I’ve been in a similar situation before, and very recently. My 8 y/o came home with the “didja know” and told me that in China that if you had more than one baby that the second baby is killed on site.
Well…
I have absolutely no doubt that the teacher was talking about China’s “one baby” rule and my son filled in the blanks from there on out. I also think that if she did, in fact, say that second babies were killed because she is staunchly pro-life and maybe didn’t want to use the big bad abortion word with 3rd graders. Or maybe she hates Chinese people. Or maybe she’s just really sensitive to MSG and had a bad experience at the Chinese buffet. In any case, I just think of it as a spring board to home conversations like “Why do you think Chinese people kill the second baby?” and “Did you know that you can have surgery that will make you not have babies anymore?” and keep it at the level appropriate for my kid and steer him through the issue.
Yeah, my initial reaction was WTF when I read the OP because I am familiar with the joke. But honestly, I’d let this one go and don’t start anything with the teacher. Because if she is presenting it as fact then you aren’t going to change her mind anyway, you’re just going to make the rest of the year miserable for you. It can be a good lesson for the kid that sometimes you have to go along to get along and the world doesn’t stop because someone in authority does things you think are stupid sometimes.
Well, I think it’s worth seeing how the teacher presented it. It’s definitely a joke that would go over the head of most ten year olds, since they probably don’t really even grasp what socialism and communism and fascism are. You should at least know what they’re teaching your kid so you can break it down as a lesson in “jokes” or whatnot, and not a lesson in “how cows are treated in other countries.”
When I get a new class, I like to tell one joke about half-way though the lesson. It shows I’m not boring and gets the pupils to listen more carefully - in case I tell another one.
So I told a group of 11 year olds one of my tried and tested jokes:
“Two parrots are on a perch and one of them says - can you smell fish?”
One girl didn’t get it, so I reassured her there was no problem. She said she’d tell it to her family. Good.
Next lesson she looks grimly determined throughout. At the end she tells me firmly “My Dad says you’re not funny!” I ask her to repeat the joke - and she rattles off:
“Two parrots are in a cage and one of them says - can you smell fish?” :smack:
Cute. Yeah, I thought my daughter was getting something wrong until I saw the poster and wiki. Turns out she just thinks she’s learning something about governments. Still awaiting a reply from her social studies teacher.
[rant]OK, I think this kind of thing is totally uncalled for. There is no evidence that Brown Eyed Girl has any intention of ensuring humorless teaching. It’s not like she’s saying “OMG I can’t believe they’re teaching the two cows joke and some kids might not understand it!!1” Anyone who has read this thread should know very well that she had never heard the two cows joke, and therefore had no reason to think that what her daughter was relating had anything to do with humor… it just sounded bizarre to her (which seems pretty understandable to me), and she came here trying to see if anybody could give her some more information prior to her speaking with the teacher. So there is no real reason to apply some “hyper-outraged parent” schema onto her.[/rant]
I have read quite a lot of research suggesting that children do not get irony, sarcasm, and nuance until adolescence (despite the insistence of the younger childrens’ parents that they do). Some research indicates that children understand that sarcasm and irony mean something as early as three or four, but that the take home message they get is not the same thing that adults intend – that essentially they are getting the contrast between the nonverbal cues and the verbal message without understanding the intention of the speaker.
Everything I have read indicates that childrens’ understanding of irony, sarcasm, nuance, and metaphor are gradually acquired and not suddenly. And I don’t know that I have ever seen a causal link made between raw intelligence and ability to understand sarcasm, irony, nuance, or metaphor. I have seen studies suggesting that understanding of irony can differentiate between certain kinds of learning disorders, but that has to do with theory of mind which is not core to intelligence either.
In short, is there some reason you are suggesting that a child you have never laid eyes on and know nothing about is stupid?
Brightness means different things to different people (intelligence, engagement, memory recall ability, lateral thinking, problem solving, abstract thinking, etc ad nauseum) and BEG’s assumption that if her child didn’t get some irony then no other child would is erroneous.
Therefore, I never said that BEG’s child was stupid, but I did say (and you’ve made the same assertion above) that understanding is gradually acquired into adolescence. Hence the ‘brightest’ pre-adolescents will be gaining an understanding of irony, nuance, etc., those way ahead of the curve will have grasped this much earlier, some will only really get there during the mid-teens (and some never, to be honest!).
Ha! We have a variation on this, although much shorter —
Me: What did you do in school today?
5-year-old preschooler: Nothing
Me: They lined you up and had you stare at the wall, doing nothing, all day, huh?
5yo: Yep, all day long.
