Child Abuse

Immigration gives so many adults such excruciating headaches, why would anyone choose to inflict something so arcane, complex and divisive on a child?  After all, children are meant to be protected and cherished, not tortured.  Besides, there are very good reasons why consular officers' children refuse to participate in "take your child to work" days - they already know more than they want to about what we do, how and why.

And children think of our founding immigrant ancestors, as our dear Gore Vidal famously noted, as "boring but perfect."

Nevertheless, the US is a nation of immigrants, etc, etc, etc; immigration is often a subject of family stories and legends; and despite childrens' very sensible propensity to presume that whatever news readers, newspapers and adults are discussing is deadly boring and has nothing to do with them, immigration can actually be made to be pretty interesting, even for them.  If anyone can do that, it would be the folks of Scholastic, that fine old organization that still publishes the "Junior Scholastic" magazine that Madam remembers fondly from her own youth.

Just a glance at this page of resources and suggestions can give any consular supervisor a half dozen ideas not only to genuinely amuse the children in spite of themselves, but also to shape a worthwhile Consular Leadership Day, in place of the usual character-building (boring, really; come on!) lectures, films and crisis management exercises.