dear caretakers of children: stop telling kids “I don’t care who started it!”. you’re teaching children to ignore unequal power balances. that leads to legitimate belief in things like reverse racism, misandry, heterophobia, etc. you’re teaching children that it’s wrong to retaliate when they are wronged. “who started it” is very, very relevant.
It can also teach them that defending themselves is wrong and set them up for abuse later in life.
It always matters who started it. One person is defending themselves, and one person instigated it. When you tell them you “don’t care who started it” you’ve taught one of them that if they defend themselves they will be punished for doing so. You’ve taught the other one that they can do whatever they wish to others, no one will punish only them for it, their victim will be seen as equally accountable for what happened.
Is that really a lesson you want your kids to absorb?
Here it is: how I got Horrible Histories banned from my school.
Sit down, I’m going to tell you a story.
Imagine a little girl, a 4’9” fifth grader with dimples and twinkling blue eyes. Oh, look, she’s going to the school library. Perhaps she’s going to rent Little Women, or read On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder!
Five minutes later, she exits the library holding a large stack of books called “Horrible Histories.”
And she’s thumbing through one called “Angry Aztecs.”
Record scratch. Freeze frame.
Yup, that’s me! The only history geek in a fifty mile radius. Living in Bumhicksville, Nowhere (name changed, but very accurate) is pretty terrible, and going to school at Caucasian Christian School of Goodness (again, a name change, but an apt description) is even worse. I snapped a bit while I was attending, due to the lack of permissible self-expression, but horrible histories were my guiding light.
Flash forward six months.
Our teacher wants us to do a history project about an ancient civilization. Since our curriculum is Eurocentricism.JPEG, most kids pick the Greeks or Romans (and completely skip over all of the good stuff, like orgies and gladiator fights) in their presentations.
I choose my favorite ancient civilization:
The Aztecs.
My teachers knew I’d been reading Horrible Histories, but what they didn’t know was that I’d also been avidly reading all about Aztec mythology. I walk up to the front of the class, pull on a turquoise skull mask, and raise my arms to the sky.
My teacher goes sheet white.
I give my presentation and skip nothing. Nothing. Every detail of the sacrifices, every dirty, disgusting part.
It all culminates when I point to the calendar.
“It’s May!” I shout, my little girl voice rising an octave. My teacher looks like she’s about to phone the police. “The Aztecs called May Toxcatl.”
No one moves or breathed. I continue blithely.
“Toxcatl was a month dedicated to the worship of the god of the night, Tezcatlipoca.” I’m still going. Everyone is afraid. Marie, one of my classmates, looks like she’s about to cry.
“They’d dress a brave warrior as the god all year, and at the end-“ I pull the red streamers out from behind my display, shouting: “They’d sacrifice him!”
The kids shriek as the streamers of “blood” roll out across the floor.
The principal walked in, hearing the commotion, just in time for me to really get into character and shout “BLOOD FOR THE GOD OF THE NIGHT!”
And that’s how Horrible Histories and all mentions of the Aztecs were banned from my school.
this is like the opening of a children’s movie about a girl who was reprimanded for over-creativity / morbid obsessions, and i love it
