rabbit of caerbannog

today was one of those days that makes me so happy i am a teacher. so happy that i get to experience the amazingly insightful and kind and profound and beautiful thoughts and ideas of developing minds. our discussion today was on genetic technology and ethics and the dangers of genetic testing and why maybe having access to that kind of information isn't as great as you might think. so once we wrap up the discussion on considering how much you want to know about your own DNA, i ask who you might not want to have access to that information. the kids sort of look at me and then after a few moments two boys in the back yell out "THE GOVERNMENT!". hells. yes my little science nerdball anarchists.

the conversation eventually moved to Hopkins and Baltimore city and the using of Baltimore city residents as a research population and the state of the school system and literacy rates and the role race and poverty play in the whole thing. one of my darling students (who is indian) raises her hand and tells us the story of taking her six-year-old sister shopping for a barbie doll and how, when she asked her sister which barbie she wanted, the six-year-old picked the white barbie. and as she's telling the story she's getting teary-eyed and i'm getting teary-eyed and the longer she keeps looking at me with her doe eyes the closer i'm getting to crying and *sigh*. so we talked about the story and how whiteness is portrayed as the "best" and "most attractive" in the US the whole walk to lunch. amazing girl.

THEN we take them to the nearby art museum as a super-secret surprise after lunch. then our conversation on genetics moves on transgenic organisms. we discuss a mouse model that was developed to study the role memory has in the development of fear, and i discuss one reason we are afraid of things is because of what has happened to us in the past. quiet kid in the back (who knows everything about achondroplasia) raises his hand and asks the following question: "so if you have a run-in with an animal with big teeth... like maybe a big dog with big teeth.... big pointy teeth... and you are scared of it. so if you have meet an animal later in your life, and let's say it's a cat but it has big teeth... big pointy teeth like the dog you saw before... would you be afraid of it? or would you be afraid of the teeth?"

AMAZING.

i told him you could test that by making a model of huge teeth and see if the teeth scared people. i so hope he tries that at the dance tonight.