Kids and Guns.

I was having a conversation yesterday with a colleague about children and guns.
He has a new baby and is torn between allowing toy guns, or not.
When we were little my mother did her darnedest to keep guns and violent toys out of our hands and in response we picked up sticks and pretended they were guns.

When I was about 8 or 9 my great uncle allowed me to watch as he organised the guns and ammo for rabbit/possum hunting on the farm. I clung to the back of his bike as we all rode out to a good spot while the sun lowered itself into the hot Hawke’s Bay earth.
I waited, twitching with suppressed excitement and nerves, for the rabbits to come out to feed.
I watched as he shot animals and they didn’t get back up again.
I cried as he walked me over to retrieve the “bunny” and ensure that it was a fatal shot and was not in pain.
He explained the different between pets, farm stock, and pests.
We talked about animal control and what rabbits and possums did to New Zealand farms and native bush.
We went home and skinned the rabbits and fed the dogs.
After a night of bad dreams I awoke and sat at the breakfast table, little legs swinging and explained to my amused Aunt that MY Bunny was a good bunny because it didn’t have too many babies and only ate our vegi scraps, so that bunny shouldn’t be shot.

My mother taught me that she didn’t like guns.
That is all.

My uncle taught me that guns are tools.
Guns harm that which you use them on.
He taught me that if you shoot something it is your responsibility. YOU pick it up, make sure you did it properly and dispose or/use the remains.
Guns are to be taken seriously, and are NOT toys.

My uncle taught me more in one week than my mother had taught me in 8 years.

I have no doubt that if he had caught my brother and I pointing even pretend guns at each other’s heads we would have finally met the big leather strop he kept on top of the fireplace to scare us with.

So when I saw this morning’s paper with this article I was delighted.

There will always be guns in this world.
Kids will see them on T.V, on farms, in computer games, and in the sadder cases, in their own world.
Kids will always play at adult activities, cooking, families, building, driving.
Shooting a gun is an adult activity and will be mimicked.
It is a parent’s responsibility to provide good behaviour for children to emulate.
We can turn our backs on violence and pretend it doesn’t exist, or confront it and teach our children better lessons. This idea is a brilliant way of providing the toys, with an appropriate response.

Will the kids who haven’t seen a real gun in action understand why the license is part of this play activity?
I wonder.

Racial blindness... a disability?

My Mother has a story that she loves to tell.
When I was 11 and started at a new school I was describing my friend Katherine to her. She couldn’t remember the kid in question, although she had met her when she picked me up previously.

I went through the stats again.
“My height, straight black hair, round face but skinny body, no freckles, great at art, wore her school uniform too big” (her mum knew she was still growing too).
Nope.
Then Mum came to school camp and I introduced them, and Mum remembered her.
“SEEEEE Mum, You DO know her!”
Because she did.

Later in life when I was at Uni, mum was telling this story to a friend of mine and I assumed the punch line was Mums terrible memory.

No, it was my colour blindness.
They key visible feature of Katherine was that she looked Korean.
My first thought was; “But how do you describe that?”
“High cheek bones, no eyelid fold, awesome ability to tan, but no desire to do so?”

I was a bit saddened by the story.

Mostly because I have changed. Describing Katherine today it would be “My Korean friend from intermediate school”*.
I assume this change is because I have learnt to recognise different races, and it is the easiest way to identify a person to someone else.

Partly because Mum obviously did see people in terms of race as a primary distinguishing feature, and that’s a bit disappointing I guess.

I’m also confused. Presumably I didn’t naturally mark people out by race but have learnt to do so.
However, my own mother couldn’t recognise Katherine by the features I gave her without the racial information.
So where did I come from?

It took me a few years to stop being sad that I lost that part of me.
I have realised that to be totally blind to race and culture would be as bad as judging people solely on their race or culture.
Two ends of the spectrum, neither ideal.
As well as not identifying her by race I was probably assuming that Katherine loved vegemite, and playing at the beach and climbing trees. Because that was what I liked!
Katherine liked reading, drawing, had a close relationship with the catholic church and loved Kimchi (an acquired taste). Our friendship was all the more wonderful for the differences.

To see and respect the differences so you can learn from them, but not make the assumption of what they are by how they look is the challenge.

When we are watching a film my partner often says
“Where is that actor/actress from?”

I always hate the question because - how do you know?
How do you judge?
Why do you judge?
I could base it off an accent or colour, or clothing choice, but mostly it is guess work.

