Curriculum by Juxtaposition

I rode my bicycle leisurely down a side street. It was hovering near 90 degrees. To my left, some 20 yards away, adults supervised dozens of kids playing dodge ball on a field in a city park. I heard glee on the breeze and it sounded good. To my right, some 20 yards away, stood a homeless encampment of three battered RVs, a plywood pallet shanty, a half dozen tarped and taped vehicles, one tent, a plastic dog igloo (that presumably provided shelter for a human being) and two huge piles of garbage. Seven or so people wandered around the encampment. I heard no glee.

What crossed my mind as I rode through this American juxtaposition wrought by forces I am always trying to comprehend was this: as a kid I played in city parks all the time. I never once played within easy view of a homeless encampment. What does seeing that do to contemporary kids? What do adults say about it, if they say anything at all. Surely they must. These used to be called teaching moments, but I suppose they don’t call these encounters with the homeless teaching moments anymore because they aren’t supposed to happen all the time about the same subject. These teaching moments are supposed to be extraordinary in nature and not a routine daily occurrence. I would say these constant encounters of juxtaposition I just described create a new kind of visceral curriculum. I wonder if teachers are teaching with this curriculum. I certainly would be if I were still in the classroom and I know I would have taken my classes up to these encampments, observed, and asked the residents to discuss what was happening. Perhaps we would have documented the experience with some method. Perhaps they would have told me to fuck off.

Or perhaps I wouldn’t have done a damn thing. Can you really take school age students on a field trip to a homeless encampment? What about adult students in a writing workshop? Now that’s something to consider. We could even walk.