You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means...

So a lot of the kids in my classroom are, how should I put this... quite under-educated. They just aren't exposed to much, and so even the simplest concepts need a thorough explanation to help them understand about the world. You can't just say big-concept words like "peace" and "justice" or "equality" because the kids really don't have much prior knowledge to anchor these words to. I just don't think that many adults talk to them about these sorts of things (at their level, anyway) so the kids appear to be "ignorant", which is a harsh word, but their ignorance is built upon under-exposure to explanations about how the world works, rather than any sort of conscious decision by the kids.

I also try to (gently) bring up other points of view, or opinions, just to throw the kids a loop and see what they do. It's amazing seeing them try to wrap their minds around these sorts of things.

In my class, I have a policy that the kids can't draw (or pretend to use) any sort of weapon, especially guns. This can be a hard rule to enforce, especially around hunting season, but I do it to show the kids that not everyone thinks the same way or has the same opinion as them.

Today, a boy "accidentally" drew a gun on his folder, and I told him to erase it. "Oh yeah, I forgot," he said. "You don't like guns."

"No, I don't."

"And you don't like shooting and wars and stuff."

The boy then looked at me, and you could tell the wheels were going around in his head. "But... um, what if two armies agreed that they hated each other? Would you be okay with it if they fought each other?"

That's a good question-- I really didn't know how to answer him. However, before I could, another boy asked, "but what if people who weren't in the army didn't want them to fight? How could people stop them?"

That I could answer, in a way. I herded them over to the computer and looked up this picture:


"This is a picture from the Vietnam War," I told them. "Look at what the man in the middle is doing to the guns. Do you think that's a better use for guns than to shoot people?"

"Is he really putting flowers into the gun?"

"Yes."

"So it's like a plant-holder instead of a weapon?"

"Exactly. The man in the white sweater is a hippie-- an early hippie, but a hippie nonetheless."

"What's a hippie?"

"It's someone who was against the Vietnam War, and thought that peace would be better. They didn't agree with the war and often protested against it, but instead of protesting in a yelling and loud sort of way, they protested by doing gentle things, like putting flowers in guns." (I know this is a pretty sugar-coated and idealized way of describing what a hippie was, but for the sake of this conversation it would suffice. Besides, my kids are only in third and fourth grade and I didn't want to bring up anything that would cause me to get fired if the kids were to repeat it!)

So the kids digested this for a while, and pondered it.

Later in the day, I was going through some of the pictures on my computer (I was trying to look up something else), and the kids were watching me. I happened to come across this picture of my friend Steve-o:



And one of the kids yelled out, "Oh, oh, I know who that is! It's a hillbilly!"

"It's a what?" I asked, a little confused. Steve-o is the least hillbilliest of all the people I know!

"It's a hillbilly! You know! A person who puts flowers in guns!"

....well, at least they are sorta understand... :)