Schools…and Indoctrination

Ok. This is actually a bit of fun on my part. However, there is a serious side to it as you will see. So; first the serious bit…

We live in an age where schools are becoming increasingly politicised. They are trying to teach kids certain things from a very early age that would never have been discussed when I was in school. Even at a school leaving age.

One recent example in the news concerned parents protesting and getting some of these so called “lessons” stopped. In this particular case it concerned “lessons” aimed at telling kids about trans-sexuality. Even I don’t know too much about that and neither do I want to really. It turns out that the parents were all of one particular religion and basically stuck to their principles. So far they appear to have won. I admire them for that.

Anyway, all that is a bit heavy for these pages so I will just finish the explanation by saying what teachers were allowed to tell us all them years ago when I was in school. The answer? Nothing. Nothing at all. If you ever asked them, they would not even tell you which party they voted for in the elections. They weren’t allowed to. Politics and anything politicised was out of bounds in those days. And I believe it still should be.

Collecting helps you learn.

Dani is as close to being interested in collecting something as he can be at his age. Collecting things like coins or stamps is great for kids.

He now has a fair collection of coins. I found a load of old money I had accumulated from years of visiting different countries and that was a good starting point for his collection. Occasionally he gets the coins out and we look at them and – obviously – he asks me about them. On this particular occasion he was separating them by country.

A Little bit of fun with old coins

Collecting coins and stamps is a great way for young kids to learn about the countries and geography in general. I actively encourage this. But after several coins had already been separated I decided to have some fun…

“Where is this one from dad?”

“Brazil.”

“This one?”

“That one is Belgium. You can put it in any pile you like because Belgium is not a real country.”

“What? It’s not a real country?”

“No. It is basically a made-up country really.”

“Where is this one from?”

“Portugal. Escudos. Before the Euro.”

“And this one?”

“Portugal again. Before Germany stole their money.”

“Germany stole their money?”

“Yes. Well, sort of. They made everyone use the Euro so the countries didn’t have their own money any more. Spain too. Spain used to have its own money, the Peseta.”

Enough… For now.

Counter-Indoctrination

Clearly I was having a little fun; for my own benefit. But there are two points to make here. Firstly some kind of balance is needed to counteract the continuous crap people get thrown at them. Even if it is half said in jest. Let’s call it counter-indoctrination.

Secondly; I would never tell him complete lies. There is a lot of truth in what I told him -albeit peppered with a little mischief.

There is another thing. And this is a combination of mischief and curiosity. I just wonder what they would tell him in school if he repeated any of these things. That could prove interesting. I may find out soon…If he ever tells me.