Make King Day One Of Learning

Remember back to childhood when adults sometimes dragged you places you weren’t crazy about going - to church, community picnics, the symphony? Remember, too, how bored you sometimes felt on those excursions? But, perhaps they sowed the seeds for adult life. Maybe now you are a church volunteer, community organizer or symphony lover.

Some Idaho fifth graders spent the day Thursday at North Idaho College. In a celebration of peace and tolerance, and to mark the Martin Luther King holiday, they wrote messages on chains of colored paper. The messages were simple: Smile on your brother and sister. Let there be peace. They listened to songs and stories.

Maybe some of them felt restless during parts of it, but the imprint is forever. This is the 15th year the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations has sponsored the program for young people. The first children who attended are now 25. Tony Stewart, a member of the task force, said: “This is a very major event for children in the fifth grade. It will go with them through their lives.”

The King holiday can be used for rest or recreation, but it also can be an opportunity to teach children lifelong lessons of tolerance, understanding and friendship.

In Spokane on Sunday at 4 p.m. at Spokane Community College’s Lair center, your children can participate in the “We are One” celebration. On Monday, they can join the one-mile Unity March, which begins at 11 at the Ridpath Hotel in downtown Spokane. In Idaho, the 19th annual Human Rights gala, a fund raiser for human rights activities, begins at 6 p.m. at Clark House Mansion in Hayden Lake.

Vince Lemus, one of the organizers of the Spokane events, is bringing his children. “It’s important because they need to know that America is more than who they see in our house.”

It takes effort to dress kids up in warm clothes, haul them away from the computer or television and say, “Today, were doing something a little different.” And they might not thank you at the end of the day. Friends got to stay home with Nintendo, but there they were marching in the street with strangers to keep alive the message of a person they know only from history books. Someday, however, those children will remember the march, the celebration, the change in holiday plans and perhaps pass on the ritual to their own children and grandchildren.

Bundle them up in warm clothes to teach them about a world, and a cause, greater than all of us.