Trust, Risk and Learning

Granpa's trade is whiskey making and considers himself pretty good at it. Since it's the only trade he knows, he teaches this trade to Little Tree (five years old at the time). Leaving the still one day, a couple of men were set out on the path and they had to hide the still and split up so Granpa could get away with the bulk of the wares. Little Tree was confronted and chased by the men, but made it back home safely to find Granpa and Granma waiting for him. In another chapter Little Tree bought a calf from a "Christian man" for $.50, which died on the way home from town. Granpa explained that if he would have stopped him from buying it, Little Tree would have always looked back on the day feeling sore at Granpa. If he would have told him to buy it, he would have blamed the calf dying (and losing the $.50) on Granpa. "Ye'll have to learn as ye go."
The close call coming back from the still and the poor trade with a Christian really cemented Granpa and Granma's teaching methods for me. They knew that Little Tree would encounter these situations in life and did not hide from it. In fact, I believe that they expected him to find him self in a similar jam later on in life and that he would need to make a decision then as well. Although only five years old, they were not going to sheild him from the world, they were willing to let him experience it. It's hard to believe that you can give a kid money and not expect him to spend it. Or give him responsibility in an illegal whiskey operation and not expect him to run into trouble at some point. Granma and Granpa knew the risks associated with allowing Little Tree to be an active participant in their family; to be his own, really. I take them as folks who can assess risks in life. The way they let Little Tree learn was not without risks, but the most protective way of learning doesn't come without risks itself.
We have no choice as health educators but to teach according to the political safeguards made by policymakers, local education administrators and school boards. This makes it difficult sometimes to be as effective as we'd like. We must trust that there is enough education going on in the home, church or other auxillary institution that our teaching is not necessary. But really, the only subject safeguarded in sexuality education, and we have free reign over the rest of the course. We aren't the parents and cannot protect them from the real world even if we wanted to. Many high schools are more like the real world from which some of kids are being protected than the city streets are. This is why it's important to teach health effectively and efficiently in the junior high and high schools, because parents may not be enough to prevent unhealty lifestyles, and in some cases promote them.