WHAT'S wrong with holding Palestine Solidarity Week in schools? Absolutely nothing.
What's wrong with criticisms of the event? They are overblown.
Come on. A swallow does not make a summer.
Videos showing teachers brandishing toy guns and burning a flag should not have created a Category 5 hurricane.
Yes, we don't want our children to learn how to hate in schools. We don't want them to think killing a human being is natural, even if political leaders, both despotic and democratic, normalise it.
But here we are, jumping like we've been stung by 1,000 hornets because characters in a handful of schools "shocked" us.
Looking at the reactions to the videos, one would think our children are doomed. "Now they will see guns, violence and hatred as natural and inevitable."
Really? Omigosh, are we kidding ourselves? Are we living on Mars? In school or out of school, our children are already exposed to vile things.
They are already absorbing the antitheses of moral values. Social media and messaging apps are awash with them. So are movies and TV shows, which streaming has made easily accessible.
In too many of them, from both East and West, human life becomes like an element in a computer game. Everyone can be "killed" easily without an ounce of regret or sorrow.
All these are okay? The thinking is, it's all right because it is fun. But that's a wicked lie. The adverse impact on children and youth is well researched.
This fact should frighten us even more than the school videos.
The Palestine Solidarity Week started on Oct 31. It did not begin lastweek, not a few days ago when the videos were recorded.
The vast majority of schools that mark the event will probably not do anything that has even a whiff of violence. We have to trust our headmasters and teachers to do what is right; to use this opportunity to promote rational discourse.
Doings at a few schools should worry us. Nurturing hate is bad. But the actions should not raise our hackles.
With or without the toy guns and burning flags, our children are already living in a dangerous world that we have had a hand in creating.
Make no mistake, Aristotle. This swallow is different. In our children's lives it has grown insidiously, and a winter will it make.
The writer is NST production editor
