As parents, should we shelter and protect our children from the horrors of terrorism, or does that promote the very ignorance it thrives on?
On the morning of Saturday, Nov. 14, families across Japan awoke to blanket media coverage of the unfolding tragedy in Paris. In those moments, many parents were forced to make a decision about how they would engage with their children about the attacks, which left 130 people dead, hundreds more hurt and countless others traumatized.
Being an island nation halfway around the world, it could be argued that such news is only tangentially relevant to Japan. But with coverage of the aftermath of the attacks being almost unavoidable in our increasingly interconnected world, do parents have a greater responsibility than ever to educate their children about global events, regardless of the degree of relevance to their daily lives? And by extension, do their teachers, too?