The Village

Last week Tom and I saw M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village" on DVD. If you haven't watched it, it's like his movie Sixth Sense with a big twist in the story. So as I write about it, I'm just warning you, *major spoiler ahead*.

The movie is about an Amish-like community that lives in a valley surrounded by woods. In the woods are creatures that, as long as the villagers don't bother them (and give an animal sacrifice every once in a while), the creatures don't bother the villagers. As it turns out through a series of events, it's revealed that the creatures are a farce and this community was created by the "elders" as a way to protect their children (who were all born after the village was established) from the world. Each of the elders had experienced a traumatic and tragic loss of a loved one at the hands of crime when they lived in society, which is what motivates them to create this "utopia" of sorts. The way they keep their families and community together was to create the farce of the creatures to scare them from going beyond the woods and discovering the outside world.

We thought it was an interesting movie, kind of like Truman Show, but with a different motivation. At first it seemed cruel for these people, the elders of this village, to create this big lie. But the more I thought about it, especially as a parent, I can understand the desire to keep evil and harm away from my children, which I think was the root of what these elders were doing. Although Tobey's options for preschool were predominantly private, Tom and I have been talking about when he reaches kindergarten age. Would we send him to the neighborhood school, a good one that we "paid for" through our mortgage? Or would we send him to a private and/or Christian school?

A former public school teacher myself, I had always been one to say that the public schools are good enough for my hypothetical kids; they don't have to go to a Christian school out of fear that he'd be sheltered. Nor does he have to go to a Challenger to be surrounded by over achieving kids. I wanted my kids to be in the "real world" and not limited. And it's not like our neighborhood school is bad either. But now that our kids are no longer hypothetical, it's hard to say "good enough" for the kids. And while I do still hold that they don't have to go to a Christian school (at least from what I've heard at the high school level, they're not all angels there either) nor a "Challenger" (scary), the potential community of families and parents that really care seem to be more of a possibility in a private school than in public (I'm sure it depends on the school and we haven't really explored our public one yet).

I guess the "story" that kind of made Tom think twice about public vs. private was from his co-worker whose kids go to Fremont Christian (even though they aren't Christians) which they are very happy with. He said that the parents there look out for your kids and might even correct them in a way that wouldn't happen in a public school. He was glad that there are other parents watching out for his kids instead of a more distant "don't you talk to my kid" kind of attitude more prevalent in general society. And Richard and Angel are already receiving invitations for social gatherings of the 1st grade class at LACS that Christopher is going to be in. That would be a great community to have.

And yeah, I do want to limit the negative outside influences that my kids are exposed to. I do plan on correcting and teaching what comes across their path. I do want them exposed to different kinds of people. But maybe school, for the number of hours and the importance of what goes on there, might not be the best place to "experiment" for our kids, especially when they're so young.

"It takes a village" is probably true. One where you have good community and one where you have some control over what goes on in it. I guess the question is how far will we go and how much might we have to pay to create our own "village" for our kids.