Privilege
One of the things that Ann Arbor and Northampton, MA (where my daughter is in school, when she’s not playing hooky in Germany) is the proliferation of bumper stickers, far more than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. Yesterday I saw a new one—“Childhood is a journey not a race.” It turns out that this meme—“X (school, kindergarten, etc.) is/should be a journey, not a race” is widely dispersed through the internet. You can also buy the bumper sticker here, on clearance, for only a quarter.
I had somewhat complex reactions to the bumper sticker, comprised of two reactions. First, it clearly reflects an impressive level of privilege (see Robert Moses, Radical equations for a good discussion of how this plays out in children’s lifes). Second, though, there are two aspects of the sentiment that are worth noting—1) If life is a race, it is a marathon and not a sprint, and the person who finishes the first hundred yards first is rarely the overall winner. 2) It is a race with many different finish lines extending in many directions and hence many different “winners.”
But the idea that children can opt out of the race aspect of development and learning without opting out of the rewards accruing from them is either a fantasy or a reflection of the deep social inequities that characterize the United States.