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[enna99]

Every morning at school the principal comes on the PA system and announces that it is time to "pause for a moment of silence." Today, I asked my 4th graders why they think we do this. Here is what some of them said

Comments

[ken_raskolnikov]

out of curiousity, has the question of why some kids don't celebrate Christmas come up? I was doing holiday arts and crafts with the kids the other day and this question came up and I wasn't really prepared to answer. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, or any teacher's thoughts really.

[enna99]

Well, my 4th graders seem to know that Christians celebrate Christmas and Jews celebrate Hannukah. Beyond that I'm not sure what they understand, but they do realize that those two groups do not have the same holidays. One of them asked me yesterday what the difference is between Catholic and Christian. I just said that all Christians believe that Jesus was the son of God and believe in the Bible, but Catholics have the Pope as the leader of their church and that is a certain kind of Christian. And I said that Christians who are not Catholic are usually called Protestants. It's actually a little more complicated than that but I tried to stay at their level.

So in short...I think they know it has to do with what religion you practice, but beyond that they don't seem to be wondering all that much about Christmas, at least at this age. I would imagine younger kids, say 1st grade, would have more questions.

A long time ago????

[polarbearbrad]

I remember saying the Lord's prayer in school. It was not THAT long ago.

Re: A long time ago????

[enna99]

But:

a) You're Canadian.

b) A public school? Seriously?

c) You're old.

d) You're talking about 30 years ago. These kids are 10. To them that was a ZILLION years ago!