A student of mine handed me this today – announcing; “This is why I don’t like America.”
We had been discussing holidays, and dream destinations – so this wasn’t exactly part of the lesson plan…but I couldn’t exactly fault him, as he was so well informed for an eight year old…particularly as he is Korean, and consequently English is not his first language.
I had him explain his illustrations; gun possession, terrorist attacks, assassinations, drones, gangs, police brutality, and obesity. That is the image foreign parts have of America, a country I know first hand to be a lovely place, filled with positives.
Perhaps more needs to be done to highlight the good, not just the bad – I did what I could with him, but he said he had watched it on the news, and called me a liar. Therein lies the problem, I feel…what do you think?
John Lee Taggart 