Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Taking a stand

One of our daughters "nailed her colours to the mast" at school the other day.

The kids are practicing for their end of year concert at the moment - music is a pretty big part of our school and each year they do a performance where the whole primary school sings 6-8 songs, with some bits of drama etc interspersed. They practice every day for an hour for 3-4 weeks. Generally good fun, some 'Over the Rainbow" type songs, other more traditional mexican, lots of good variety.

But this year, one of them had the Mexican equivalent of "Oh my God" in it. ie: a pretty commonly used expression of surprise, but using the word God. The sort of thing that we hear 100 times a day, we may kindof cringe a bit but don't say anything.

Well, one of our daughters said something. She quietly said to the (very senior) teacher leading the rehearsal that she didn't think it was appropriate to use the word "God" like that because he is very important and perhaps they should consider using a different expression.

The teacher said "OK - lets raise the issue with everyone else and see what they think?" So, she stopped the rehearsal, said that "______ (used her name but I won't because she was embarrassed) thinks we should change this phrase because some people might find it offensive. What do you think?"

After some discussion, the overwhelming opinion of all the assembled students (and _____'s peers) was to change!

Good on you ______ . We are proud of you.

(Random picture - taken in the Sierra Madre mountains. We live on the edge of this range.)

1 comment:

Sandy Grant said...

Good on you Pete and Sarah's wonderful unnamed daughter!

You stiffen the spine (ask Dad what that means) of us old evangelical warriors!