Kids are just the same, everywhere
Travel schooling exposes children intensively to diversity among people. They grow up knowing, accepting and even embracing a world full of differences. So much so that a homogenous society may surprise them. Yet there is one group where despite any superficial diversity, there is unmistakable similarity. That demographic is kids.
When we spent a month living in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand last year, we became involved in an NGO project for Burmese refugees. It was through a friend that we were introduced to Tuttu, who runs learning centres in the border town of Mae Sot. These schools teach the Burmese national curriculum in the Burmese language to children of migrants fleeing persecution in their villages on the other side of the border.
While visiting one of the schools, Morning Glory II, we took the opportunity to get our daughters to make some Burmese friends. On our school visit, we go into the grade one class. Because of an idea we shared, the kids have been told that we will be teaching them about computers. Everyone is very keen to learn how to build their own games on computers. So I show one of them my iPad and Shashank is showing his laptop to some of the kids while Sanaa and Samaa peek just as curiously into the screens. I thought, let me show them our daughters’ favorite nursery rhyme. We play Pink Fong’s “Baby shark” and the entire classroom of kids including my daughters break into the baby shark dance. The unplanned flash mob was performed by two Canadians and ten Burmese children to utter perfection.
Nothing could have driven the point home better — kids are just the same, everywhere. They need very little to be happy. Everyone loves Disney (or Pink Fong, as we saw). They like to swing and slide, jump in every muddy puddle they encounter along the way, walk on top of a street divider as if it were a gymnastics beam, and they throw tantrums for all the same reasons too.
