Lions, Tigers, and Beggers, Oh No!

by Chris Mercogliano

At the risk of sounding repetitious, I’m going to begin with another phone conversation. This time the call came from a concerned citizen. “I was downtown this morning and saw some kindergarteners from your school with a guy who said he was their teacher,” the young woman began. “He was carrying a big bag of bagels that he told me Brueggers gives them to use for snacks. Is that true?” I recognized her voice immediately. Apparently she didn’t remember mine. She and a fellow office worker had stopped to chat with the kids and me and ask where we were from while we rested on the long wooden bench at the bus stop on South Pearl Street. We were sharing the bench with a homeless woman to whom we had given several bagels when she mentioned that she hadn’t eaten in days.

At the time I was pleased to have other adults showing an interest in the children. Very often when we go downtown the kids appear to be invisible. It’s as though people consider their presence so incongruous that they don’t even notice them. Unfortunately in this case, it was information and not conversation that these two women—whose suspicions I failed to pick up on—were after.

“Yes, it’s true,” I replied. “Twice a week he takes the kids with him to pick up bagels.”

Now, some of you may question the ethics of my not letting on that I was the teacher to whom she was referring. But I wanted to know what it was that had disturbed her to the point of contacting us, and identifying myself might have ruined everything.

“Are you sure it was okay for them to be with him?” she continued. “I mean he didn’t look at all like a professional educator.”

I couldn’t resist. “Actually, he’s our director.”

She emitted a guttural sound that is hard to translate into type. Then, when she had recovered: “But he was by himself with six children. Usually when I see a group of kids out walking, there are at least two adults and the kids are arranged in some kind of buddy system, which these kids didn’t appear to be. Are you sure that’s safe?”

“I can assure you it’s totally safe,” I returned, still not letting on. “He’s been teaching here for many years and six isn’t too many for him to handle. Also, because we take our kids out frequently and don’t rope them together, they become quite responsible about crossing streets.”

She wasn’t reassured in the least. “But there’s so much traffic downtown, and so many people. And … there are … beggars.”

It was my turn to nearly swallow my tongue. There were so many things I wisely refrained from saying, because clearly this was a situation that called for diplomacy. “Listen, it’s almost lunchtime here and I’m going to have to get off the phone. But before I do I want to thank you for calling. You saw something that concerned you and you followed up on it, and I think that’s awesome.” “I’m glad I did too. I really care about children, you know.”

I hung up and then paused before heading in to help serve lunch. I wanted to try to put myself in the caller’s shoes for a moment in order to understand why the sight of me with those kindergarteners had aroused such anxiety in her. For starters, the image of us was probably all wrong. Middle-aged males aren’t supposed to be with groups of small children, and no doubt my long hair flowing out of a red Washington Nationals baseball cap (DC is my hometown) didn’t help matters any. Nor did my black sweat pants (it’s imperative to dress comfortably when you’re working with small children) or my worn tennis shoes. I’m sure the large trash bag full of day-old bagels slung over my shoulder didn’t help any either.

Then, compound my “unprofessional” appearance with the fact that we weren’t doing it right. I was alone and didn’t have the kids holding each other’s hands or on to a walking rope. And the clincher, I suspect, was that we were talking with a homeless person, and giving her food to boot. I wonder if that wasn’t what tripped the alarm in her mind. Children should never talk to strangers, and certainly not to ones who don’t have a roof over their heads every night.

I wasn’t taking the young woman’s critique personally. Not at all. She is everywoman, or for that matter, everyman, and the truth is that increasingly we are living in a world filled with fear, one in which the majority of children are stored away in warehouses called schools and daycare centers, and in which great pains have been taken to remove the risks from everyday life.

It’s no wonder we’re all so scared. We are bombarded hourly with headlines about terrorist attacks, and natural disasters, and urban crime, and fatal diseases, and impending environmental catastrophe. Fear, just like sex, sells news, and so the media everywhere is in the business of portraying the world as a dark and foreboding place.

Parents are especially susceptible to all the hype—on a deeply instinctive level—because they have offspring to nurture and protect. And it isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. According to historian Stephen Mintz (2004), twentieth-century America saw a steady stream of what he calls “panics” regarding children’s health and welfare. For the first third of the century posture was a national concern, followed by an anxiety over left-handedness that finally faded out in the 1950s. There was also a series of panics over childhood diseases, beginning with polio in the ‘20s, then smallpox, measles, mumps, chicken pox, etc., and culminating in the ongoing panic over Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and the exploding number of so-called “behavioral disorders.”

What was then known as “juvenile delinquency” and lives on today under the name of “youth,” or “gang violence” became yet another source of panic beginning in early ‘50s. In the ‘60s fear became focused on teen pregnancy and stranger abduction. The ‘70s saw the great Halloween candy scare, a spectral phenomenon that will forever cast a shadow over the ways in which we celebrate children’s favorite cultural event even though there never was a single verified report of a child being harmed by tainted treats. In the ‘80s child abuse and illegal drug use became major sources of panic, only to be replaced by falling achievement in school for the remainder of the century and the start of the next.

During this hundred-plus-year period, says historian Peter Stearns (2003), the prevailing image of the child underwent a 180-degree about-face, from that of a naturally sturdy being with inherently good instincts, capable of learning from experience and independently surmounting obstacles, to a fragile, vulnerable creature in constant need of guidance and protection. And even though the fatal illnesses that had caused premature death for many young people in previous centuries had been largely eliminated, childhood was gradually came to be seen as an accident waiting to happen. Observes Stearns in Anxious Parents: A History of Modern American Childrearing, “An American society normally hostile to government regulation became obsessively safety conscious, with warning signs, car seats, railings—every conceivable intervention between children and danger.” By 2001, he went on to note, even traditional games like dodge ball had come under scrutiny for the threat they posed to physical and moral safety.

But I for one refuse to give in to the current hysteria. I’ll be darned if I’m going to teach children that the world is a dangerous place, because I don’t believe it is. Yes there are dangers, and the sooner kids learn how to respond to them the better. Street crossing can indeed be a risky undertaking, especially at busy intersections where drivers are in a hurry to get through the green light, and so we teach our kids to look both ways and scan for turning cars before they step off the curb, and to continue scanning as they walk across.

And yes, not all strangers can be trusted. But the popular perception of the danger has been blown way out of proportion by fear mongering reporters and politicians. So we teach kids to be discerning when they encounter an adult for the first time, to listen to their gut and trust their instincts. If they have an uneasy feeling about someone, get away immediately; and if they think they are being followed, then ask for help from the nearest person. This is where the never talk to strangers rule can really backfire, because that person is likely to be a stranger, too. We also remind our kids never to get into a stranger’s vehicle or go off alone with him.

I say let’s bring back the pre-20th century belief that children are naturally sturdy. Because it’s true. They are. And then let’s empower them to embrace life as an exciting journey filled with challenge and opportunity. Because it’s true. It is.

References
Mintz, Stephen, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. Harvard University Press, 2004
Stearns, Peter, Anxious Parents: A History of Modern American Childrearing. New York University Press, 2003



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