Jurassic juniors

When me and my twin brother were young there were very few things we weren't allowed to watch or see. The only stipulation being she was present. 

I was the only kid in my class who got to MTV’s VMAs, see the nightmare before Christmas and all the Jurassic park films and the exorcist (which, to this day I still regret begging to see it). 

Now we live in a candy coated cotton candy cloud covered reality where children are handled intellectually like China dolls. 

I hadn't thought about this in a long time until Jurassic World was released last week (I saw it twice with a student of mine, once with my mother, and once alone. I'll admit I'm probably always going to be heavily interested in dinosaurs but we’ll address that later if I remember). 

I had been counting down the days until it was being released on bluray. Well as the days passed and I got closer to the release date I thought to myself “I can't wait to show the kids!”.  Then reality fell down around me and I realized I couldn't. And even if I wanted to attempt to I'd require a permission slip signed by every parent. 

We live in a drastically different world now. 

Jurassic World is rated PG-13. Mainly for the violence caused by the dinosaurs. And judging from past experience at other schools most parents would see PG-13 and toss the permission slip in the trash, not seeing how this movie could open up an entire world of learning.

“Well what if my child is scared?” …if your child is frightened by long extinct animals simple explain there is no way this could happen. The dinosaurs have been dead for millions of years and to save their fear for actual scary things like poisoned Halloween candy. 

It saddens me that I'm not able to share one of the best experiences of my childhood. 

Instead of removing the “temptation” my mom would experience with it. Explaining things and having an active dialogue so we got something more from whatever media outlet we showed interest in. 

Luckily for me a lot of my students saw the movie over the summer and to not only disprove some mother’s opinions I harnessed the interest of Jurassic World to teach the children about dinosaurs. 

My favorite part of the lesson was my students and I having a “cooperate” meeting to start our own Jurassic Park. What dinosaurs we would or would not want in our park. How we would keep them contained. And most importantly should we recreate dinosaurs should we?

Another prime example of how the world has changed for children since I was a child hit me in the face while we Watched Hocus Pocus. 

I loved this movie as a child and still do as an adult but even though it's rated PG and made by Disney the word virgin is said a ridiculous amount of times. I never noticed because as a child I already knew what one was and as an adult it really isn't a draw dropping word. 

Naturally, because preschool teachers are forced to be hyper sensitive, the word hit me like a slap in the face each time one of the characters said it. I was just waiting for one of the kids to ask what it meant. It seemed like I was home free and then a student blurted out “what's a virgin?” I instantly tensed and was searching my brain for some vague way to answer when another child blurted out “it's a person who doesn't eat meat! Duh!”.  I didn't bother to correct.

I guess I'd believe mollycoddling worked if these children, completely removed from media, weren't shooting up schools or selling drugs.