Different perspectives

Remember “The Giving Tree”? Shel Silverstein’s fantastic kids’ book that chronicles a tree that loved a boy.

In Morocco, I used it in my advanced English class at camp, spending a week talking about it and then putting on a little play that made my country director cry.

I translated it and told it to my favorite girls in Midelt, even though we didn’t have an English class.

So here, as I’m trying to help a local staff member improve her written English, I thought this would be a good project. I took out all the articles and had her fill them in, then asked a few question about the story, asking her to write out her answers.

One of the questions was to write her opinion of the moral of the story. I was, of course, expecting something like “selfless love” or “mother-child relationship” or something like that.

Instead, in very broken written English, it was something like “It is possible to ask for so much that you run out of things” I was completely baffled as to how that could be anyone’s takeaway, but no matter how else I phrased it, I got answers suggesting that the tree had completely run out of things to offer to make her boy happy.

I said what about offering just a place to rest, but she didn’t consider that anything. I queried what made the tree happy and pointed out that she never asked anything of the boy. She countered, saying she had asked something of the boy – to have him play on her swing and climb on her branches.

I’d never make it as a teacher, where you have to completely think on your feet. I mean, I was just floored that this intelligent adult could completely miss – and dismiss – the entire premise behind the story.

She insisted that parents were not put on earth to give things to their children and that no parent should try to make their kids happy.

She even had a son – not even a year old -- and I asked if she would be willing to sacrifice for him. Nope.

My only assumption is that this must just be cultural difference somehow. It was not the same in Morocco, though. I remember telling Nora the story and asking her what she thought it meant. I could see her pondering it for a minute, and then her eyes lit up and she said, “Mama!”

So it really blew me away that it didn’t translate here.