I was part of a movement of "dinosaur moms" when I lived in Maryland (Astrodon Johnstoni is the Maryland state dinosaur.) Which is nothing more than this -- dinosaur moms delight in the half-feral nature of the beasties they parent, even as they whisper Shakespeare and Kierkegaard in their ears at night.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Great Blacks in Wax

Dinomom's timeline of Black History Month projects gone awry made me suddenly aware of its complete absence from the curriculum out here. I believe the reasoning is that we're just libertarian cowboys out here on the lone prair-ie not hurting anybody and don't bother us with anything that happened before we joined the union.

I had high hopes for Girl's wax museum project, wherein the 5th graders were supposed to portray animatronic replicas of figures from early American history. Visitors would hit a button and they would recite their bios and then return to a frozen position until the next person hit the button.

Girl went all out. She had even worked up a rap -- "I sent my bro Leo to M-D."

Although she was going for Caecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, her robes made her look the spitting image of Hermione Granger. But at least that takes care of her Hermione Granger costume for Halloween.

Alas, few of the students dressed up and even fewer researched their parts. Next to my Lord Calvert stood John Smith, dressed like Huck Finn and insisting that he was on the Underground Railroad.

No, sweetie, you weren't. Are you perhaps thinking of John BROWN?

No, I freed the slaves.

What slaves, pray, were you freeing in the 1600's?

The slaves on the plantations.

All right then.

It reminds me of when I did a research project on Kenya in fifth grade and listed Kwanzaa as a national holiday. Noone called me out either. Sigh.

1 comment:

n/a said...

OMG, worse than when my sister left Manitoba off her map of Canada in 5th grade and got an A 'til my mom flipped out about it at the parent teacher conference. When are you guys coming home already?