Childrearing With Boob, Sans Ham

Last week there was this post at Dr. Crazy's, a post about a university policy of banning children from classrooms &c written in respose to hoopla about this article. (Looks like she's written another post about it, which I'll definitely read when I finish my wriiiiting.) The question is whether it's appropriate for a university to have a blanket policy banning children from attending classes with their parents (students or faculty). A large number of people seemed to agree that yes, children inhibit the learning environment, and having the blanket policy offers faculty members a gentler, less personal way of saying don't-bring-your-kid-to-my-(x-rated)-class. A minority of people (Bitch, Ph.D. for example) argued that the blanketness of policy created an environment hostile to mothers, esp. if said university doesn't provide childcare for faculty children.

I have never experienced a university classroom with children, except for in that class that met at the professor's house and his adorable and intelligent daughter Jane regularly came in and showed us pictures she had painted and that was great. So in general I'm not down with blanket policy, though I'm obviously not down either with children being allowed to run around unsupervised. But the debate got me thinking, and watch me now as I parlay this question into three, three, THREE peanut butter blog entries, none exactly about the subject at hand. (Mwah ha ha ha.)

As you might imagine, one objection to children in the classroom has to do with the sensitive or x-rated material that comes up in college classrooms sometimes, say in a field like English. In comments, this particular situation was posed: the teaching of The Bluest Eye in class when a seven-year-old was present. In The Bluest Eye (I have to admit it's been years since I read it), the child Pecola endures not only horrible racism, but also is raped (by her father, I think?). Okay, so we have two sensitive topics: racism on one hand, rape on the other.

Would I teach it in the presence of a seven-year-old?

This is an interesting question to me, specifically, because it's the the kind of question that asks me to put my money where my mouth is, and my mouth can frequently be found saying things like free information for everyone, no banning books of any kind, and let the little children listen to George Michael, for pete's sake. I hate, hate, hate the rhetoric of protecting kids which so often simply stands in for the perpetrating onto the children of the parents' own narrow mindedness -- i.e., that which is inappropriate for children is that which is UnChristian, or which celebrates the naturalness of bodies, sex between men, evolution from sea slime, etc.

The idea that there's a magical and definitive point beyond which a small person becomes "mature" enough to see boob on public tv, say, or say men making love onscreen -- but up until which this small person must be at all costs shielded from boob or man-sex -- is ridiculous. It's a mentality that makes me scared not only for these small persons who will someday be large persons, but also for the civic sphere. We tell these people, these children: these acts, they are not appropriate for you! They are bad! And then the small people turn eighteen, old enough to watch rated R movies and also to VOTE, and we expect them suddenly to be able to make informed, compassionate decisions about matters of legislature and about who should get to make up legislation and on what grounds.

"Protecting" of children from sexuality, from racism, from various uglinesses can lead to dangerous naivete, the kind that could expose a kid to pregnancy or disease on one hand (I still remember my ardently-Catholic best friend in high school, who somehow reconciled with her religion that she could have sex as long as she didn't use a condom), or on the other to the gut-punch of the nineteen year old girl who discovers her boyfriend looks at pornography and HOW CAN HE CHEAT ON HER LIKE THAT. Totally avoidable, that.

The overzealous (pretense at) protection of children from Ideas They Are Too Young To Process leads, I think, directly to the crop of corn-fed eighteen year olds who have sometimes shown up in my college classroom, insisting that racism doesn't exist and entirely unaware of the "possessive investment in whiteness" that has protected them from, say, living downwind of garbage incinerators. I like the books of Francesca Lia Block, and find them appropriate for teenagers. I also believe that my (dad-sanctioned) reading of entirely inappropriate materials of all sorts at young ages made me, ultimately, more thoughtful and tolerant -- as I had to grapple with the fact that the world I lived in (small, conservative, white) was by no means the same as other worlds out there. And yeah, I've grown up into a dilettante and a pervert, but I'm a MARRIED, HETEROSEXUAL pervert. I wasn't ENTIRELY corrupted beyond the pale, I'm saying. Finally, I have had the pleasure of babysitting for many children of many ages, and the most delightful have always been those treated by adults with some measure of gravity and respect, and who have been allowed (or encouraged) to discover some of the complexities of the world.

But this is not to say that children should have to deal with adult ugliness and adult despair in unadulterated form. (Tee hee!) This is simply to say that the sharp delineations between some kind of magical, sex-free, fluffy world where children live and the suck-ass world where the rest of us live does a disservice, to children and to the adults they'll eventually become.

To answer my own question, racism, yes, I'd teach about it in the presence of a seven-year-old, and rape, I donno -- the question of GENERAL sexuality is distinct to me from the question of THREATENING sexuality and I don't quite know what I think about introducing that. But imagine you are that seven year old, and you are in the college classroom. (And here I am leaving aside entirely the objection that the child is distracting to the students or teacher in the class: a point with validity, sure, but as it happens not my concern here.) You are probably bored, first of all, and you don't understand a lot of what you do hear. But what you might be left with is the idea that there are bad things or confusing things in the world, but that people can DISCUSS them rationally, can work on them with their brains and pens. That some adults are in the direct business of trying to figure out these bad things and how to make them bettter.

I don't know. I can't help thinking that, for seven year olds, maybe it would sometimes be a good thing. To be included in the business of the world, to be welcomed to observe it.

Also, if I were a parent and had decided that my child had the context for a certain class discussion, or could be trusted to ask me later about anything confusing or upsetting, I'd be pissed as hell at anybody, even a professor, making that decision FOR me. Like pre-empting my ability to judge my own child able to withstand the subject matter of a given class.

But then, you know, if I have children I'm sure to play them gangsta rap in the womb, allow them to consort directly with homosexuals, and to fail ENTIRELY to feed them ham. So possibly I can't be trusted to make this decision for myself.