Children Giving Valentine's Day Cards
There is this notion that children should give a Velentine's Day card to every child in their class. I find this to be so alien and deeply disturbing, and I am so incredibly relieved that I was never expected to do so.
My classes, quite appropriately, did not exchange Valentine's Day cards in class. At least, not formally. Or if we did, I have repressed the memory completely.
I can't imagine though that we would have been required to give one to everyone, because if we were, it would have been a horrific, nightmarish ordeal for me.
Would they have provided a cheat sheet? I didn't know the names of all of my classmates. How exactly would they expect me to pull of this accomplishment? And then if I had to deliver them, how would I get the cards to the right kids? Every now and then I had to pass back completed assignments that had names on them, and it was always a stressful horrible ordeal where I would pass them out semi-randomly telling people to pass them on to the right person.
So, arguments about inclusiveness and exclusiveness are one thing. Also arguments about not celebrating religious holidays in public schools are another. Also arguments about not taking religious holidays and celebrating weird secularized knock-off cheapened overly commercialized versions of them are another. But what about the simple argument of, how am I supposed to pull off the dual message of, excuse me, who are you, oh thank you, okay, here's my symbol that I care about you?
I can't be the only kid who is ever stuck in that situation. Sure, a case can be made that it might be useful to identify the children that don't know who their classmates are after a semester of time with them and take steps to help them in a respectful way. You may identify various cases of propognasia or other issues by checking for that. But since I doubt schools are checking whether the students actually do know who their classmates are (mine certainly never did), it seems unfair to force them to do activities that require them to have this info. It wasn't generally treated as part of the required school material to be learned, so it feels a bit like having a pop-quiz in February on a subject you only covered once briefly in September.
If they really want to do it, perhaps they could send the kids home with a list, and then gather up all of the cards and distribute them to each kid. But I definitely think a cheat sheet should be provided if we're going to make kids present an empty gesture of caring to people they vaguely know.
My classes, quite appropriately, did not exchange Valentine's Day cards in class. At least, not formally. Or if we did, I have repressed the memory completely.
I can't imagine though that we would have been required to give one to everyone, because if we were, it would have been a horrific, nightmarish ordeal for me.
Would they have provided a cheat sheet? I didn't know the names of all of my classmates. How exactly would they expect me to pull of this accomplishment? And then if I had to deliver them, how would I get the cards to the right kids? Every now and then I had to pass back completed assignments that had names on them, and it was always a stressful horrible ordeal where I would pass them out semi-randomly telling people to pass them on to the right person.
So, arguments about inclusiveness and exclusiveness are one thing. Also arguments about not celebrating religious holidays in public schools are another. Also arguments about not taking religious holidays and celebrating weird secularized knock-off cheapened overly commercialized versions of them are another. But what about the simple argument of, how am I supposed to pull off the dual message of, excuse me, who are you, oh thank you, okay, here's my symbol that I care about you?
I can't be the only kid who is ever stuck in that situation. Sure, a case can be made that it might be useful to identify the children that don't know who their classmates are after a semester of time with them and take steps to help them in a respectful way. You may identify various cases of propognasia or other issues by checking for that. But since I doubt schools are checking whether the students actually do know who their classmates are (mine certainly never did), it seems unfair to force them to do activities that require them to have this info. It wasn't generally treated as part of the required school material to be learned, so it feels a bit like having a pop-quiz in February on a subject you only covered once briefly in September.
If they really want to do it, perhaps they could send the kids home with a list, and then gather up all of the cards and distribute them to each kid. But I definitely think a cheat sheet should be provided if we're going to make kids present an empty gesture of caring to people they vaguely know.