Raising Free People
"What are you going to be when you grow up?"
It's a question adults asked me as a boy and one I still hear adults asking children. From quite a young age I knew that questions required answers to it so I always had one ready. "I'm going to be a cowboy." "I'm going to be an astronaut." "I'm going to be a baseball player." "I'm going to be an engineer like my dad."
My answers varied, often week to week, but I always had one at the ready. Adults expected it. None of them ever thought to ask about my current interests, my plans for the day, or about who I was right then. It was as if I, as a child, wasn't really a complete human being yet. That my real life wouldn't start until I'd become something else, and as a white boy in America becoming was naturally attached to one's profession.
Of course, I realize that for most adults it was simply a convention to ask this question of children, a way of making conversation with the smaller humans, but it seems as if I've always known there were limits to which answers were CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Raising Free People
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