Thought for the Week

I LOVED a story I heard recently about two wee boys who wanted to get exactly the same haircut so their teacher couldn’t tell them apart.

Delighted with the result, they set off for school to dupe their teacher. They were bitterly disappointed when it didn’t work.

Neither had realised that one wee boy was black and the other was white. If only the world could be that simple.

I mentioned the subject of musicals recently, and my fondness for the works of Rogers and Hammerstein. The lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein were clever and political. He had a passion for justice and a concern for race relations, always making the point that our differences are only skin deep and that, fundamentally, human beings are the same everywhere.

South Pacific contains one of Hammerstein’s most biting pieces of social commentary and criticism in the song: ‘You’ve got to be carefully taught’ with its message that racial and class prejudice are acquired and instilled and are not natural or inborn. ‘You’ve got to be taught, to hate and fear, You’ve got to be taught, from year to year, It’s got to be drummed In your dear little ear You’ve got to be carefully taught. You’ve got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made, And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade, You’ve got to be carefully taught. You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate, You’ve got to be carefully taught!’ Can we teach our children different values, until the only difference we will notice is a haircut?