“My son was once afraid to swim; the water made him wince.
Until I said he mustn’t swim. He’s been swimming ever since.”
Lyricist Tom Jones
“The Fantastiks”

I am a big fan of musical theater. I love and appreciate the ability of lyricists to not only tell a memorable story, but to also make it rhyme and to make it work with some of arguably the best music ever written.

That’s why I used one musical for my column title, and another for its basis.

Different shows, conceived decades apart, but in a strange way, with a wee bit of the same message.

If you don’t recognized the show from the column title, simply type it into the search bar on YouTube and you will likely get the Bernadette Peters rendition of this cautionary tune.

Go with Bernadette - pass on Meryl Streep in this instance, OK?

I thought of the lyrics from The Fantastiks - the longest running musical by the way - a couple months back, in regards to the removal of Native American history from the draft curriculum presented by the S.D. Board of Education.

I thought at the time, “That’s not going to play well with today’s kids guys.”

When I went to school, I received a wonderful high school education. I had great teachers and am eternally thankful for their patience and perseverance in sheperding me through.

I don’t remember any specific branch of History or Social Studies that dwelled on Native American history, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t. It wasn’t stressed and we certainly were not told we couldn’t.

We had a Native American classmate and that was about as close as I got to that culture at the time.

I did have a keen interest in the Lakota warrior Crazy Horse, and checked out several books about him from our school library.

That was the first real education that I had on Native American history, at least as it pertained to our area.

But I checked those books out. When we wanted to learn something, we needed to check out a book or more likely, research it in an encyclopedia.

Today’s high school kids literally grew up with more information at their fingertips than we had in the entirety of our library.

So I was impressed, but not surprised last week, when students in Flandreau walked out of school in protest over Native American history being removed from their curriculum.

They were told ‘no.’

All parents can empathize. When your children are young, you can tell them “No!” and they ask “Why?”

You can get away with “Because I said so,” for awhile, but that only lasts so long.

“Since Dad doesn’t want me to do this, there must be something really interesting about it!”

Right?

We were never told that we couldn’t do this, so we never questioned. When I got into college and later out into the world, I came to understand in more detail how Native Americans were treated by our country.

In “The Fantastiks,” two fathers pretend to feud, ordering their children not to see each other. The intention is, as children don’t do what they are told, the children, Matt and Luisa, will fall in love, all because their fathers’ told them not to.

Telling students that they cannot learn about something is equivalent to painting a big, shiny, red and white target on it.

To an extent I get it. Native Americans were treated horribly by early settlers and by the U.S. government. You could make the argument that the ill treatment continues, but that is a completely different debate.

And if I was a part of the governmental machine that, in the past had been a part of it, there may be a part of me that wanted to keep it on the down low, too.  

It’s unpopular, let’s not talk about it.

In a way, it’s like the rash of voting restrictions that have taken place.

If you are the ones in power, making the decisions, and your quest is to limit people’s ability to vote...maybe it’s because you’re concerned those people won’t like what you are selling.

Saying “No” didn’t work for the Dads in The Fantastiks, it’s not working out great for the S.D. Dept. of Ed.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

Children will listen.