Opinion

The dream lives on in kindergarten

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Getting my son to talk about what happened at school can be like pulling teeth.

He'll volunteer that he didn't get in trouble and even share some of the current gossip of kindergarten, but finding out what they learned about takes some time and questions.

"I can't remember" is the common response, with the sass growing if you ask follow-up questions.

All of this made it a pleasant surprise when he just started talking about one of Thursday's lessons. I was buckling him in his booster seat and had asked no questions.

He just started talking.

Miles: "Dad, we learned about Martin Luther King today."

Me: "That's good. What did you learn?"

Miles: "Well, he was staying at a hotel, and while he was there a guy came and shot him. I don't remember that guy's name."

Me: "What else did you learn about him?"

Miles: "He told people that just because people's skin was a different color, it wasn't OK to tell them they couldn't go into certain places." (In a subsequent conversation with my wife, he recalled that this phenomenon is called segregation.)

Me: "Very good. Did they say anything to you about a speech?"

Miles: "Yep. He said that he hoped someday his kids would be treated better than he was. He said, 'I have a dream.'"

I'd be lying if I said there weren't a few tears in my eyes as he talked. I was proud of my son, of his school, of this country.

That last part really let me know that he gets it.

He wasn't just reciting the "I have a dream" cliché. He was telling me at least a little bit of what King's dream was about.

Sure, he said "I have a dream," eight times in that famous speech, but it was what came after that really mattered. In the case Miles spoke of particularly, the civil rights leader went on to say "that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

MLK put it much more eloquently, but I could tell that my son basically got the message.

It got me thinking about myself at his age, and I realized that things have changed a lot. Certainly I was taught about Martin Luther King, but not until third or fourth grade.

And even then, I could have told you that he said "I have a dream," but I didn't know what that meant anymore than I knew what "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" or "ask not what your country can do for you" meant. They were all just sound bites to me, things you recited and didn't think about.

More fundamental, though, is that growing up in rural Indiana in the 1980s, we didn't really talk much about Martin Luther King or civil rights or much about race. I remember doing a third-grade report about Shirley Chisholm for Black History Month, and that's about it.

In fact, I once asked an adult in my life who Martin Luther King was and was told he was "a troublemaker."

I learned otherwise as I got older... or at least learned that if King was indeed "making trouble," it was only because it needed to be made.

Things have certainly changed in the last 30 years -- even moreso in the 50 years or so since King's speech. Unfortunately, not all have been for the better. Events in places like Ferguson, Cleveland, Chicago and Baltimore give us good reason to be worried about the future of race relations in this country.

But our schools, for all the flak they take -- some of it earned -- are doing an even better job than they once did of teaching some really important lessons.

If my five-year-old understands the basics of "just because people's skin is a different color," maybe there's hope for us all.