The idea of pizza

At The Merasi School, we snap at any opportunity to talk about food. It would be a total anomaly in our desert classroom if a day passed without someone indulging in a bit of heartfelt praise of Good Day Biscuits, Chocolately Cake, or Mango Juice. In English Class, we are at our grammatically sharpest, linguistical best when discussing the color, shape, and price of our favorite vegetables. In computer class, the fewest mistakes are made when typing "I like yellow bananas" or "The orange carrot is big."

So the other day, young Rojieela, an aspiring teacher with a knack for turning any gesture into the beginning of an elaborate dance move, did not exactly stop traffic when she said that her favorite food was pizza. By and large, our little lads and lasses subsist on very modest, inexpensive diets of chai, rice, lentils, and flat bread with vegetables. Cheese would be an absolute delicacy because it requies refridgeration and is quite pricey. So the comment was a bit of a blip on the radar, but nothing that brought the class to a halt. However, when Akram stated that his favorite drink was coffee, I began to get a little suspect. But the cherry bomb that exploded it all was when Seema said her favorite person in the whole world was Hannah Montana.

So, we began to retrace our steps. I asked Rojieela what was in pizza and, upon reflection, she realized she'd never had it. I probed Akram about the taste of coffee and he said it tasted like Thumbs Up (if I may subjectively interject, it is a foul soda that would be much more productive if used to remove lead from all Chevy trucks). When we approached Seema about the color of Hannah Montana's hair, she said it was a blue-green-black kind of hue.

I think we're talking about ideas, here. The idea of pizza, coffee, and Hannah Montana has some decidedly American cache, which is powerful verbal loot to be lugging around. It's something of a social currency, in the same way that wearing Nike sneaks and reading Kant in the park is in the US. Generally, it's stuff we do out in the broad light of day to influence others' opinions of who we are. The red, white, and blue has brilliantly packaged and exported the idea of America through cheesy pizza, coffee, and that excellent cultural ambassador, Hannah Montana. But can you fault these little ones for wanting to buy in?

The idea of America, I believe somewhat rosily, is one of public libraries and government subsidized education, making gold from dust, and shattering molds of poverty and discrimination. Sure, we're loaded with heaps of less attractive, poetic ideals, but America, I have come to believe, is also an idea of hope, opportunity, possibility, and choice.

I think part of our work here at The Merasi School is to shake loose the good stuff from this idea of America, the glorious, generous notion of expansive possibility that sends folks up to the moon, down to the bottom of the sea, and around the earth on a sailboats and bicycles and determined feet. If we can squeeze out these thought patterns, these electical currents that charge kids with the very real idea that they could write their name, they could go to college, they could be a doctor, then perhaps it's an idea worth spreading.

If I could just add, though, Neil Diamond would be a far superior cultural ambassador of hope and opportunity than Hannah Montana .