Where I am from, and my racial origins’ are such a small part of who I am.
I would love people to get to know ME, and the oddities that make up the culture of me, rather than make assumptions based on how I appear.



Where are you from, what is your culture, and why are you like that??

* I have more than one friend who is Korean, but only two friends total from intermediate school, so the oddity is the friend part of the sentence, not the Korean part!

Website blocking a rights violation? Not in USA apparently!

I was a wee bit disturbed by some news that I read this morning on my tea break.
The article revealed a clear breach of church-state separation in the USA, within Indianapolis schools. They are banning students from viewing the websites of certain religions, as well as atheist and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) sites.

Some quotes that I pulled from the offending document regarding banned sites...

"Sites that promote and provide information on religions such as Wicca, Witchcraft or Satanism. Occult Practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or other forms of mysticism, [...] the use of spells, incantations, curses, and magic powers. This category includes sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events."

Pardon? How on EARTH have they popped Atheism in with occult and witch-craft? It is one of the very few theologies that DONT subscribe to “magic.”
And how was a man who rose again after death, walked on water, turned water into wine and hung out with hookers NOT part of this ban?

The ban of LGBT sites says that sites can't "cater to one's one's sexual orientation or gender identity including, but not limited to, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender sites".

At first sight this appears to simply be directed toward parental concerns that their children may be exposed to adult themes or content that they shouldn’t be at school. I can’t condemn them for protecting children from unsafe or dangerous sites.
However there is also a section specifically stating that adult content is banned.

So it appears that this LGBT section is banning the kids from viewing anything other than heterosexual Christian, Jewish and Muslim role-models.
How dismal that children sent to a public school in a country founded on the separatism of church and state are being exposed to absolutely no variety of role models involving consenting adults in healthy relationships with each other and their gods.
The real world waiting for them has plenty of variety of relationships, both healthy and unhealthy in the straight and LGBT community. I see no reason for age appropriate sites to be banned to children and young adults questioning their sexuality or belief systems.

So that was distressing but I already had a dismal view of the American public school system, thanks to my exposure while working with young people in the New York state.

Upon further research it appears that the problem began in 2009 but is still current.
The Freedom from religion foundation hit on it when it first started, and have this week reposted the issue – clearly still a problem that has not been addressed.

What I was not aware of is that this is a more widely spread problem than just Indianapolis.

The American 'Children's Internet Protection Act' requires that all schools seeking federal funds through the E-Rate program and Title VI of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, install a "technology protection measure" to protect against access to obscene material, child pornography, and material that is harmful to minors.

Many public school districts in the U.S. have or will be installing filtering software that functions by blocking access to sites that the filtering company has determined are inappropriate.
Some of the companies that are the focus of this report were active in the efforts to ensure the passage of this legislation through the efforts of a trade association called the Internet Safety Association(ISA) and through testimony provided to Congress.
The other major champions of this legislation were conservative religious organizations.

According to Cyberbully.org
“The open secret about content filters, besides the fact that they can be easily hacked, is that many of the site lists used in these filters had their genesis with conservative Christian organizations”

“Some of the filtering companies appear to have partnership relationships with conservative religious organizations. Some filtering companies have been functioning as conservative religious ISPs and have recently established new divisions that are marketing services to schools. Most of the companies have filtering categories in which they are blocking web sites presenting information known to be of concern to people with conservative religious values -- such as non-traditional religions and sexual orientation -- in the same category as material that no responsible adult would consider appropriate for young people. “

“Because filtering software companies protect the actual list of blocked sites, searching and blocking key words, blocking criteria, and blocking processes as confidential, proprietary trade secret information it is not possible to prove or disprove the hypothesis that the companies may be blocking access to material based on religious or other inappropriate bias. This situation raises concerns related to student's constitutionally-protected rights of access to information and excessive entanglement of religion with schools.”

So in summary, if your provider of filters origionated from a religious organisation you may find more that just objectionable material being blocked from your kids.

I would hope that even if my teenage son or daughter was in the grumps with me, that at the very least they could go to school and use the computers to look up something they needed to know – rates of homosexuality in young NZ men for example.

The internet has a lot of flaws and filth within it, but its major strength is that no one should feel alone with the variety of the world at their fingertips.



I would be VERY interested to know what programmes are used in New Zealand schools.
Does anyone have a way of finding out? I would hope that our public school system has a stronger level of freedom to it, but there is only one way to find out...