Fair, not kind
D’s preschool sends home a weekly magazine/worksheet from Scholastic. Each week, it has a different theme, usually more or less related to the season or an upcoming holiday. Last week’s focus was, as you’d expect, Martin Luther King, Jr. The magazine had pictures of different ways that you can be kind, and said that Dr. King "taught people to be kind."
That’s been bugging me since I saw it. "Kind" seems like the wrong word. Even if every white person in the segregated South had been "kind" to black people — and some certainly prided themselves on their kindness — there still would have needed to be a civil rights movement. Kindness is doing something nice when you don’t have to — standing up on the bus because someone else looks more tired than you feel, lending someone a hand when they’re struggling with carrying too much.
I think the right word — remembering that the audience is 4- and 5-year olds — is "fair." Dr. King taught us to be fair. It wasn’t fair that black people had to ride in the back of the bus, and stand if there weren’t enough seats to go around. It wasn’t fair that black kids could only go to inferior schools.
Kind is when you share your cookies with your brother who doesn’t have any. Fair is when you realize that mom gave them to both of you.
January 16th, 2006 at 9:40 pm
I just recycled that very same “Let’s Find Out” and had the same reaction (albeit not so eloquently). My daughter’s teacher also sent a letter home about what they did during the week regarding MLK, which was to read some books about him (which sounded all fine–Curious Girl reports that MLK is dead, and he was born, and she seems to think he did something on a schoolbus, and for a three year old I guess that’s OK). But the note also emphasized that MLK wanted us all to be friends, and I also thought that wasn’t quite right. Even for 3 year olds, fairness would be a better way to frame it.
January 16th, 2006 at 11:45 pm
Yes, I had the same reaction as well. “Fair” hits the nail on the head — perhaps you could do some freelance work for Weekly Reader?
The only saving grace was when LG announced today that he wanted to bring that Weekly Reader to playgroup today, because two of the kids there aren’t very nice. He said, “They should learn about Martin Luther King so he’ll teach them how to be nice.” Groan. But still, my laugh of the day.
January 17th, 2006 at 12:47 am
Good distinction; you’re right.
January 17th, 2006 at 12:58 am
I imagine time and again we’ll be faced with these kinds of not-quite-accurate lessons from school… think Thanksgiving and Columbus. And we’ll then have to come up with nifty ways to help our little kids understand big lessons and big ideas.
January 17th, 2006 at 10:07 am
Too bad they’re still too young for the TV version of The Boondocks. Sunday’s episode with MLK was amazing. “Kind,” my ass.
January 17th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
This is an important distinction.
As far as I can tell there was little to know discussion of MLK in my 6 yr old’s school in Loudoun County. Yesterday we went to the Border’s in Frederick to buy an age-appropriate book. The rotating “seasonal” displays in the store were all focused on Valentine’s day — nothing for MLK in sight.
I had to ask an employee who said, “not sure if we have anything” We ended up finding one picture book in biography.
January 17th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Yeh. Fair’s also when you realize your brother always gets two cookies and you get none, and your job is to clean up after him, and that not only ain’t that right, but now you got to make Mom turn things around, and then watch her like a hawk for the next ten years, because you know damn well who her favorite is.
God, I hate when they take the gelding shears to King. The thing about fair is that King and the rest of those guys didn’t just stand their wringing their hands and saying, “Won’t you please be fair? It’d really be nice,” and looking reproachful. Like, ahem, some other populations do. They said, “Nobody’s going to be fair till we make them be fair.” And they got a little ways down that road, and some of them got killed for insisting on fair, and pretty fast too.
What was that about kind? God, I don’t even know why we send kids to school.
January 18th, 2006 at 8:57 am
I cringe at what has been done to King. My kids got only the I have a dream speech and how everything is okay now.
There’s no coverage in the kids’ material on the social justice and class issues that were absolutely the center of King’s activities, especially near the end.
NOTHING on his criticisms of US foreign policy, which read so true even 35 years later.
As Amy notes, they’ve gelded him to make his message invisible. Grrrr…..
And definitely write to Scholastic, that “kind” stuff is just BS.
January 18th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
I think Scholastic’s new picture-book publisher is Andrea Davis Pinckney, who’s won the Coretta Scott King award for her own work. She might be receptive to complaints. I’d try apinckney@scholastic.com and adpinckney@scholastic.com; their pattern looks like it’s firstinitiallastname@scholastic.
January 19th, 2006 at 10:29 am
Our school’s MLK lessons seemed more focused on the nonviolent ways to right a wrong. They read about MLK, and then for application to their own lives, they had the kids draw a picture of something they would try to stop, and how they would do it.
J. drew a toddler trying to hit another toddler, and him telling the hitting one to stop (something he did in pre-K when a little kid was bullying a littler kid). The teacher wrote on the picture, “You’re using your words, good!” or something like that – my sense was that the stress was on nonviolent resolution of unfairness.
Not too bad for kindergarteners.