2025-09-18
44 分钟I remember my first day in an American public school.
I had just moved here from Israel.
I was nervous about what was in my lunchbox.
Pita with things stuffed inside it.
But when I sat down at the lunch table, the whole place was like an international food hall.
Doll, dumplings, jerk chicken, you get the idea.
This was PS117 in Queens, one of the most diverse places on the planet.
The term of art back then to describe our situation, families of every race,
configuration, and religion sitting down to eat together, was melting pot.
Which makes it sound like a smooth, warm bisque.
It was not.
We were mean to each other, made fun of each other's holidays,
regularly sniffed each other's lunches and said, ew, gross.
Fights broke out nearly every day on the playground.
But every morning, we all showed up and said the Pledge of Allegiance together.
I didn't think about it at all this way when I was a kid.
But on top of the English and math and social studies,
we were absorbing another lesson that would serve us throughout our life.
It was a lesson on messy democracy,
how to be around people who ate and thought and believed different things than we did and then our parents did,