The latest craze to hit schools in Australia is fidget spinners. Essentially glorified ball bearings, normally hidden from view inside an engineering framework, now they’re in shops as a stand-alone item, glossed up and colourfully packaged to attract the attention of kids. They come in a range of styles and quality. Some spin effortlessly between your fingers for ages, without a noise. Others clunk away, feel cheap and stop well short of any spinning records.
Spinners are the latest cool thing to have in school and recently shops completely sold out of them in Sydney (“Fidget Spinners Taking Over the City”, SMH, May 7, 2017, p7). Originally intended to improve attention of kids with attention deficit disorder, now that everyone wants them, schools are having to create policies to restrict their use and some have even banned them from school. Why? Because kids are fidgeting with them in class! Oh, the irony.
IRONY- Why we should teach it to our kids
But here’s the thing…it’s worth discussing this current craze with your kids and getting them to think about ‘irony’. Irony is used by the Bible quite frequently to highlight the foolishness of the world’s thinking and direct us to a better path.
LOOK OUT: What’s the path we want our kids to follow in life? It’s the path to a healthy and productive life. This ‘good life’ comes from sticking to God’s path and avoiding worthless, harmful distractions. To this end, keep an eye out for a new course of Family Devotion videos I’m making for mums and dads to use with their kids. It’s going to teach your kids the Hebrew alphabet and how each letter directs us to the ‘good life’ God wants for us. It’s going to be awesome, 22 videos full of biblical, engaging, fun for your family.
How do I explain irony to kids?
In short, its where people outside the event and story can see how silly the situation in the story is, but those in the story, can’t. In this instance, people outside the class can see how crazy it is that kids are all fidgeting with the very device that was intended to stop a small group of kids from fidgeting.
Other examples of irony
-I read another story in the same paper about a woman who was losing her home she’d been renting from the government for decades in the inner city of Sydney because the government wanted to sell it off to developers. It seems the unpopular housing location she had been allocated all those years ago, now had become a trendy, hipster location and so developers wanted to cash in on the changing times.
-People advocating for same sex marriage argue for their progressive view to be tolerated and normalized but so often in the media we hear them shouting down and refusing to tolerate those who wish to stand by the old-fashioned view of marriage that has persisted for millennia.
-In the Gospel, we are told about the high priest prophesying that ‘one must die for all’ for the good of the nation; speaking of Jesus he unwittingly did not realize the true nature of Jesus’ death for all.
-right now, Anton and I are wrapping up a full show video for a the ‘Sneak Peek, Growing Godly Kids’ course that covers a miracle Jesus did that failed to deliver the faith it should have. The crowds were feed, 5000 men in fact, then they asked for proof he was the messiah…What about a bread miracle, like the one Moses did, Jesus? …Oh, the irony.
So, teach your kids about irony, let them see the richness of God’s word and keep an eye out for how it is used in the Bible. Irony packs a punch and if you’re looking, truly searching for the path to the good life, God will show you just how silly everyone is in the story and what NOT to be like!
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