vive la difference

When I reflect on where I have learned the most about the human condition, I have no doubt that it was when I have been in the company of young children. There’s something invigorating about their naivete and innocence, unspoiled, as they are, by any experience of life’s ups and downs. In those early years, they live for new experiences, the next activity. Learning is an enjoyable quest, unincumbered by tests – the application of which will all to soon put them into boxes of our creation. Too often when it comes to educational achievements, as indeed in many other areas of life, we value what we measure when we should be measuring what we value.
Children are an open book, curators of a story yet to be told.  Those of us who are adults – relatives, and friends are co-authors of their stories. We pass on our shibboleths, prejudices, values – explicitly or perhaps more subtly, implicitly, by  words or observations. We help to write paragraphs of those stories by how we give or withhold praise, by how we treat others, by what we deem “sound”. Those paragraphs can be uplifting or discouraging depending on the nature of our penmanship.
Here, in this place I call home, for too long we have passed on bigotry, sectarian views to our children who watch our every action and take in each careless word. Such negative paragraphs have no place in any child’s story. I believe children are born without guile or prejudice. Fear of difference is something both caught as well as taught.
I was once a speaker at a school prize giving. Before the ceremony I wanted to meet the pupils who were to receive the awards. I approached a young boy and asked him did he know where Donna was. He pointed across the hall and said she’s the one beside the girl with the red bag.  I looked over and saw that Donna was black.  The point of reference for my young helper was a red bag and not skin colour.  It wasn’t that he didn’t know Donna was black, but rather that her ethnicity wasn’t a big deal. Donna was Donna.

There is a misconception, in my view,  that we should create a generation that is colour blind, one that doesn’t notice ethnicity or colour. For me this is to ignore the root cause of our problems – that we can’t deal with difference. To be colour blind is to create a mechanism to ignore difference. I don’t wish to do that. I would much prefer that we teach children to recognise we are different but therein lies the beauty of the human race. Handled well and curated with love and compassion, we have the capacity to create a society at ease with difference. A society based on mutual respect, tolerance, drawing on God’s grace. Now that’s a chapter I would love to co-author.