My heart broke. My son Ryan -- age 8 -- informed me, while we were enjoying breakfast, that they were no longer allowed to talk about politics at school. I was flabbergasted. Why would any educator tell students that they were forbidden from discussing anything -- especially politics, in the midst of an election?
Further investigation revealed that the impetus to this perceived ban was that a couple of kids had decided that they were going to build a wall to keep the Mexican kids off part of the playground. They really meant "any kid who was Hispanic or Latino."
A heated discussion ensued and the after-school care program staff had directed the kids to have these discussions at home rather than at school.
Let's rewind for a second. Elementary school kids were playing and they decided that they wanted to take after Donald Trump and build a wall to keep children of color off their playground.
Hillary Clinton is running an ad that highlights the fact that our kids are watching. They're listening to our discussions, watching the news and considering the ideas that our presidential candidates are putting forth as solutions to issues our country faces.
If you thought that ad was overdramatic, clearly it isn't -- Trump's plan to build a wall to keep "illegals" (or at least people who look like them) out of our country is translating directly to playgrounds across our nation.
No matter your political stripe, it seems obvious that this incident cannot be the only one of its kind. Clearly, our national discourse in this crazy election cycle isn't just about how you want the country to proceed. Our kids are watching, many of them in their formative years. For some of them, it seems the result is an ugly racism.
Before we go any further, let's get the straw men out of the way. Did Donald Trump make these kids racist? No. Do the parents of these children bear responsibility for their actions? You bet. Are playgrounds across the country descending into some madness that crosses "Lord of the Flies" with the Stanford prison experiment? Of course not.
What I'm arguing is that political rhetoric has consequences -- not just for big issues like foreign policy or the shape and size of our government, but for how all of us, including the youngest among our population, think about the idea of "America."
How can anyone stand for this? And what in the world are educators to do about these sorts of things? Here in San Diego, we aren't exactly removed from this very real issue. In fact, some of the most hateful things that Trump has said would directly affect our communities.
Ever since I was a child, I've enjoyed civic engagement. Participating in community government is a perk, rather than a burden, of living in this country. I remember walking from my grandmother's home to the Illinois State Capitol when I was Ryan's age to sit down with the secretary of state and the governor. They happily engaged with me, even as I had nothing to offer them but my curiosity about what they did.
Public servants taught me that any citizen can engage with government. If you don't believe that your children (or you, for that matter) can get that kind of experience from taking an interest in their work, then you probably haven't tried.
Every four years, people on TV drone on about how this election -- this one more than any other -- is about the direction our country is headed, our ideas about America, and our children's future. And while that's a bit overdramatic, it's also essentially right; the privilege of American democracy is that we consistently get to weigh in on the stuff that matters.
But you don't have to be a political pro to sense that something bigger really is going on here in 2016. When our kids are learning at school is that politics is too divisive and downright nasty to discuss instead of how to learn from local elected leaders, that signals a serious problem.
Talk to your kids about Trump, but more importantly? Talk to them about democracy.