Things Kids (And Other People) Don't Know

It's a very pleasant day in Streeterville, 64 degrees under clear blue skies at the Mini. The boats are back, sailboats, power boats, sailing cruise ships, power cruise ships. Little by little the appearances of warm weather are returning and with those appearances come the high spirits that pass for normalcy in the warm weather months. Just imagine if we lived in Iceland. Two or three hours of slanting yellowish sunlight in late December. Two or three hours of semi-darkness in late June. The alternating mania and depression of that kind of climate must wear on you. Having been to Reykjavik once, I must admit that they produce some very pretty blonde people, though. Too bad the economy just collapsed, and half the population is out of work.

I was chatting with a class today about the 1960's and the Civil Rights movement. In the course of explaining the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and their role in the Civil Rights movement, I mentioned the special political role that churches play in the African-American community, in addition to their traditional spiritual duties. Having made that point, I went on to explain that that was, in all likelihood, a large reason that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became such a major player in the Civil Rights movement. He was a minister, after all, and his doctorate was in theology.

Mind you, this was a class full of Mexican-American students with a couple of Puerto Ricans thrown in, so they were not exactly up on the finer points of black culture in America, except as it relates to Black Gangster Disciples vs. Latin Kings. The question that came from seemingly out of the blue and threw me at first was the following, though. "So that's like a profession? Those guys get paid?" I looked at the young lady with the question and replied, "Ministers, you mean?" She replied, a bit excitedly, "Yeah. Ministers. They get paid?"

I had to admit, "Yes, they get paid. It's their job. They get a college degree to be a minister, to be the guy that gets up in front of the church every Sunday morning. Priests, ministers, they're all paid. There may be a few store front ministers who have a regular job during the week, and just do that on Sunday, but most of them, well, it's their job, their profession."

Then came the questions from the floor. "So where does the money come from to pay them?"

"Well, the members of the church pay their salaries. You know, every Sunday morning they pass the collection plate, and people put money in. Some members give more. Some give less, but they pay the bills of the minister, and pay to build the churches, and for the bills for keeping the church open, and anything else the church does."

About that time, it occurred to me that most Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans are Catholic, so I felt it necessary to bring this into the discussion as well. "Priests in the Catholic Church are paid by the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church also takes regular donations from parishioners, but they also own a lot of property and various things. Priests are paid as well." "So how much does the Pope make," came the question from the floor. This was taking a truly weird turn, but in education you have to use everything you get as a teachable moment. I replied, "I have no idea how much the Pope makes, but he's like the CEO of a large organization. Just like teachers make less than Principals and Principals make less than area supervisors who make less than the CEO of the entire school system, the Parish Priests make less money and get less perks than the Bishops, who make less than the Archbishops and Cardinals, who make less than the Pope. I assume he is well taken care of. He's like the CEO. The Cardinals are like regional managers, and so forth."

This all came from noting that Dr. King was a minister by profession, not a professional Civil Rights Activist. How did these kids come to reach their Junior year in high school and not know that ministers and priests are paid professionals? We didn't even get into the Nuns. The thing is, I, and most people I know, accept certain things as basic cultural literacy. We just assume certain things are known by everyone. When you work in a school that is in an immigrant community, or sometimes just in a poor community of anyone, certain things of cultural literacy are not known. That is part of the problem. We don't have to just educate the kids in our specific disciplines. We have to give them cultural literacy as well, and we cannot assume that they know things that kids from what we know as middle America accept as the norm.

Frankly, even in the middle class, there are variations on what people know and take for granted. I grew up Southern and fundamentalist. My wife grew up Midwestern and loosey goosey Methodist. Her parents were Go to church on Easter and at Christmas kind of not very serious religious sorts. I take things for granted about Biblical literacy. Hey I can quote the Bible with the best of them. Babs hasn't a clue about a lot of that. There are things that she grew up with that I haven't a clue about. Some of the things I have heard come from the mouths of adult professionals as regards other cultures and sub-cultures go beyond ignorance into the offensive. Often it's just a case of they honestly don't know what other cultures and sub-cultures are like. People are often clueless beyond their own narrow boundaries, and there are a lot of boundaries. Where's the norm?

The more one sees of the world, the more one realizes the vast array of different ways that people can structure their societies, and then one comes to realize how little they are really different. The key is in recognizing which things are important. Are these differences going to cause conflict? Which things we have in common can be used to form a bond? In the meantime, every time I walk into a classroom full of Mexican-American and Puerto Rican and African-American kids, they get to know middle class white America just a little better, and I hope they are just a little more comfortable with us, as I get more comfortable with them.