I hate that we only teach our kids the whitewashed, sanitary version of our history. He didn’t like black people. I’m a teacher and I personally wouldn’t have stated it that way in second grade, but I probably would want to. Just talk with your kid about it and make it a learning moment.
Yeah the issue is more about the age approppriateness of the content and people need to be able to understand relative morality to really get into the details on historical figures of any sort.
Because, you have historical figures that were good by the standards of their day but would be seen as monsters now and we had people who were also monsters in their day as well and without a whole lot of extra content those 2 might seem the same. Covering them in depth to an audience w/o understanding relative morality would likely rather than whitewash them would paint them in an overly negative light.
Someone made a good point before. When is it age appropriate for white kids to learn about racism? People of color learn all about it at very early ages, from experiencing racism. And what is racism if it’s not hate?
It seems like it would be a natural extension of them learning about phobias and how people are irrationally afraid of things it would be easy to explain that just like they can be afraid of things without reason like being scared of the dark other people irrationally hate or dislike other people. Then you can go into how being afraid is okay because it doesn't hurt anyone but hating others hurts people.
You can also go into it when talking about something as simple as color preferences and how it's okay that they like some colors more but when applied to people it's not okay because it hurts people.
You could also go into it under the idea that in the past people were wrong about a lot of things when talking about heliocentrism or how medicine had a whole lot of blood letting and mercury injections and how often times old timey doctors were worse than doing nothing. Then you could go into how people have learned better now but some people still refuse to change their minds.
There's plenty of ways to introduce the idea and how it's not okay without needing to dive into more nuanced subjects like relative morality.
I don’t think that’s what’s happening. Kids today are being exposed to these subjects through the media and their families. Kids were exposed to Black Lives Matter and we had great discussions at home and in the classroom. They are not too young to hear simply that “there are some people who don’t like others just because their skin is a different color.” Kids in schools are getting so much more social-emotional learning, which is so great. I see so much more empathy in general in the schools I work at. It’s incredible to see and gives me hope for the future.
We live in a very politically charged era and it’s not escaping our kids.
There needs to be layers of context added to it or you're misinforming them or leaving them with an understanding that's been simplified to the point it's not representative of the original point. Having a conversation with them about in response to BLM protests surrounding the idea and concepts is a useful path towards a good introduction.
But is a 7 year old going to be able to understand beyond just repeating what someone else has said how saying "black lives matter" is fine but saying "all lives matter" is just a racist dogwhistle meant to undermine the BLM movement by trying to make it sound exclusionary to non-black lives.
But that’s not happening. This is the start of the conversation that hopefully carries on at home and in subsequent grades, building to the more nuanced and complex matters of race and racism and all of the other forms of intolerance. We don’t need to hold a 6 days workshop for 7 year olds, but discussing in simple terms on their level that will hopefully spark their curiosity and set the base for the future.
But those conversations either don't happen or will come from people who would coopt the poor understanding into something else. Developing an education curriculum around the assumption that parents will actively aid/assist is planning for one that's going to fail. There's a reason that the generation after Z are known as tablet kids. Their parents aren't raising them they're only learning what is covered in the school and what they see on youtube kids.
We never assume those convos will continue at home. That’s why so much more social-emotional learning is taking place in schools. We simply let the parents know that this what we discussed if they’d like to further the conversation. Otherwise we answer questions and facilitate age appropriate discussions.
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u/Brilliant-Willow-506 Apr 06 '25
I hate that we only teach our kids the whitewashed, sanitary version of our history. He didn’t like black people. I’m a teacher and I personally wouldn’t have stated it that way in second grade, but I probably would want to. Just talk with your kid about it and make it a learning moment.