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| Our student teacher (M.A.T.), Mrs. Schumacher, reads a book to the class. The text she chose, Corduroy, was a childhood favorite of hers. Many of the kids had stories of having read this one at home as well. |
Dear Families,
One of the very best parts of being a teacher is reading wonderful books alongside forty-two eager ears. Among many incredible benefits -- meeting both academic and social needs -- these daily books provide me an opportunity to revisit some of my own favorites and experience them all over again through the fresh eyes of each new group of kids. If the book is carefully selected, these are moments filled with oohs and aahs, laughter, wonder, and even occasional sadness.
One of my personal goals this year is to read a book to the class every single day that I have never read to a class before. I want us to explore 180 brand new titles as we collaboratively discover a collection of new authors, illustrators, topics, writing craft, and so much more. Another of my goals is to make certain the texts I am selecting throughout the year reflect not only the diversity found within our classroom, community, and country, but the rich diversity found all over the world.
Last Friday's book, The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from Iraq, did just this. It allowed us the opportunity to imagine life in post-9/11 Iraq from the perspective of a librarian deeply concerned about what will become of all the books in her library if the bombs fall on her city.
It was a wonderful book - simple, well written, thought provoking. However, as much as I expected this would be a book in which the kids would want to talk about Alia Muhammad Baker secretly saving books by stowing them into her trunk each night and how I might follow up on their thoughts with my own about the importance of preserving such stories, what actually happened was that I was bombarded with questions - hard questions - about war. Particularly, I was questioned about the role of America.
Here is how it developed...
At first we saw a collection of Iraqis in the library discussing books and the world and their lives.
Soon, however, the discussions among the characters in the book turned to the possibility of war and what this would mean for their families. Before long their fears became reality as planes moved in and began dropping bombs. Buildings were destroyed and fires spread across the city.
And this is where the discussion took a turn from what I expected to what the kids really wanted to figure out.
"Mr. Hass, is that America bombing them?"
Yes, it is.
"Why are we bombing them?"
Well, there were a group of terrorists who were so upset with America they decided to do an awful thing. They overtook a couple of airplanes and crashed them into towers in New York City as well as a government building in Washington, DC. There was another plane as well but the people on that one were able to keep the terrorists from crashing it into a place where other people would be hurt. That happened on September 11th and we refer to it as 9/11.
"Were they from Iraq- the people who crashed the planes?"
Not really, no. But our government felt Iraq was part of the problem. They felt like Iraq was a place that helped the terrorists. They also believed Iraq had been making really awful, really dangerous weapons they weren't supposed to.
"Did they? Make the weapons?"
No. People came looking for them but they didn't find any.
"So we bombed them for nothing?"
This is what happens when you read a good book with a group of curious children who want to understand a situation that makes no sense to them. How would you answer that final question for a group of children who come from politically diverse families? What do you hope each of your children's teachers will make of such questions as they go through their schooling?
I fear many teachers would avoid such a question. But what does avoidance teach kids? To not ask hard questions?
These are the sorts of issues I find interesting in regards to the relationship between democracy and education. I look forward to seeing the kids continue to ask questions, critique answers, and construct their own tentative knowledge - knowledge that will ideally change and grow over the courses of their lives. In doing so they'll go on to contribute to the sort of citizenry a democracy depends upon.
So...how did I respond to the question about whether or not Iraq was bombed, as one child wondered, "for nothing?" Very honestly, but also acknowledging that such questions sometimes have different answers and meanings among different groups of people. My response to them was...
In some ways, that's a hard question to answer. Many of the adults in our lives would likely disagree about whether it was right or wrong to drop those bombs on Iraq during that time. Looking back and knowing what we know now, I am going to guess most would say it was a mistake. But not all would agree with this. That's how these sorts of decisions work in the world - there is always disagreement because people see things differently. But different perspectives are an important part of making decisions together. We just hope that in the end the decisions we make work out to be the right ones.
I'm proud you all thought to ask about this. We'll study about a number of wars this year and war should never feel like a cool adventure or something that is natural. It's complicated. As we study this year we'll keep coming back to the question...when is war okay and when is it not?
"Like with the Civil War?"
Yeah, like with the Civil War. Lots of people died but slavery ended as well. This leads us to ask...what is most important to you when deciding whether or not war was "right" or "wrong?"
"So they have to decide which is worse - war or no war."
Right. And that's an awful decision to have to make.
I will always share these sorts of discussions with you in hope you might choose to continue them at home. In any given discussion, some of the kids are incredibly curious and engaged and others are listening in from the outer edges of the conversation. My goal is to ask probing questions, offer differing perspectives, and let the kids work at hashing it out from their third grade perspectives. It is awesome to witness, when this happens. It's yet another perk of being an educator who is committed to both teaching and learning alongside a wonderful group of kids.
Have a great week!
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