California kids
I have always liked to talk to children.
Children tend to be more authentic and sincere than adults, reflecting more of what is genetically “human” than what is added (or taken away) by years of exposure to a given culture.
Today, I was fortunate to be conversing with a group of second graders from what could be described as an “upper middle-class” background, with a California “twist.” The twist is the multiculturalism of California. The kids were polite, had generally great reading abilities, and either came directly, or had parents or ancestors who came, from all over the world.
I have a pretty strong background in science, and was discussing with them the value of visiting their school science fair (we went). I told them that it is important to be familiar with science so that they could understand phenomena that affect us all, like global warming. I also told them that one of the big problems that I see in eliminating causes of global warming is that people all over the world must learn to work together, even cultures that have fought with each other for hundreds or thousands of years.
Well, that brought some good questions….
One child needed to know how a gradual sea level change would be different from a tsunami. One child, of Persian and Polish ancestry agreed that it was important to know about science to understand such things. One child, wanted to know why humans seem to always resort to violence to resolve their differences. Why, indeed….? One child of Korean ancestry wanted to know what caused the Korean War. Another of Korean ancestry said that her grandmother had moved from North Korea to South Korea, but did not know when. A child of Vietnamese ancestry wanted to know what caused the Vietnam War. Another of Vietnamese ancestry had a 75-year-old grandfather who had fought in the Vietnam War. Another knew of the French involvement in Vietnam before the American involvement.
There were some pretty sincere and intense questions from this group of second graders. I tried to provide some sincere and accurate answers, but as you can see, many of their questions are the same questions that adults have.
The multiculturalism of California highlights something about America that some folks have recently forgotten – that America is a land of immigrants. All of us have come from somewhere else, the only difference is the time of the immigration. The contributions of all of the people from all of the different places are what continue to make the country, and the state of California, great.
Sometimes you have to talk to kids to be reminded of such things….
-Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo
