My daughter made this globe when she was 10, by layering paper maché over a large plastic ball,(actually half of it, twice), then taping the halves together when they were dried. The oceans are a skin of blue tissue paper. The mountains are raised plasticine covered by tan tissue. We thought it came out fairly well, even if missing many significant details. Learning about the continents, and seeing the earth from space, appreciating that all the elements are part of a single rotating world, was the main point. Well, having a cool art object was also a goal! Pretty good work for a fourth grader. Funny thing is, she later used it as a prop in a high school social studies class and everyone thought she had made it for that. She got a good grade.
After a year and a half experiment with public high school she decided she wanted to be more directly involved in the world, not theoretically preparing for someday later. She took a class in Food Sovereignty & Sustainability at our local college, volunteered in a local soup kitchen, joined its board of directors, and got a full scholarship to the United World College program which brings together youth from countries around the world to foster global awareness and responsible leadership.
My daughter loves to travel. She loves meeting new people, and learning about their cultures and daily lives. While she was homeschooling she took Chinese classes from local college students and neighbors who were native speakers. Later she traveled in China and volunteered teaching English in a rural elementary school. She loved her huge fourth grade class, especially the boys who were so in need of being active, like her own little brother. She invented ways to teach them that took advantage of their eagerness to move and play.
Now she's a freshman at a premier women's college, studying Chinese formally-–for credit this time. She's also taking Arabic, and Environmental Science, and hopes to continue along the lines of Political Agroecology, or Peace Studies, or Cultural Anthropology. Something all encompassing, where it matters that one sees that every little thing is part of a larger system.
Meanwhile, my second child, age 11, is out in the back yard with his friends staging a war. There are lots of guns, foam bullets everywhere, and a mess of cardboard and a little red wagon being turned into a tank. He has no interest in traveling. Am I at all concerned about his global awareness? Not hardly!
Today he went to our local school's fifth grade French class, which he wanted to try this year as well as orchestra. (We are glad the school is open to homeschoolers attending some classes!) I sat in the back helping prepare materials for next week's class, meanwhile listening to the lesson about maps, charts, and what significant landform differentiates Europe from Asia. I watched in pleased surprise as my son raised his hand repeatedly, confidently offering answers, many of which I have no memory of consciously teaching him. He picked up this information through sailing once this summer, watching documentaries, seeing his sister's globe all these years, and through osmosis probably, just being around her and hearing what she cares about.
During Orientation three weeks ago her college's president spoke of finding your own inner compass, and warned us parents to stop playing that role and let our daughters fledge. We laughed. We both thought of how, at nine months old, she walked (yes, walked) to the door and pounded her little fists on it and said (in words, yes,) "Out! Out! Hana Do It Self!"
"I don't think I've ever been your inner compass," I told her. "I think you've always had strong ideas of where you wanted to go and what you wanted to do. If anything, I tried to help you open some doors, and tried to be brave enough to let you charge through them, come what may."
No comments:
Post a Comment