Last week I paid a visit to the summer camp where I used to work back when I was a teacher. I still spend a little time there each summer; I went to sleepaway camp as a child and worked at two different camps as an adult, during college and during my teaching years, and I just can't seem to let it go.
While I was there I found myself talking to a 10-year-old about my time in camp and the camp's history, and at one point in the conversation for some reason the President's name came up. I don't remember exactly how; I think he was telling me a story about how he or a friend of his at home made an anti-Obama sign for school, and before I knew it he was saying "I hate Obama!" and "He's horrible!" and "He's done at least three illegal things!" and "He's gonna be impeached!" and "He didn't care about Benghazi!" and so on and so forth.
I was a little taken aback by this and didn't quite know how to respond. I have my ways of dealing with anonymous right-wing Internet trolls -- many of whom have the intellectual capacity and sensibilities of a 10-year-old -- but it's quite different when there's an actual 10-year-old next to you talking like a Twitter Troll, spouting the most heinous lies he heard on Fox News and The O'Reilly Factor (both of which he cited as sources) exacerbated by a 10-year-old's limited understanding of current events, the law, government, economics, global affairs, &c.
What on earth does one do in that situation? I couldn't be angry with him for not knowing any better -- he's only a child, for heaven's sake, whose parents are probably Republicans and Fox fans and are either teaching him this stuff or letting him accept it without question. And that's their business, not mine. Yet I've always been an educator, even before and after I worked as a teacher; I've spent my life sharing what I know with others, especially kids, of all ages. But here I was, in a situation where I found what I was hearing deeply upsetting, not just the content but the fact that it was coming from a child, and unable to really do much about it except try to hold the high ground, explain the facts patiently, and attempt to change the subject.
How do you tell a 10-year-old that the things he's saying are simply not true? How do you tell a 10-year-old that the "Fox News" channel and The O'Reilly Factor are not "news", but improv and propaganda? How do you tell a 10-year-old that the people on TV -- and perhaps, by implication, his parents -- are lying to him, and programming him to believe terrible lies? Not to mention, how does a 10-year-old even understand what propaganda is? How do you explain the law, the workings of our government, and the nuances of current events to a 10-year-old, in a way that he can understand? How do you do any of this without coming across as scolding?
There are no easy answers to these questions. I wish I could remember more of the details of this conversation, but it upset me so much that I've kind of tried to forget it. As I recall I did the best I could to maintain the high ground, not seem angry or frustrated, provide the facts where I could, and try at each juncture to change the subject; "Please, let's not talk about this." I did feel compelled to say "No, that's not true" a number of times (leading to a couple of futile "Yes it is" / "No it's not" exchanges), asked a lot of questions, tried to understand why he believed these things, tried to explain how most of it was not reasonable or believable, and tried to explain that he maybe shouldn't just accept things like that at face value without understanding them better. Afterward I made it clear that I was not mad at him (kids can be very sensitive about being argued with, even absent a raised voice or angry tone), and that it was good that he was taking an interest in current events and important issues at such a young age.
I think I did OK; he came up to me a few minutes later and said, "Maybe we shouldn't talk about that anymore," and seemed OK with it. It didn't come up again while I was there. I'm still torn about it, though. On the one hand, I feel like a jerk for trying to debate a 10-year-old; I should have ignored the subject altogether and said nothing. As I pointed out above, this is what his parents are teaching him, want him to believe, and/or are allowing him to believe, and it's not my place to disabuse him of that or interfere; not by a long shot. So in that sense, I was wrong to engage him at all.
On the other hand, as I also pointed out, I've always been an educator, even to the point of fault. Not only do I have this terrible inability to let lies and propaganda and unsupportable opinions slide, no matter who they're coming from, but I find it distressing to see someone that young so thoroughly taken in by such grotesque and inflammatory rhetorical nonsense; to hear a 10-year-old lie on Fox's behalf, on Bill O'Reilly's behalf, or even on his parents' behalf. Especially when those lies are causing him to feel and express hate.
Maybe that's what bothered me more than anything else, and why I couldn't simply ignore it. The conversation started when this small child said, rather forcefully, "I HATE Obama!" Everything else he said seemed to flow from that, and everything I said from that point on was a reaction to that. Never mind the facts, never mind the truth, never mind logic and reason; I don't want kids to hate. It's a cliché to say "You have to be taught to hate," but it's true, and once you're taught to hate, it becomes very difficult to teach you not to hate. I'd like to think that was I was doing, in the aggregate, was trying to teach this kid not to hate, or at least not to hate so easily and so willingly.
In retrospect, I wish I had focused more on that than on refuting the lies he was repeating. For some reason it didn't occur to me focus on his statement/expression of "hate" instead of the nonsense it was based on. I'm not sure it would have done any good, and I think/hope he will learn to learn, to inquire and understand, on his own as he grows up. But I think if I was to have said anything at all, I should have said something about that expression of "hate" that seemed to come so easily to him. And I should have realized at the time that that was what I was reacting to, and trying to dispel.