Kids say the darnedest things. From the mouths of the babes. This week I bore witness to them. Twice.

A private school in Jakarta invited me to share basic knowledge of media and my experiences as a columnist with their fifth-graders. Sharing is always interesting, and the teacher gave me pointers, but as I am yet to be blessed with children, I admittedly was a bit lost upon preparing my presentation — to what depth should I speak, what level of vocabulary should I employ?

Beyond my scant memory of my fifth grade self and the popular TV show Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? I had no idea what fifth graders would be like.

Generally throughout the session, I was pleasantly surprised. The fifth-graders showed a good level of media awareness and a healthy appetite for writing and reading. They asked good questions and needed only little encouragement to speak their minds. They enthusiastically pored over newspapers, magazines and tabloids that I brought along. 

However, as I drove home that afternoon, a tinge of sadness set in. So realistic were some of the questions that I was taken aback that fifth-graders would be aware of certain situations already.

When I talked about hoaxes, a girl asked why people would create hoaxes in the first place and if there were any real punishments for anyone doing so. When I mentioned that media outlets made revenue from advertisements and subscriptions, a boy asked if it meant someone could be paid (read: make a living) from writing hoaxes for media outlets that would welcome such writing.

When I elaborated the differences between news and column writing, a girl asked if running a column meant I got to be rude to anyone I disagreed with.

I answered truthfully — acknowledging the existence of bad people profiting from other people being misled, underlining the necessity of good manners even when writing a scathing argument — but it’s sad that today’s 10-year-olds are in the position to pose such questions. I thought the world would’ve waited a while before making them aware of these grim facts.

The next day, still reeling from the realization, I spent the morning glued to the televised town hall meeting between survivors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school, the latest site of mass shooting in the United States, and a handful of lawmakers.

Seventeen people, mostly students, were killed on Valentine’s Day, a day that ironically was supposed to be about love for most coming-of-age teenagers. The tension was high as bereaved parents barely contained their grief and shocked teachers objected to President Trump’s bizarre idea of arming teachers in schools, but the powerful moments came from the students themselves.

Having survived the ordeal only to learn of their friends’ deaths, the students put aside their raw emotions enough to put together the most pointed questions and remarks.

A teenage boy asked not to be patronized because he knew the feeling of being trapped for hours waiting for his death and texting his mother goodbye. A teen girl asked a lawmaker if their blood wasn’t worth the lawmaker’s blood money. Another teen girl asked the audience to be silent for she needed to listen to the National Rifle Association (NRA) spokeswoman’s full answer in order to compose her rebuttal, which she later did. Another boy who’d just turned eighteen wondered why even after all that had happened he could walk to a store and buy automatic weapons.  

The best question came from a young man who asked Senator Rubio point blank if he’d stop receiving campaign donations from the NRA, a question which Rubio unsuccessfully deflected as the student kept drilling him with a tenacity rarely shown anymore by the White House press corps.  

These are teenagers, whose worries were supposed to be passing classes, entering college, and finding a prom date. They weren’t supposed to worry about dying from assault rifles, or whether their political representatives took blood money.

Indeed, the millions of twentysomethings marching across the US did end the Vietnam War, but these students are younger and the US is not engaged in a civil war. Or is it? Is it a civil war now between the majority of Americans who want tougher background checks for weapon purchases and the lawmakers who heed their contributors more than their constituents?

What a sad world we’re giving our future generation these days. We the adults seem to be clueless about how to best utilize and manage the technological advancements we’ve achieved. We don’t appear to know how to balance freedom of information or self-protection, and the necessary wisdom. We look like we enjoy arguments for the sake of arguing instead of problem solving.

The mix of innocence and comprehension shown by Jakartan fifth-graders and American high-schoolers this week is both commendable and depressing, for it comes from the decreasing level of safety the world can offer them these days. I now understand how some of these kids may grow up to be disillusioned and fixated on trivial things they feel more rewarding, like fame, just as I wrote here last month.

The bright young minds have spoken. Now, when can the adults get their act together?

 —   Lynda Ibrahim is a Jakarta-based writer with a penchant for purple, pussycats and pop culture.

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