Tell Me the Truth – age-appropriate conversations with children about Human Right’s Day.
I’ve got to be honest, I’m pretty useless at lying or withholding the truth (I believe the two are distinguishable, though they are arguably the same). I’ve tried withholding the truth a few times, but have always ended up eaten alive on the inside and then telling the truth to people at a later date which is far more awkward than if I had just spoken the truth in the first place. One particular incident took me two years to reveal, but eventually I plucked up the courage, reimbursed a resulting expense, and felt a weight lift off my shoulders.
What if the truth of the past lifts weights of our shoulders?
Tell me the truth! It’s such a simple phrase, used by an enquiring mind wanting to understand the authenticity or accuracy of the matter in question. Whether asking about issues of little significance or situations of great consequence, the asking of this question creates a moment which holds the potential to conceal or reveal the truth) and the level of honesty in the answer holds the power to decide which.
As a parent and teacher, I have posed these four words to children as a suffix to others on many an occasion! Did you hit your sister? Did you take his soccer ball? Who did this? Where were you? Tell me the truth… Children understand these words from a very young age and are adept at including the word ‘but’ in their answer if they are implicated by the exposing of truth. “Yes, but she started it!” It’s hard for children to simply acknowledge truth, state truth, and leave it at that. I wonder why?
How good are we, as adults, at telling the truth? We have phrases that suggest to me that it can be hard for us… we need to ‘sugar coat’ it, or try to avoid it with a, ‘believe me, you don’t want to know.’ Even the gravitas of needing to be sworn in before a judge so as to ‘tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’
There are many occasions, where the truth is inconvenient, but does that mean we should avoid it? Or would confronting the truth be part of a journey of setting us free?
In South Africa, and around the world, many Public Holidays or International Days, create an opportunity for us to reveal the truth about history to the future generations. For some reading this, you already want to stop reading – perhaps you’d prefer the ‘believe me, you don’t want to know’ or at least a ‘not until you’re older’ approach to telling our children and youth the inconvenient truths about history. For others, there’s an acceptance that we must teach the next generation, but it gets sugar coated so as to make the unpalatable palatable or appease those who may feel guilty or awkward as they hear the inconvenient truths.
Whilst I accept that there are age-appropriate ways to give information, I don’t accept that we hide the truth away from the children who we are always asking to ‘tell the truth.’ On the contrary, when we create safe spaces to teach history carefully and candidly without the bias with which it has often been recorded (in order to make it palatable), we begin to shift the weight off our shoulders, we begin to free ourselves from the past, we begin to unlock the possibilities of intentionally, insightfully and deliberately forging a new future.
Let me get real. I have met seven-year-old children in South Africa who know nothing about apartheid. I have seen Human Rights Day celebrations in South Africa which celebrate human rights but mention nothing about Sharpeville and the events of 21st March 1960. I’ve heard children convinced that Youth Day is about celebrating children and that they should get breakfast in bed!
Conversely, when given safe spaces, the language to talk about difference and some honest truths, I have heard children discussing the fact that we are all the same inside and that skin is just like the wrapping paper we come in. I’ve seen grade 3 children understand in an age-appropriate way what happened in Sharpeville and therefore genuinely understand why Human Rights Day is so important; and I’ve read a 10-year-old boy’s reflection: “I used to think Youth Day was just a day to celebrate youth. Now I think it is to remember the children who died that day.”
If you find this hard to read, that’s OK. It’s your natural response. Take a few long deep breaths. A natural response to difficult truths about the past can be defensiveness. My last blog was on Embracing Discomfort, a vital skill for us to develop if we are to learn and grow. As we learn to sit with our discomfort, to allow ourselves to feel some of it, and then to even embrace it as an opportunity to consider something alternative to that with which we are comfortable, we may find ourselves in a space where defence is replaced by compassion, and compassion gives birth to love and kindness in new spaces.
Let’s consider what happens if we don’t tell children the truth. They fill in the gaps. They create their own truths. Like the ones above – that youth day means they should get special treatment! I’ve heard children tell me that the people who stand at the robots (traffic lights) are there because they choose to be. Now, I can imagine how they’ve overheard adult conversations or comments and come to that conclusion, or perhaps been told that as a non-truth or partial-truth by an adult. Yet it prevents the truth from creating an opportunity to cultivate a new future intentionally and deliberately.
One of my most memorable hope-filled moments teaching the Thrive Together Curriculum, was when a Grade 6 boy, after understanding the events of the Soweto Uprising in preparation to commemorate the youth on Youth Day, and understanding how the struggle to learn in another language had impacted my colleague’s own opportunities in life and thus those of her children, saw it for what it was, stating, “So, it’s like a cycle that keeps on going.” Then he asked, “But Mrs Mthethwa, can’t we break the cycle?” And right there, in that moment, was a heart and mind truly understanding that the current realities are a result of the past, that there’s a cycle at play due to injustice, and he and his whole class understood that we can choose to be part of breaking that cycle, that we can’t rewrite history, but we can still write the future. Those ‘aha’ moments can’t be ‘taught.’ They have to be facilitated. Yet without the truth, the realisation cannot be birthed.
I don’t always like telling the truth, particularly if it might offend someone. Yet we can learn to speak the truth in love and bring things into the light. When we don’t bring things into the light, they remain in darkness, unseen, or festering. There is something beautiful, even if it’s painful, about revealing something and no-longer allowing it to hold its negative power.
What if telling the truth and bringing things into the light it is part of our healing process as a nation. For some, it will take courage. For others, it will be a relief that the truth is being told, so long as it is told accurately.
With Human Rights Day around the corner, I have developed some materials for schools and parents to access, including a video presentation you can watch with them and a discussion guide to help you navigate productive conversations afterwards. There is also a guide on “How to have conversations about apartheid with children,” so that we can reveal truth in an age-appropriate way to our children. You’ll find these under resources.
On 21st March 2022, I read my three girls the story, Mama Africa, How Miriam Makeba Spread Hope with Her Song and through this they understood afresh the history of apartheid, the struggle, how Mama Africa was an influential artist who fought for Human Rights for Black South Africans. How she had to sacrifice something on her own journey, for the greater justice she sought.
We then went to New Town, visited Miriam Makeba Street, stood by a mural of her, sang with the statue of her iconic contemporary, Brenda Fassie, and celebrated Makeba and what she had lived for. I trust my girls, as they learn the truth, will live for something greater than themselves.
Let’s inspire the next generation to live for something greater, to bring justice in whatever way they can to this world. Yes, it might cost them something. It might cost you something. It might set us free.
Why not tell the truth?
