Excerpt from Sam's report card: "Sam demonstrates an awareness of his surroundings and curiousity about the world around him." Yes, yes he does. This is becoming something of a problem around the house, actually. While some of his questions are rather easy to answer—for instance, "Were there bunnies in pirate times?"—he's asking more challenging ones all the time.
Consider this one. "If it takes one day for the earth to spin around and face the sun again and we always see the same side of the moon at night, does that mean the moon is spinning at the same speed as the earth?"
Ummmmm. Makes sense. To be honest, I never thought much about the moon spinning. In all the space movies I saw, the astronauts landed on the sunny side of the moon and then didn't camp out there for any length of time, really. Hhhmm. I don't know Sam. We can look that up.
Or this. "All these ants that are crawling around in the house now, did they hibernate in our house? Are there ant families in the walls?"
Ummmmmm. Makes sense. To be honest, I never thought much about where they sprung from. I capture and release and make mental notes to buy ant traps, but I haven't considered that there might be whole ant farms tunneling in the walls. In all the bug cartoons I've seen, the ants live in cosy apartments tucked safely away on a little oasis near the trash can in a public park. Hhhmm. I really don't know, Sam. We can check that out.
Or this. I hope that when they redecorate the Tim Horton's, they take down the pictures of the soliders. I like soldiers, but seeing those pictures makes me think of what happens to them... Why do they die in wars?
Ummmmm. To be honest, I've never really had a satisfactory answer for that one. In all of the war movies I've seen, soldiers died because they were selfless and committed, brave and determined. They died defeating "bad guys" who were threatening our freedom. But the news from Afghanistan is hard to align with other world conflicts and I'm not sure what to say. Hhhmm. I really don't know, Sam. Let's look up "peacekeeping."
Our inquisitive boy is slowly becoming aware not only of his surroundings (from microcosmic ecosystems, to massive solar systems, to complex international political geography), but also of the fact that his parents don't have all of the answers. Far from it. And while I don't mind saying "let's look it up," I'm less comfortable with the admission that I just haven't given enough thought to a lot of things. A lot a lot a lot of things. It's telling that my mind goes not to edifying books I've read on those subjects, but to entertaining movies I've seen. And Hollywood is considerably less thought-provoking than my kindergarten-aged child.
At one time, I suppose it seemed possible to get the answers to everything, to pin down the how's and why's of it all. But sooner or later, out of necessity or perhaps laziness, we whittle our interests down to a few narrow topics and we leave it at that. That is, until our children hit kindergarden and remind us that archeology is cool, and space travel is fascinating, and the deaths of Canadian soldiers should make us all as sad as a little boy in line at Tim Horton's watching the video display and wondering what is going to happen to those men in Khandahar after they roll up the rim.
"It has been consistently observed that Sam takes responsibility in learning." That's good. That'll serve him well. But his learning is our responsibility too, and I'm trying harder to demonstrate awareness of my surroundings and a curiousity about the world around me.
No comments:
Post a Comment