A while ago, I watched a series on pay TV called The Mill. Like so many British period dramas, it was bleak, grim, disturbing, and hard yakka to get through.
It took me back to a time .... sitting in my country school in the 1960s in New Zealand .... when my teacher (later my mentor and all-round hero, apart from my Dad) asked a simple question:
"Have you heard of Lord Shaftsbury?"
Well, of course I hadn’t. Nor had any of my classmates. After all, we were a class made up of children from widely diverse backgrounds. Most of my friends were Māori, Hindu Indian, Moslem, Chinese and Caucasian - from both sides of the financial divide.
I was fortunate enough to be on the kinder side of the line that separated poor white from my white. But my friends came from both sides of that curtain - both sides of the diversity divide that now seems to hang like a shroud over what we once were.
It wasn’t something we really discussed or acknowledged. To us, as children, no curtain existed. We were just friends. Enjoying and accepting life as it came.
The only difference I really noticed was that my feet were warmer than my friends.
It was a strange place to live, nestled in the hills outside one of the biggest cities in the country, yet so far removed it was almost unremarkable…
Except for its diversity.
It was a market gardening community, rich in farming heritage. Many of my white friends were children of returned WWII soldiers, granted small dairy blocks. Others were the children of Indian farmers planting potatoes in the rich volcanic soil.
The Chinese farmers grew vegetables ... cabbages, cucumbers, pumpkins, and all sorts, depending on the season. My “poor white” friends and my Māori friends were labourers on those farms.
I had friends who slept on beds made from hessian sacks - the kind used to hold spuds. They came to school in rags, with lunches made from hacked-off bread, slathered in local butter and maybe a dribble of honey. Probably better than most kids get today in all honesty.
They never knew the life I lived - being greeted with love at the end of the school day. They went to pick potatoes, barefoot, and fell asleep on sacks. I was tucked into bed by Mum and Dad ... crisp white sheets, slippers at the door, love on both sides.
This particular day, I went to school, took off my boots that had kept the chilly mud from my feet and hung up my coat that had shielded me from the frigid day outside. My friends had wiped their chillblains and limped into class and sought the warmth of the fire that was blazing in the classroom.
Fueled by wood, cut by the boys in our class the day before, I might add.
As we all sat, as 9 and 10 year olds, our teacher said " How many have you heard of Lord Shaftsbury? "
No one put their hand up.
Lord Shaftesbury (1801–1855) - the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury - was an English social and industrial reformer.
He was best known for the Ten Hour Act of 1833, reducing children’s working hours, and for leading the Ragged School Union .... giving poor children a chance to learn and escape the pit of poverty.
He fought for better treatment of the mentally ill, for women and children’s rights, and was a passionate Christian reformer in the age of Victorian industrial cruelty.
He even advocated for the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land, decades before such ideas were common.
In short, Lord Shaftsbury .... a white man, a privileged man - fought for liberation long before “liberation” became a fashionable hashtag.
But more on him in another post.
Back to my memories: My Hindu and Moslem friends would turn 9. Yes, nine years old and they would come to school and tell me that they were very excited because they were going back to India or wherever to get married.
I always implored them to write and they said they would. Of course, they never did., They just disappeared into the ether and were never heard from again.
Over the decades, I have thought about my childhood friends from rural New Zealand and how they gave me bangles and laughed in excitement about going back " home " to marry at 9 years of age. How we clapped our hands and felt so envious that our friends were going to a castle to be treated as Princesses.
Children are so easily deceived.
I think my teacher was trying to tell us something.
I remember him telling us about Lord Shaftsbury and, as my particular friend left that day walked up to shake his hand he said " Nandi, did you hear what I said about Lord Shaftsbury? "
And she replied " Yes Sir! Thank you. He sounds rather nice. "
And off she went, with dreams of going home to India ( a country she had never seen ) and being greeted like a returning Goddess.
It has been over 60 years since that day when she left and gave me some bangles as a gift to celebrate her approaching marriage. I sometimes shudder to think what awaited her as she arrived to be greeted by who knows what and who knows who.
Every year, little Australian and New Zealand girls head back to the Middle East or other places around the globe with false hope in their hearts and images of joy in their minds.
The question I have to ask is why do parents allow this? Why do our governments ignore it?
Why do we allow children to be lectured to by bearded men chanting " Free Palestine " and encouraging their sexual fantasies under the guise of Storytime or so called Religion??
Dad: A human male who protects his kids from gender ideology. pic.twitter.com/VIE0xEX6dB
Why do we let adults’ agendas - traditional or progressive - override what children might question about their own futures?
Why are we so afraid of children’s curiosity that we punish them for asking uncomfortable questions? Why are we restricting their access to platforms where they might question, connect, and understand the world - instead of teaching them to navigate those spaces with strength and critical thinking?
Why are we cutting kids off from the very tools that could empower them to protect themselves, instead of teaching parents and children how to use them wisely, bravely, and safely? I speak with the voice of a life lived. How many speak from a life merely chanted?
Is this the silencing of the lambs? Because let's face it, there is a lot of weird out there,,,,
