DINOSAURS

I was listening to this story about dinosaurs when I remembered that earlier this week, Big E was telling me about her teaching experiences at a school in San Francisco where most of the kids are very poor and have not grown up speaking English. Most of their parents are recent immigrants, often with less schooling than the 5th grade kids. As a result, none of them had ever heard of dinosaurs. Somehow, I found this jarring. I know there are people who go through life with a 3rd grade education, and that there are kids who don’t succeed in school simply because they don’t speak English very well. It’s callous, but these just seem like normal parts of an imperfect world. But to not know about dinosaurs seems alarmingly wrong. I mean, dinosaurs are everywhere! Dinosaur movies, dinosaur toys, everywhere. How did they avoid them? What were they told when they asked about them? Perhaps the kids just thought they were imaginary.

On the other hand, think how jaw-droppingly amazing it must be to learn about dinosaurs for the first time. I would love to remember how that felt.