Fall                                                                                      Falling Leaves Moon

Students in Jefferson County, Colorado and Hong Kong reacted strongly against authoritarian regimes that would limit the teaching of history and studies focused on the homeland. This is no accident. Children and teens are acutely aware of the BS factor in adult pronouncements. They learn some of that at home no doubt, matching parents words with their deeds, but school authorities often say one thing and do another. Kids always notice. Sometimes, like reasonable human beings, they dismiss it, probably saying something like, adults will be adults, but sometimes they notice a danger to their future, perhaps even to the adult’s future.

Especially when governments, the schoolboard in the instance of Jefferson County and Beijing in the instance of Hong Kong, try to shape teaching to conform to their own ends. In Jefferson County the schoolboard wanted a more “patriotic” curriculum that emphasized the values of free enterprise and loyalty. They also wanted a curriculum that downplayed the role of protest and other civil disobedience in the shaping of American history. In Hong Kong the movement led by Joshua Wong wanted public decision making in who would be chief executive of Hong Kong. They also opposed a moral and national educational program* that had critics among Hong Kong teachers, just like Jefferson County.

Children know that their birthright is a world in which they have a voice, in which their decisions and choices matter, in which the information on which they make those choices is as unbiased as possible. In particular they oppose bias by so called “authorities.” Why? Because children instinctively know that authority shapes reality for its own purposes.

As we grow older, we become that authority. If we are wise and can remember our own youth, we will listen to the voice of the young when they say, “I’m calling bullshit on that.”

*”The “China Model National Conditions Teaching Manual”, published by the National Education Services Centre under government fundings, was found to be biased towards the Communist Party of China and the so-called “China model“. The teaching manual called the Communist Party an “advanced, selfless and united ruling group” (進步、無私與團結的執政集團), while denouncing Democratic and Republican Parties of the United States as a “fierce inter-party rivalry [that] makes the people suffer”” analysis by teachers, from Wikipedia