The children love to talk and the conversation started with The War of 1812 and Confederation. It meandered unfettered from there to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture complete with cannon fire, to Laura Secord and the part she played in defending the budding nation, to our neighbouring nation and the fact that Obama would be our president had The War of 1812 resulted differently, and how Obama was or wasn’t doing as a president and the blacks in North America and the Jews in Germany at the time of World War II and Anne Frank. Did you know that Anne Frank went to a Montessori school from the age of 3 to 13? Then, can you imagine, as a Jew, she was prohibited from going to school with non-Jews!  And what an amazing person she was, pretending that short sleeved sweaters were all the fashion in Paris in those days when her sweater got too small for her and she had no replacement. The question was raised, what we will look back on in horror in fifty years’ time as we now look back at the discrimination in Europe years ago? Well, pollution is something and gay people are not treated with equality and some white people think they are better than black people. Think of Rosa Parks etc., etc. These were the topics of lively conversation that afternoon in the Upper Elementary classroom.