Teaching tolerance - to children - Last Morsel - Column

Vegetarian Times, March, 1996 by Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin

TOLERANCE IS NOT an easy virtue to teach a child. So many things in our society--from moralistic children's tales to well-meaning relatives--conspire to teach values in black-and-white terms. It's good to share, it's bad to hit, it's good to clean up the juice you spilled, it's bad to scribble in library books. To a young child, the obvious implication is that people who do good things are good people, and people who do bad things are bad people. It's a misconception that some people never outgrow.

In my family, vegetarianism has turned out to be our vehicle for teaching tolerance. Hannah, my 4-year-old daughter, has chosen to be vegetarian, despite plenty of opportunities to eat meat at school and in the homes of various friends and relatives. Having been born into a vegetarian family, eating a vegetarian diet is, for her, as natural and normal as brushing her teeth and listening to stories before bedtime.

For a while, she regarded her Uncle Jim's tendency to eat fish as an odd quirk. ("Uncle Jim eats things that aren't food," she informed me one day.) But then, she started to be disturbed about what she had long known--that many of the people she loves eat animals, something she had decided was not the right thing to do. For several months, she quizzed me about other people's eating habits, trying to make sense of the difference.

"Does Grandma eat meat?"

"Yes, she does."

"Why?"

"Well, each of us makes our own decision about what we will and won't eat."

"But it's not good to eat animals."

"That's what we decided. But everyone doesn't feel the same way." Silence.

"But why does Grandma eat meat?"

"Well, sweetie, most people do. That doesn't make it right. It doesn't make it good. But since they've always eaten meat and thought of it as food, it's hard for them to think of it as an animal."

I longed for an analogy to use as a simple way to make sense of the seeming contradiction, but I couldn't find one. So we repeated this conversation in various permutations over the next few weeks.

"Is it bad to eat meat?"

"Well, it isn't good." (I knew I wouldn't get away with this.)

"But is it bad?"

"Not exactly. It's a choice we don't agree with."

Hannah was clearly trying to make sense of this apparent paradox. We went through a week of pretend picnics at which Hannah asked me to hold various stuffed animals to my mouth and pretend that I was eating meat. I complied, wondering whether the point of this game was to try to associate someone she loves with an act of which she disapproves. Then, one day, we were talking about having some people to dinner when Hannah chimed in. "We should have meat for people who want meat and not-meat for people who don't want meat."

I explained that people who eat meat will still enjoy a vegetarian meal, but I commended her for her thoughtfulness. And I realized she now understood that people can do things we don't approve of and still be good people.

Vegetarianism has become the analogy we use for all sorts of other tolerance issues. Why do we give money to the man playing the accordion in the subway while others pass him by? Why does Jenny whine to get her way when Hannah is told to use words instead? Why does Andy take toys away from his baby sister but Hannah is supposed to share with her baby brother? In each case, we don't approve of the action, but we don't reject the people, either. It's a lesson that many adults still struggle to learn.