curriculum

"You mean people make computer viruses?" he asks, his open expression unmistakably sincere.  He's been listening to some conversation about the perils of Limewire, and once again I'm reminded that common knowledge isn't always. A boy seemingly tech savvy somehow believes that a plague of the internet is generated by nature: it's a virus, after all. It's one part language learner, I think, and one part innocence of the ways of the world. Ignorance, by definition. 

My theory is that these kids lose, maybe never develop, the expectation that the world make sense. They spend such a chunk of their formative years surrounded by seems-to-them gibberish that instead of being inspired to analyze they accept everything and question nothing. Education should be the solution, and maybe it is, but meanwhile they believe that eating pork will transmit H1N1 and Saddam Hussein sent the jets to the Twin Towers. 


Perhaps they're more American than they know.

Meanwhile, I rig up lessons to fill-in the blanks. The textbook reading on Yellow Fever becomes a compare-contrast assignment with Swine Flu so I can stand at the front  of the room and say, "If you learn nothing else today, remember this. . . ."