Time for School

Time for School

Ken in 2003.

As part of our Global Citizenship theme, we've been watching the documentary Time for School. It's a fascinating PBS project that chronicles seven children from around the world as they begin their first year of school. The kids come from radically different cultures and backgrounds, and we've been talking about how different factors can help or hinder an education. For example, Ken from Japan lives in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We watch as he begins school at six years old, and he has already learned to read by his first day of class. He has tremendous cultural and family support, as well as a backpack stuffed full of new supplies. 

Neeraj in 2003.

Compare Ken's experience to those of Neeraj. She is about 9 or 10 years old (she's not sure), and living in India. Her mother takes an extremely dim view of education, arguing that she doesn't have an education, so why would her daughter need one? She also complains that the educated males in their village are unable to find work, and asks why should she bother educating her daughter as well? Neeraj is allowed to attend school only after a full day of labor. She attends a night school huddled around a small lantern with other girls. She walks home by herself each night, and arrives in her home after the rest of the household has gone to sleep.

We also meet children from Kenya, Romania, Brazil, and Benin. The first installment aired in 2003, and the filmmakers followed up with each student three years later. The intention is to check in with each student over the course a twelve year period.

You can view the original installment here: Time for School (2003)

The first installment yielded such productive conversations that we decided to watch the 2006 follow-up. You can watch it online here: Back to School (2006)

There is also a third installment, but we've held off on it for now. We've been using what we've seen so far to think about what we've learned about each culture and society featured in the program, and it's caused us to examine our own as well.

The documentary has inspired strong interest in trying to connect to some international pen pals, which is something that I'm looking into. (I have a few leads, but I'd welcome suggestions!)

Read Aloud

Our current read aloud selection is called How Susie Bayer's T-Shirt Ended Up on Yusuf Mama's Back, an article by George Packer that originally appeared in The New York Times in 2002. In it, Mr. Packer follows a t-shirt donated to a thrift shop in Manhattan on a long journey across hemispheres, exploring the many hands it passes through along the way to its final destination in Africa. Like our studies of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the Materials Recovery Facility, it encourages us to think about the things that we own and use, and the effect they have on others when we discard them.