Who cares what a kid thinks?

I have been blessed enough to just sort of fall into a tutoring position as the result of someone whom I met here leaving the island. Initially it was only seven hours a week, but then some more students were introduced and I now am pretty busy tutoring from 10:30 am until 5:30 pm five days a week, plus a few hours on Saturday. It is amazing and humbling and tiring and exciting to see people so excited about learning.

One of my students is a boy named Chris. He is fourteen in Korea, where they began a person's age at conception. Which by the way I think makes a great deal of sense-think about it. But he would only be twelve in America. He is the most advanced out of his family, who have all come to Saipan for a month of intensive English tutoring. He is very talkative and I really like him.

This afternoon we were talking about different types of food and as I pointed at a picture of a supermarket meat case I jokingly asked him if it was American Beef. To explain the joke, he, his mother and his aunt have all informed me that people in Korean don't like American beef. Ya' know, that whole mad-cow disease thing kinda soured them on it. So anyways, I said this jokingly-and the joke was in the inflection of my voice, which is not something that most foreigners can pick up on-and Chris' eyes got really big. His answer came in the excited, elevating voice that is his normal volume of communication with me. (I am going to paraphrase his answer and our dialog in general-doing my best to leave the point that struck me intact.)

"No, no American beef. Is Korean beef. No buy American beef. American cows are crazy," was Chris' response.

"Not anymore," I tried to defend my countries meat practices. "They say that the beef is okay and there is no more mad-cow disease."

His eyes got big again and he responded with words that would have made many people nod in agreement. "We don't believe your president when he says mad-cow disease is no more. Why we believe your president? George Bush is a liar. He attack Iraq and say maaaanny nuclear weapons and so attack Iraq and fight and no nuclear weapons. And he say bin Laden and..." Here he paused and asked me if he was saying bin Laden right-he wasn't, because he pronounces the letters R and L incorrectly unless he makes a great effort to inflect them properly-and what his whole name was. I told him, and he continued.

"Yes Osama bin Laden and he say find him and kill him. And no kill bin Laden. And he really attack Iraq for oil."-(it sounded more like oir)-And he said it questioningly and so we repeated the word 'oil' quite a few times. And then he finished up with "Your president is a bad man attack Iraq for oil and a liar."

A twelve year old. From a country on the other side of the planet. Of course he has heard and absorbed this from others. From his parents, his teachers, relatives and the news. Maybe there is a left-wing liberal party running around trying to convince non-voting, non-citizens of our country and its leaders incompetence. That seems likely. I don't really believe that there is a global conspiracy to make George W. Bush seem like a liar and an imbecile. I realize that this wasn't exactly a scientific poll, that one young Korean boy is not representative of the entire world and its views...but still.

As I sat there and listened to him I could hear the emotion in his voice, the feeling behind his words-and none of this is really that "close to home" for him. It became incredibly clear to me in a moment how young boys are willing to die because of opinions like this. His opinion may not mean much right now. I wonder how many more children there are like him around the world, wondering at American incompetence and ignorance. At our ability to demand righteousness and good behavior from others and our seeming inability to present it in ourselves. Maybe Chris becomes a politician in Korea someday...who knows. Whatever, he's just a kid right?