I kid you not~

We're at the part in the social studies book where the thirteen colonies are forming, and Massachusetts Bay Colony, despite being formed by religious dissenters, allows no dissent among its residents.

Roger Williams was banished and has headed south to start a colony in present day Rhode Island with Anne Hutchison following on his heels. She has been speaking up as well, in Bible studies for women, later drawing in men.

The student book covers 100 years in four pages, so all the juicy details of Anne's "blasphemy" has been left out, but I paused at this part and opened a discussion about the way things were then-- Puritan women were subordinate to their husbands and were not to teach men, among other things.

The kids didn't seem indignant, or concerned, or in any way vested in the plight of Anne, or women in general in those days. But they were energized by a conversation about women and men today.

Ashley, an earnest student, and smart, raised her hand. It takes awhile for fifth graders to make their point, but hers ended with a question: "If women did men's jobs, who would do the grocery shopping?"

I kid you not.

One girl said, "We need each other. If it wasn't for women, there would be no more people."

This brought an indignant response from Matt who said, "Yeah, but you need men for that too, you know!"

I kid you not.

There was another exchange about ironing and who in the family did it. I mentioned that my husband did his own ironing.

I kid you not.

The consensus was that ironing was a cross gender activity, and I learned which fathers ironed.

The class was not able to listen and began to talk over each other. Lots of opinions got tossed in the ring, but no one wanted to hear anyone but himself, so I called off the discussion.

"That's it, I said. We need to be able to have some respect for the opinions of others. We need to listen before we respond. If you want more discussions, you'll have to have some self-control."

"Was this like a town meeting?" someone asked. I'd told the class how feisty those could get. I assured him it was similar.

After class Jen came to my desk and fumbled to express her thoughts. She hadn't liked it when someone said women should be able to do "men's jobs." She floundered, trying to express herself.

I helped her out. "Are you saying that if a woman doesn't want to do a man's job she shouldn't have to, but that the opportunity should be available to other women who might want to?"

She beamed. "That's it!" she said. "Exactly!" And she skipped off to lunch.
~~~~~
“One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.”~Franklin Thomas