it if you want to, and not if you don't, but at our house one thing we try to do is to make sure everyone feels comfortable. So if someone ever chooses not to say the "under God" part, we would hope she wouldn't say anything about it, to help make the other person feel comfortable.

When we were choosing schools, we considered the public Waldorf-methods school, but it was really a commute. Many of Zadie's friends went to Montessori, but it was really a cha-ching. We considered several schools for their art and music programs, their proximity to home, their butterfly gardens. We did not consider test scores other than to rule out a school which boasted of quite good ones, earned primarily through hours of homework and a lack of other instruction. As we were getting ready to decide, our home school, the one for which we had guaranteed admission, announced that they were going IB. IB! The program I teach and love. I love its global perspective, its focus on the learner, its mission statement (among other things, they are going for "intercultural understanding and respect"). I love its belief in inquiry. I signed her up as soon as the window was open.

A few days ago, she came home with a hat on which she had colored a rainbow feather, and carefully traced the words "I sailed with Columbus." We complimented her and let it go.

But JESUS FUCK. I mean... My mom said, "You know, we learned all the wrong things, but later we learned the right ones and now we know better." And someone else said that they start learning the real story of things like the first Thanksgiving in about 6th grade. And that's fine, in many ways. I'm not aiming for her Kindergarten curriculum to include anything about cutting off the hands of indigenous people or selling 9-year-old girls as sex slaves. But, like... couldn't we just skip that asshole? I mean, it's not like they get the day off. Many places have started calling the day, if you need a goddamn theme, Indigenous People's day. Maybe you could color a basket instead, and trace "I wove baskets from reeds." Or it's October, harvest time... maybe we could talk about what's growing, or how early people grew stuff at all, or how food was stored in the early days of this country. That's all Kindergarten-friendly stuff.

I honestly just didn't really think the curriculum for my daughter, born 32 years after me, would be the same crap I learned, and the same crap the Brady Bunch kids learned, and the same stuff pretty much everyone past the age of copying the Bible and wearing dunce caps learned.

I can't imagine the amount of work that goes into being a Kindergarten teacher. Zadie turns in a packet of three pages of homework twice a week, and gets it back the next day with a comment, star, or happy face on every page. She has already learned all kinds of stuff that she didn't know before. This week, she is the VIP and she's very excited about it. Kindergarten makes her feel special and grown-up, and I love all that. But I think when I envisioned what a "global perspective" would look like in the younger grades, I didn't think it would mean strict and rigorous adherence to the doctrine of God and old dead white guys. And I am a little disappointed.