Teaching Kindergarten

Finally, after a 7 hour delay at Dulles International Airport in DC, we are in the air, and boy was the sunrise amazing! It was a hushed blue-green sunrise, the color of the sea, which is a nice change from the usual red-orange-yellow ones I see in flight. I think the difference has something to do with the angle of elevation between the Earth and the Sun, but anyway.

While waiting for the flight, I befriended this little Indian-American girl named Rida. Rida was 4.5 years old and wore rectangular-shaped glasses, and she turned out to be an engaging and entertaining conversationist. One of the most interesting turns in the conversation came when she told me a story about ants:

"Once, there were ants on the tv, and I took scissors and I cut them." (She giggles.) "I like to cut things. But I don't cut people because then they have to go to the hospital. I only cut ants. And paper, and..."

Isn't it sort of frightening how much we don't know innately? Like don't cut people. I'm slowly beginning to realize that teaching kindergarten would be more about teaching people how to be people: how to not cut people, how to cross streets, how to share toys and say please, how to hop, skip, and jump- things that seem so basic to us adults that we forget they were taught to us long long ago.