naamahdarling:

kummatty:

kummatty:

What Resulted When a Photographer Gave Rural Children Cameras

Twenty years before the term “socially engaged art” entered the lexicon, Wendy Ewald realized that, when she gave cameras to children, they

The New Yorker

“My little sister is praying,” Mounia Betioui, Morocco, 1995.

“Here is my cousin, Miry, with the skulls and fruit for the Day of the Dead,” Juan Jesús Murillo, Mexico, 1991. 

“My lame cousin-brother is dressed like saint Sadhu Hari,” Kalu Rupsingh, India, 1989-90. 

“The chickens run behind my mother,” Carlos Andrés Villaneuva, Colombia, 1982-85.

That last one is so well-balanced. Extraordinary.

tiktoks-for-tired-tots:

thefirstpaleontologist:

sandersstudies:

physticuffs:

anexperimentallife:

when i was three, i told my parents that my preschool classmate Molly had a new baby sister who was Chinese. my parents tried to explain to me that Molly’s baby sister was Chinese because Molly’s parents were Chinese and Molly was, in fact, herself Chinese. i simply was not having any of it. Molly’s baby sister might be Chinese and Molly’s parents might even be Chinese (i couldn’t tell because it’s not like i ever looked at adults’ faces back then) but it didn’t make sense for MOLLY to be Chinese because, like me, Molly was THREE.

A family friend’s kid came home from school when she was still pretty small and told her mom there was a new kid at school who was “brown” and her mom is literally an Indian immigrant and she was like “honey you also are brown” and her kid was like “????????? no?” 

So sometimes small children do not know how appearances work. (Or, like the story above, race either)

teashoesandhair:

So, my university does a lot of outreach Classics work, trying to make it less of an elitist subject and more accessible to children, and as part of that, I went to give a talk to a class of 6 and 7 year olds a few months back.

And here’s the thing. Classics is really often portrayed as the last bastion of academic privilege, a subject that is only taught to rich white kids so that they can brag about knowing Latin and get jobs as Tory MPs. But these kids were OBSESSED. They had already done some stuff on myths, and they were so excited to talk about it. They knew all the stories, all the heroes, the gods, the monsters. I have never seen such an excitable group of kids as these 6 year olds shouting about Odysseus.

For the lesson, I asked them to think of their favourite myth and to consider it from the point of view of the monster rather than the hero. The end goal was to show that often the monsters and heroes are quite similar. We decided to do Polyphemus (the Cyclops) in the Odyssey, and so I asked them why they thought Polyphemus might have been so angry at Odysseus that he killed some of his men.

Because he came home and found lots of strange men in his house, eating his food, said the kids.

So, I asked them, do you think that was a good reason to kill people?

No, they said, but he was very cross, and he didn’t do it because it was fun.

And then this KID, this SIX YEAR OLD CHILD, put her hand up and said “well, it was very bad of him, but if we’re cross with him then we have to be cross with Odysseus too, because when he came home from his adventure and found lots of men in his house, trying to marry his wife, he killed them, and that’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

AND LET ME TELL YOU

I am a published Classicist! A PhD student! And I have never made that connection before! Not once! And this child was six years old! And she made the link! By herself!

And so I tried not to show how gobsmacked I was, and we talked more about other monsters, including Medusa, and at the end of the lesson a lot of them said that they thought the monsters were not as evil as we usually think, and then I went home.

But I honestly haven’t got over how excited and engaged those kids were, in a totally regular primary school. Classics, in that classroom, was not elitist or inaccessible. It was something they understood, could really get their teeth into and use to think of new ideas of good and bad, of why we demonise different people for doing the same things. And that’s how I like to think about Classics. Not a series of dry texts in ancient languages, but as living stories that you actually can’t help but love, just a bit.

bogleech:

I have an odd preschool era memory of noticing for the first time that the daylight gets a little dimmer every few minutes and then brighter again but instead of looking up and discovering it’s when a cloud has gone by I deduced it was a weaker shorter nighttime for bugs

humblegrub:

sound on to hear what this child identifies a dragonfly as

obstinatecondolement:

krwzprtt:

hukiboukeryy:

today a kid at work climbing up a tree felt the need to tell his friend “this tree is for ONLY BOYS and GIRLS”. so obviously his friend was like um that means it’s for everyone, to which i responded “some people aren’t boys or girls!” and the boy climbing the branch added his hot take of “YEAH! some people are PIRATES.”

Well, you heard it right here. New non-binary pride flag: