I’ve also never met a 5 year old tall enough to read the top shelves at stores. Children generally only have an interest/awareness of things on their own level unless they’re looking for something specific (and even then, they’re more likely to search low).
Reminds me of 6th grade social studies. Our world history textbook had a chapter on early human ancestors and human origins - Australopithecus, Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, origins in Africa, Neanderthals, all that jazz. I grew up in the Bible Belt so evolution wasn’t on the curriculum. Our teacher could’ve just skipped it and nobody would’ve cared. Less reading, yay! But instead she stopped to say “Chapter three conflicts with my personal beliefs, and is not required in the curriculum, so we will not be covering it in this class.” You bet that’s the only chapter I actually read.
Ha, you got played. Your teacher wanted every kid in the class to learn about evolution and knew nobody could get mad if they refused to teach it because they were so Christian, and those darn pesky kids went and did it anyway.
Unfortunately it was her sincere belief. Creationism was very popular, and we were coming out of the late aughts, when creationism vs evolution was a popular controversy. That same year another student saw me reading a book and asked me what it was about. I said "evolution". She replied "you know that's fake right?". That was in the morning. At lunch I was surrounded by her and six other kids hounding me to argue with them about evolution. I'll never forget this one girl, who was so proud that her dad went to abortion clinics to "talk women out of it", said "If evolution is real, then when am I gonna evolve into a mermaid?"
Later in eighth grade science class we were learning about "animal adaptation" and my science teacher almost said "evolution", stopped himself, and said "adaptation" instead. He seemed to know he'd lose credibility or invite argument if he said the E word.
Rural MS, actually. I don't know that we had a List of Forbidden Topics like that, but there are definitely artefacts of the religious affiliation. Like the mandatory Health class taught by a coach who openly believed anal sex caused incontinence among gay men. Or my teacher in 7th grade who stated that Pompeii was God's punishment for Roman sexual decadence. In high school there was an elective "Near Eastern History" class which was effectively bible study. Student elections for explicitly christian "Student Chaplain" officers who would lead prayer before football games and the like (you see, staff can't lead prayer, but facilitating an official student prayer leader is entirely different).
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u/sunsetgal24 6d ago
And it's not like a 5 year old has the context to understand what any of those words mean.