From: Monica R. Edinger <edinger>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 09:33:09 -0500

This is continuing an off-topic thread, but under the circumstances I'm assuming it is okay.

For those working with children (as I wrote already a few weeks back on child_lit), I recommend that you be very, very, very cautious in your use of war-related literature with them. Books don't fix everything; they can, in fact (horrors!) make things even worse. They aren't magic bullets
(ugh...bad metaphor, but I haven't a better one right now), just bits of paper.

As Ruth Gordon pointed out each situation is different and unique. On child_lit someone wrote that she had assured the children in her class that the war would not be fought here. And I wrote in response that my NYC school was that very day having a shelter-in-place drill to prepare for the possibility of a chemical terrorist attack. While it may be presumptuous of me to suggest it is being fought here given what horrors awaits the Iraqi people, I do think we nonetheless have to consider our children and how each and every single one of them will respond uniquely to this. Each is an original whose age, location, family circumstances, prior experience, personality, will result in an original reaction. Within a classroom one child may find knowing more reassuring while another might find it terrifying. One may voice this and the other may not ---- to anyone. So, please, please be careful.


Don't assume. Anything.

Monica

Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at yahoo.com
Received on Tue 18 Mar 2003 08:33:09 AM CST