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For fun.
During our regular video conversation Friday evening, our five-year-old granddaughter told us about their kindergarten reading projects on history. (I am not a fan of the increasingly academic nature of kindergarten, but academic kindergarten is a trend of more than thirty years, and our grandchildren are growing up in a town of academic overachievers; the dominant employer is a scientific research laboratory; more than 20% of the town’s adult population has a Ph.D. in engineering, chemistry, physics, or other hard science; so I guess an academic focus is almost inevitable.)
Anyway, our granddaughter coherently explained to us the difference between fact and opinion, and supplied many proper examples of the difference. I suggested she should teach all those adults in media who don’t seem to know the difference. She objected that she’s just a little kid in a little town in New Mexico. So we left it. But I remained impressed that my kindergarten granddaughter had a better grasp on differentiating fact and opinion than did so many modern graduates of journalism school.
This same granddaughter had, a couple of years ago when she was learning to use the toilet, emphatically explained to me that she peed differently than her older brother did because she was a girl and he was a boy. Duh, Grandpa!
One time something came up that caused me to ask her if a man could become a mommy. Using the exasperated tone she uses when Grandpa is being particularly silly, she said, “Of course not, you silly goose. A man cannot become a mommy.”
How does a five-year-old have more sense than so many “educated” people?
Discussion (11)
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Are there any important theological questions that have not been asked by a five-year-old?
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Curiosity, observation, and common sense? She'll never get a Pulitzer with that skill set.
Good.
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I certainly got more foundational questions when I taught little kids' Sunday School than I have teaching adult Sunday School.
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A precocious five-year-old of our acquaintance used to say things like, "I'm only five years old. That word isn't part of my vocabulary." I'm pretty sure that isn't an exact quote, though. I need to ask my wife in order to get it right.
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They tend to call things as they see them.
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