Now it’s progressed to —
"How was school? "
“Great! We stared at the wall ALL DAY.”
“Did the wall do anything?”
“Yes! It moved!”
“Danced around a bit, did it?”
“Yes!”
Etc.
Do most kids get that? I only recently found out that perch was a fish. (Thank you, Edwardian Manor House.)
As for the OP’s daughter not being bright–I think you also have to not only know about sarcasm but also enough about government. If you get irony but don’t know the concepts of communism/fascism/etc. well enough (i.e., as more than just textbook definitions), you’re not going to get the joke. Do any ten year olds really know that? If you were being sarcastic about something on their level, they might grok that. But I doubt even the brightest 11 year old will find political humor all that droll.
Update: The social studies teacher has invited me to come to the classroom to view a poster used throughout our school district which shows a simple format of understanding different governments. She is discussing different ideologies in preparation for teaching about the world wars.
Sound reasonable?
I have to work this afternoon, so I won’t be able to see the poster today, but I’ll make sure her teacher is aware that she doesn’t yet get the connection.
I’m sure that’s true. However, if you take the stance that education is not about what to think, but how to think, a little humour (even if not everyone gets it) is pretty essential - if only to demonstrate that there is a wider level of language than that used by 10 year olds!
Incidental to the discussion at hand, but having taught briefly in the US, I’m very conscious of the difference between attitudes and systems on either side of the Atlantic. The UK approach is driven by knowledge acquisition but aims to encourage critical thinking, project planning, etc. from an early age. The US system, as best as I comprehended it 15 years ago at least, seemed to place the teacher/professor as the fount of all knowledge and students as sponges - their role being almost solely to soak up the knowledge and regurgitate it later. That’s probably profoundly unfair - but these kind of discussions seem to highlight that perception. When my children come back from school saying such things, my first thought is that they’ve misunderstood and I’ll try and explore where that misunderstanding took place. It seems to me that the prevailing attitude as exhibited on this board is to immediately try and sort out the factual basis against which this was taught (ie. approach the teacher), rather than the real underlying nature of the lesson (ie. what the child has understood and learnt more generally). Hence my comment that the experience is unlikely to have a longlasting effect on the child - unless parents make a big deal about how the teacher/school is wrong to have done what they did (in which case the lesson learnt is not what either party intended).
It’s true that not all kids get it at first, but the point is that it’s a simple pun once you know about the fish. (Also I want pupils to think in my lessons!)
I would be very dubious about using the ‘two cows’ stuff too early - maybe for 17-18 year olds.
What a coinkydink! That was my first thought as well! Hence, my discussion with the kiddo, my email to the teacher, my search and request for more info from a wide community of parents, students, teachers, people knowledgeable of pop culture and, evidently, critics alike. I understand a lot more today than I did yesterday. By the end of this, I hope to make sure that she gets the lesson in whatever way she understands it. If it is devoid of political satire, so what. She’ll get plenty of that as she gets older.
Um, it’s the teacher’s lesson. If I want to understand the lesson better without the tint of my daughter’s perception, isn’t approaching the teacher the sensible way to go about it? Through my discussion with the child, it’s clear she doesn’t understand what she tells me she’s been taught. I’m fairly certain that’s the point of this discussion.
I don’t expect this is going to have a long-lasting effect on my child other than if she doesn’t understand the lesson. But the point of teaching is to teach not misinform. As far as my daughter knows right now, Canadian government is really dumb. Sorry if I don’t think that’s a valuable lesson for my daughter to learn in social studies.
OK, I did… and I truly don’t see anything in your post to suggest that that statement was anything other than a barbed comment aimed at the OP. But I can at least imagine the possibility that it wasn’t intended as such… if I misinterpreted, I’m sorry.
Heh, I woulda just asked to see the kid’s *notes * on the subject and have her explain to me what she was trying to mean with the cow thing.
If it’s not in her notes or her book, I’d assume it wasn’t really that big of a deal. If she pointed to the notes and it was on government or such things, i’d try to see if we could work on that part instead using the textbook and such things.That’s the easier low stress way of trying to figure out what the kid’s learning- things like are they taking notes, are they realizing things from the notes, like important details, etc. Those are more valuable skills to learn before going into high school when they can learn more about cows and how to shoot them in the name of socialism and such things.
Pretty much look at the kid’s notes, and then ask to see what part of the textbook they’ve been learning about. Easier than trying to figure out “what was the teacher trying to say by X statement” when I don’t even know the context of the statement.
But I’m amused by your methods. And a tiny part of me is hoping that you get t o go to school and end up staring at a brand new shiny ecownomics Cow Poster.
