Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 9, 1995 TAG: 9501120049
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Horrifying stories about children killing children seem as foreign to the fortunate youngsters in the New River Valley as stories about genocide in Bosnia. These kids have a precious gift - relatively sane and peaceful childhoods.
They eat cheese pizza for lunch, say the Pledge of Allegiance in the morning, love recess best of all, and generally have parents and teachers who assume the responsibility to see that they get an education. In attitudes, the fifth-graders seem comfortingly like those most adults remember from childhoods in far more innocent, less dangerous times. Most still value their families (including pets), friends and homes - followed by television and video games.
They would hardly be American if they didn't mention video games.
The series of stories appearing Sunday, "Oh, to be in the 5th grade," was the work of a New River reporting team that didn't simply interview the superintendent to learn what was up with the kids, but sat with them for weeks, in class and cafeteria, getting to know them and hearing what they had to say.
Ours is one of some 20 newspapers, coordinated nationally by a committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, that attempted in the past year to look at the world through the eyes of fifth-graders. The glimpse offered is poignant for adults, partly because it evokes memories of optimistic childhood, but also because we know that these children - their horizons now barely stretching to the other side of the valley - will emerge into an America full of uncertainty and suffering. An America, for example, in which 25 children - the equivalent of one of the classrooms studied - are killed by guns every two days.
One boy reminds that, as positive a picture as Montgomery County's fifth-grade classes present, it is nothing like the picture one might take at many other elementary schools in the nation.
Bill Fudge and his family moved to the county last September from Southern California. He likes his new school better because it has computers and his schoolmates don't bully him. "At least here, they don't carry guns. There they had drugs and guns." In a private, Christian school.
Country kids with guns still carry them on hunting trips with their papas.
Despite shifts in form and style, under those baggy clothes, black tennis shoes and rattails, the fifth-graders seem much like fifth-graders of earlier generations. They are interested in scouts, all-terrain vehicles and secret clubs that don't involve wearing "colors," toting guns or committing crimes.
There are new developments, to be sure. Computers sit in classrooms where slide shows once were the cutting edge of audio-visual educational enhancements. While most of the schools surveyed reflect a rural and small-town homogeneity and insularity, Kipps Elementary School in Blacksburg has embraced a recent and controversial philosophy of inclusion. It brings kids of all levels of ability together to learn while allowing each to progress at his or her own pace.
As protected as these students appear to be, they still participate in a DARE program on the dangers of drugs and alcohol. If they haven't been exposed to these temptations yet, they almost certainly will be.
Meanwhile, from their candid talk come hints of hours upon hours spent daily, presumably unsupervised, before the television tube.
We can only wonder about their family life, worry whether journalist Richard Louv's observation about modern childhood applies in some cases: "The small moments, the special family getaways, the cookies in the oven, the night fishing with the kids asleep next to the lantern, the weekend drives, the long dreamlike summers - so much of this has been taken from us, or we have given it up" - not a fair trade, even for high-tech diversions.
Rural Riner Elementary is experiencing the crowding that accompanies population growth when farmland is consumed by the suburbanization creeping over America's countryside. We can only wonder if anonymity is supplanting a sense of community in the New River Valley, too.
Nostalgia can distort thinking. We have to worry, also, how well these children are learning the skills - critical thinking, creative problem-solving, cooperative teamwork - they will need in a workplace very unlike the industrial and agricultural models on which their schools are still largely organized.
We worry whether small-town and rural schools may eventually decline into the chaos of some of America's urban schools. Or can we improve the latter so all kids have a chance at a sane and peaceful childhood?
We have to worry about the kids. We're adults. It's what we do, or what we're supposed to do. Yet our optimism cannot help but be refreshed by acquaintance with children leaning eagerly and in relative safety into the future, theirs and ours.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***