Photo Credit: Sam Hodgson
By Emily Alpert
Published May 4, 2011 on
“The Rainbow Fish” is a beautiful tale: A shimmering fish gives away its glittery scales one by one to befriend others. It’s often seen as a parable about sharing and selfishness.
But one kid at Torrey Pines Elementary pointed out in an essay that there was something fishy about it.
“The adult writers did not realize that they were teaching kids an immoral way to make friends,” the fifth grader wrote of “The Rainbow Fish” and two other books. The child said giving someone a gift the way the fish did might strengthen a bond of friendship, but couldn’t actually create one.
Such sophisticated arguments might not seem so surprising at Torrey Pines, perched on all-but-oceanfront real estate in La Jolla. But across town in the refugee hub of City Heights, Joyner Elementary is doing just the same thing with classes of poor children still mastering English.