I don’t think I have recorded this tale in my blog/journal yet, but it is one I want to have recorded for my boys so here it is.
In 2016, we realised how big Carter’s passion for geography had become. He had mastered approximately 80 flags at the time, and had progressed to an interest in world landmarks and facts about each. Seeing how much Carter struggled with retention of new information , we were thrilled to see that if he had an interest in a particular subject, he was able to retain a lot of information.
We decided it would be wise to branch out from geography and to also include some history to see if this was something else Carter might find interesting. We decided to teach him about World War 2 and all about Nazi Germany. I found this area particularly interesting myself so it seemed natural to share it with our boys too.
To my delight, Carter loved learning all about WWII and had a lot of questions regarding Hitler, the treatment of the Jewish, and the concentration camps etc. It also provided a lot of great teaching opportunities for our boys.
All was going well. Or so we thought.
A couple of months down the track, our boys’ school had an open day where parents and family members could come into their classrooms to look around and observe the work they have been doing.
I went to Tony’s class first and saw some great art work he had done, and his work in coding (which I still don’t really get).
Then, I headed down to Carter’s class. Within moments of walking through the door I could see the room had been decorated with students work from the last term. There was poetry, drawings, graphs, and other art work. My attention was directed to the beautiful butterflies the class had painted that were hanging across the classroom.
You know the kind, where children put dollops of paint on their paper, then fold the page in half and open it to create a rainbow butterfly.
As I looked at the colourful creations and searched for Carters, my eyes widened and my stomach dropped. I spotted his within a few seconds. I didn’t even need to read the name in the corner of the page to know it was Carter’s handiwork.
Instead of a beautiful, brightly coloured butterfly, Carter had decided to just draw a giant red swastika!
My first thought was;
“Please tell me he told his teacher we have taught him this is a form of hate flag, not a belief we support and promote at home!”
My second thought was;
“Why in the world did she actually hang this up there?? Did she think I would be offended to not see my child’s monstrosity of a piece of artwork hanging up in the classroom for all to see??”
We decided it was best to dial down the history talk for a little while.
